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Ricky Davis
E. Caruso
UWRT 1103
1 October 2015
Is it possible for the Earth to not be able to support all of its inhabitants?
World population shows how many humans currently live on the Earth with the top three
inhabited countries being China, India, and the United States. China and Indias populations are
almost four times the size of the United States. There is an estimate that approximately 100 to
115 billion people that have ever lived on Earth and that currently there are over 7 billion people
that live on the earth. The population has a high rate of growth as there is already 1 billion more
people than there was from the previous century. In the last 60 year the population has grown by
4.5 billion people. This is an issue because as the population tends to grow it causes the food and
energy resources to become more desolate. With the rate that the population is going it is
possible that farms wont be able to keep up with the pace and people will be left to starve.
GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) are already being used as an aid to keep up with
todays current population but we could be reaching the maximum population capacity for this
method. Also as the human population grows it has the potential to cause plants and animals to
go extinct as fewer resources become available to them.
The plan to put an early end to the population growth is to use the method of population
control. Population control is the method that is used to control the amount of people that live on
the earth. Over the years policy through the government has been the most common way to set

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rules and regulations on population. The government uses various methods to dissuade people
from having children whether it has a financial, educational, or administrative effect. When
governments use these methods their goals are to stabilize the population. One of the most
known and effective methods of population control by the government was Chinas one-child
policy. China introduced this policy in 1978 ("Human Population Control). This policy helped
China to prevent 400 million births and it wasnt until November 2014 that the Chinese
government allowed its people to have the opportunity to have a second child ("Human
Population Control). Having more than one child was highly discouraged and usually there
were punishment by fines for additional births. India first took up use of family planning
methods in 1951 which caused it to be the first country to use these techniques ("Human
Population Control). In India they have it so only those that have two children or less are
eligible for election into their local government. We two, our two is a slogan meaning one
family, two children which is used as a message for keeping the population under control
("Human Population Control). The downside to this though is that countries that lack
government and money tend to have higher populations as they do not have any leadership to
guide them.
There are methods of population control that I believe have a better chance to be effective
across all of the earth. Empowering women and allowing them to make their own life decisions
is one major step in limiting population growth. Currently two in five pregnancies are not
intended to happen by the women that go through them and these births cause the continued
growth of the population. Birth rates can be lowered by women having the decision of when they
want to have a child. Many times women have to face fear or pressure to have a certain number
of children or give birth to a certain gender from their partner, family, or society. Also if women

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are given easy access to affordable birth control along with the teaching on how to use it this can
lead to women being able to control when they have a birth. Survey data shows that many
women who plan to have children usually only plan on having somewhere between one to three
births. (What a Population) The average of those births would end up averaging to the
replacement fertility rate which would possibly be able to put the population on a gradual
decline. While attempting to limit the amount of births countries will have to watch the how
many members are a part of the aging population ("Human Population Control). This is because
there has to be a younger population to care for their elders and be a part of the work force
("Human Population Control). We also need to develop better methods of conserving energy,
water, and material resources. The way this can be done is to move towards conservation
techniques, focus on how efficiently resources are being used, and the development of green
resources.
Population is on its way to becoming an upcoming major issue. The earth is faced with
the challenge of trying to provide for the growing amount of people that inhabit it. The method
that will succeed in limiting population growth and allows the Earth to reach a sustainable
amount of people is through the use of population control. Empowering women, finding better
methods to resource use, and learning conservation methods will be the goal in order to reach the
replacement rate for population growth.

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Works Cited
"Human Population Control." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 29 Sept. 2015.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population_control>.
Watson, Mark. "Population Control." Watson's Web. Web. 26 Sept. 2015.
<http://www.markswatson.com/popcontrol.htm>.
"What a Population of 7 Billion People Means for the Planet." Theguardian. Web. 30 Sept. 2015.
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jul/18/population-7-billion-planet>.
"World Population." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 29 Sept. 2015.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population>.