Population Growth and Control Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Population Growth and Control - Essay Example In other words, it is a ratio: population over resources. If a given environment has a population of 10, but there is food and drinking water enough for only 9 people, then that environment is overpopulated, while if the population is 100 individuals but there are food and water enough for 200, then it is not overpopulated. Over population can result from increases in births, a decline in mortality rates, which is linked to increases in life expectancy, or from an unsustainable use and depletion of resources. Advances in technology can reduce the threat of overpopulation by making new resources available, or by increasing the productivity of existing resources. Resources to be taken into account when estimating if an ecological niche is overpopulated include clean water and air, food, shelter, warmth, or other issues related to survival. In the case of human beings, there are others such as arable land and, for all but tribes with primitive lifestyles, lesser resources such as unemployment, money or other economic resources, education, fuel, electricity, healthcare, proper sewage treatment and waste management, and transportation. In the context of human societies, overpopulation occurs when the population density is so great as to actually cause an impaired quality of life, environmental degradation, or a long-term shortage of essential goods and services. Overpopulation is not merely an imbalance between the numbers of individuals compared to the resources they need to survive, or a ratio of population over resources. This is because such an imbalance may be caused by any other number of factors such as bad governance, war, injustice and exploitation, etc. When other such factors come into play in a certain locale, and population density cannot be shown to be the major cause, overpopulation cannot be conclusively said to occur. The world's human population is currently growing by more than 75 million people per year. This is down from a peak numerical growth of about 88 million per year in the late 1980s. About half the world lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility, and population growth in those countries is due to immigration. Thomas Malthus (1798) argued that if left unrestricted, human populations would continue to grow until they would become too large to be supported by the food grown on available agricultural land. He proposed that, while resources tend to grow linearly, population grows exponentially. At that point, the population would be restrained through mass famine and starvation. Malthus (1798) also argued for population control, through "moral restraint", to avoid this happening. As the population exceeds the amount of available resources, it decreases, since the lack of resources causes mortality to increase. This process keeps the population in check and

The Great Gatsby Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 3

The Great Gatsby - Essay Example S. Eliot in his Four Quartets. In Burnt Norton, he says This very vividly brings out time as an amorphous mass with no real future or past. It all seems to exist in one place and seems to suggest that it is also memory he is talking about, for where else in real life does all time exist in one place except in the human mind These lines from Little Gidding, bring a new dimension to the concept of circularity of time. It says quite clearly that one can only truly understand when one has come full circle. This dimension is not evident in The Great Gatsby. In the novel though past and present are irrevocably entangled, there is a quality that makes one think we are trying to escape from the past but cannot, especially in the last lines. However, Eliot seems to consider the pull of past on us as something that helps us to understand ourselves and the future more completely. The idea that the past and future are inseparable is brought out clearly in Nick's comparison of the Dutch sailors and Gatsby's vision of a new life. Here too, the idea of rediscovering oneself re asserts itself. The experience of the Dutch sailors on landing on the Long Island beach for the first time clearly seems to be one of wonder and is filled with a sense of incredible adventure. They had discovered a completely new, untouched virgin country; ".fresh, green breast of the new world." The discovery is accompanied by a sense of excitement and the promise of new and undiscovered adventure, as is evidenced by Fitzgeralds use of subtle but definite language. He describes the moment with tenderness, bringing out the overwhelming sense of wonder in their landing, with terms like "transitory enchanted moment" and his description of the greatness of their dreams for the future. The experience is unique because of the sheer newness of the discovery. The sailors had come across an entirely unexplored and unknown territory. Everything here was to be discovered and shaped by them, they had a sense of power and the headiness of it is evident in the language. The paragraphs vibrate with it despite the restrained language. This was not simply a new area; it was a new life and world, something of theirs and theirs alone. It was an experience of hope and was forward looking. Gatsby's experience on first identifying the light that swung outside Daisy's home must have been, according to Nick, a similar experience in terms of the wonder it created in him. He must have felt the same sense of discovery and also one of hope for the future; "I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it." However, this experience is both similar to and widely different from the one