Achieving Sustainable Development in the Face of High Population Growth and Depletion of Natural Resources: Article Critique
“Is Humankind Dangerously Harming the Environment?” I attached two articles. One article says YES and the other says NO. 1. Need to critique both of them write one or two paragraphs about who I agree with, and then list any questions I felt were unanswered by the authors. Please use additional sources... No Wikipedia, encyclopedia, or sites similar to about.com are allowed. Teacher PREFERS academic articles such as those found through Google Scholar (scholar.google.com). Please be careful with the grammar... The last two articles I ordered had several issues and I had to spend hours correcting them.
During the last half of the twentieth century, the world economy expanded sevenfold. In 2000 alone, its growth exceeded that of the entire nineteenth century. Economic growth, now the goal of governments everywhere, has become the status quo. Stability is considered a departure from the norm.
As the economy grows, its demands are outgrowing the earth, exceeding many of the planet's natural capacities. While the world economy multiplied sevenfold in just 50 years, the earth's natural life-support systems remained essentially the same. Water use tripled, but the capacity of the hydrological system to produce fresh water through evaporation changed little. The demand for seafood increased fivefold, but the sustainable yield of oceanic fisheries was unchanged. Fossil-fuel burning raised carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fourfold, but the capacity of
nature to absorb it changed little, leading to a buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere and a rise in the earth's temperature. As human demands surpass the earth's natural capacities, expanding food production becomes more difficult.
Losing Agricultural Momentum
Environmentalists have been saying for years that, if the environmental trends of recent decades continued, the world would one day be in trouble. What was not clear was what form the trouble would take and when it would occur. Now it has become increasingly clear that tightening food supplies will be our greatest trouble and that it will emerge within the next few years. In early 2004, China's forays into the world market to buy 8 million tons of wheat marked what could be the beginning of the global shift from an era of grain surpluses to one of grain scarcity.
World grain production is a basic indicator of dietary adequacy at the individual level and of overall food
security at the global level. After nearly tripling from 1950 to 1996, the grain harvest stayed flat for seven years in a row, through 2003, showing no increase at all. And production fell short of consumption in each of the last four of those years. The shortfalls of nearly 100 million tons in 2002 and again in 2003 were the largest on record.
Consumption exceeded production for four years, leading world grain stocks to drop to the lowest level in 30 years. The last time stocks were this low, in 1972-1974, wheat and rice prices doubled. Importing countries competed vigorously for inadequate supplies. A politics of scarcity emerged, and some countries, such as the United States, restricted exports.
In 2004, a combination of stronger grain prices at planting time and the best weather in a decade yielded a substantially larger harvest for the first time in eight years. Yet even with a harvest that was up 124 million tons from that in 2003, the world still consumed all the grain it produced, leaving none to rebuild stocks. If stocks cannot be rebuilt in a year of exceptional weather, when can they?
Achieving Sustainable Development in the Face of High Population Growth and Depletion of Natural Resources: Article Critique
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Achieving Sustainable Development in the Face of High Population Growth and Depletion of Natural Resources: Article Critique
It is a widely acknowledged fact that environmental conservation is one of the most pressing global issues of the 21st century. The non-renewable nature of most natural resources has pushed nations to explore alternative resources as raw material for industrial use, while global warming and climatic changes as a result of environmental pollution has raised concerns about long term health effects and implications on future survival. However, it appears that efforts to conserve the environment and its natural resources are not fully supported by all the involved stakeholders. While environmentalists are concerned about the effect of industrial growth on the environment, economists are reluctant to acknowledge the seriousness of issue because it discourages industrial investment and effectively, economic growth and development. Not surprisingly, environmentalists and economists have different views on the way forward regarding environmental conservation and exploitation of the world’s natural resources. In this essay, I critically discuss the views of two articles on environmental conservation, one written by an environmentalist and the other by economics.
The two articles, “Pushing beyond the Earth’s Limits” by Lester Brown and “The Truth about the Environment” by Bjorn Lomborg, present contrasting views about the need for environmental conservation. Lester Brown takes a pro-environmental position by arguing that the rate at which human beings are exploiting the world’s natural resources is “beyond the earth’s limits,” and therefore unsustainable in the long term. Lester observes that the world economy grew “sevenfold between 1950 and 2000,” whilst the earth’s support system (e.g. natural resources) did not increase. The author suggests that the rate, at which the world is developing, especially in terms of industrial growth, is beyond what the earth’s natural resources can sufficiently support.
In addition, associated with economic growth are the problems of environmental pollution. He notes that carbon emissions increased four times as a result of burning fossil-fuels to provide energy for industries and domestic use (Brown, 2005, p. 18). Moreover, human population has been growing exponentially since the early 19th century whilst food production has been declining steadily over the same period. As a result, human demands exceed the earth’s natural capacities to provide for human needs without the risk of depletion. To support his arguments, the author cites declining levels of grain production among the world’s leading producers, such as China, U.S.A, Australia, and Argentina. He attributes the decline to exponential population growth, industrial expansion and economic growth. Industrial expansion takes up arable land that was once under agriculture, besides attracting able-bodied people to cities to seek well-paying jobs, thereby reducing the human labor in the rural areas, which I turn reduces production. Economic growth has the effect of creating a higher demand for grain-intensive products, such as beef, which requires more grain to feed cattle. Population growth, together with industrial expansion, creates high demand for water, which reduces the amount of available water for farming (through irrigation). This trend also affects the ecosystem by lowering the water-table. The bottom line of Brown’s argument, therefore, is that the current rates of economic growth and the inevitable exploitation of natural resources are not sustainable.
On his part, Bjorn Lomborg argues that economic growth and industrial expansion do not have adverse effects on the environment. He counters the claims of environmentalists about the scarcity of natural resources by arguing that these resources, such as oil deposits, “have become more abundant” over the years, especially after the publication of “The Limits to Growth” in 1972 by the Club of Rome. Lomborg’s article focuses on downplaying the impact of economic, industrial and population growth on the environment by referring to statistics that cite lower figures than what environmentalists claim. For instance, he argues that only 0.7 species are expected to be extinct in the next fifty years as opposed to the 25-50% often predicted by pro-conservationists (Lomborg, 2001). Moreover, he argues, the number of sta...