e POPClock, it calculates the world population and gives monthly estimations on them. On April 1, 1999 the world population was 5,976,870,741 (U.S. Census Bureau). So in fifty years, when today’s college students are old and gray, the world’s population will have doubled. I don’t think that people understand that the Earth is finite. There is only so much land to live on and to farm and there is only so far that you can drill for natural resources before coming up empty. ISSUE 2 HOW CAN WE DEAL WITH POPULATION GROWTH IN THE PRESENT DAY? I think that when we look at population today, you have to remember that drastic measures won’t work. We should make subtle changes, which don’t resemble eugenics campaign that may start to change the momentum of population growth. Here is a list of possible changes in the United States; 1) Take away tax write-offs for having children. 2) Raise life and health insurance rates for people with children. 3) Give tax breaks to people without children. 4) Raise child support for divorced parents It would be great for the United States to slow its population growth but we can do little or nothing about other countries where much of the population growth is going on. So even if a superpower can change their ways, no one can tell poor countries what to do. ISSUE 3 HOW COME CERTAIN ARES HAVE GREATER POPULATION GROWTH THAN OTHERS DO? If you look at the population break down in the world, you will see that there are some areas that grow much faster than others. An interesting aspect to look at is the time estimated for a country’s population to double. It will take the United States 116 years to double their population, Japan will take 330 years to double, and the United Kingdom will take 433 years to double. When I saw these numbers, I thought that population wasn’t much of a problem. But if you look at country’s doubling time, you see a different story. For example,...
