Global thoughts

Today I‘m going to talk about the issues behind our economic problems. We passed
the 7 billion mark for global population not long ago, which raised some awareness
of the issue. By the way in 1970, there were 3.5 billion people on Earth. It‘s doubled
since then to more than 7 billion, so even though the percentage growth rate is
lower, we‘re now adding eighty million people to the planet every year.

Now, it seems it‘s OK to talk about overpopulation as long it‘s in the developing
world- we all know that that‘s where population growth is out of control. But first of
all the idea that we should control the size of families in Europe or America is rarely
discussed.

However, people in the West do need have fewer children. That’s because the
world’s problem isn’t so much overpopulation, but overconsumption, and it’s
westerns who use most of the planet’s resources.

In the fight for limited resources, westerners won’t be able to carry on taking the
lion’s share, so they’ll need to limit both the amount they consume and their
numbers.

By the end, hat about the idea of one hild per family? People often say that would
be a social disaster, because only children find it difficult to get on with others. But
recent research suggests that this isn’t true- it seems they often have good
relationships because they’ve had all the attention they need and no more. If all the
families in the world were limited to one child, the world’s population would fall to
1.6 billion by 2100.