Earth's Population

Our world's population has seen drastic changes since the late 1960s when the growth rate reaches its peak: 2%. Earth's population now is 7 billion people and counting and we are expecting it to reach 8 billion in 2024.  Overpopulation is one of the most concerned problems in the world. As we know, China and India have the highest population: 1.4 billion and 1.27 billion people. There are articles that talk about the problems:

http://www.codewit.com/asia-pacific/15717-overpopulation-in-china

The cause of China's exponential population growth is because of the encouragement that Mao Zedong gave to the people of China after World War II. He encouraged people to have as much children as possible since it would bring more money to the economy. As a result, a massive increase of population of 712 million of people in just 20 years.This circumstance contributed to our problem today. But China has taken preventive measures to decrease the growth rate: One child per family.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/world/europe/germany-fights-population-drop.html?pagewanted=all

Although there are countries with increasing population, Germany is not one of them. In fact, Germany's population is decreasing. They have a negative growth rate. More people are dying than babies being born. In a town, there had been 60 houses torn down as well as 12 apartments. The country has a decreasing population and it some cities feel empty. In 2100, the population would be only 70 million people left. The government is encouraging the population to have more children to prevent this problem to happen.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2517637/India-stretched-limit-overpopulation.html

India's exploding population is a hard to contain by the government. The demand for goods and services is tremendously high, and there are not enough facility to accommodate and satisfy the people's need. With the two billion figure blooming, along with shortage on needs, it might be too late when Western technology innovation comes.

http://www.howmany.org/big_picture.php

Many problems occur under the pressure of overpopulation. Not enough food and water for at least 1 billion people on Earth, scarce limited resources that are now even harder to exploit and extract, etc are the negative effects that we need to eradicate. We need to create a safe environment where everyone receives the same basic needs that they need to survive. We need to cut down our resource consumption with recycle and reuse. Our world is limited in land as well as in resources, so we need to take charge and save our home planet. Future generations depend on how well we treat the planet now and leave them with the most prominent and prosperous legacy.

Basic Human Needs

Human has basic needs, and that's what makes us human. Throughout human history, there had been theories developed to identify what do human requires to sustain. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is one of the most basic theories out there that shows us what we need. Another theory, which was developed by Rosenberg, increased the basic needs for a human being to survive and have a nourished life.

Rosenberg's hierarchy of needs

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

ISIS's insurgent in Iraq is made up of people who hold a conviction that they have religious control over all Muslims across the globe. It is a self-proclaimed of religious belief. They do not feel that they have self-fulfillment needs in religion so they started pandemonium to reach their needs. From Maslow's tower, we could see that it's at the top of what human beings need, and on Rosenberg's tower, spiritual communion as in religion is a necessity for people in ISIS. It is human to aspire for that level, but to abuse that need to terrorize others is fallacious. Their "needs" do not justify for the horrendous actions that they have done. We crave for what we do not have, but there are always limits to it. War is the last resolution that one could think of to resolve any problem. The world that we now live in aims at a glove with little conflict and focus on augmenting the economy and technological advance. Compromise to regain peace and extend the society's life, for the children and generations after.

The Erroneousness of Our 21st Century World

           The world, in any era, always has conflicts. From 431 B.C, the Pelopponesian War between Athens and Sparta, to the Crusades in the High Middle Age, and to the 21st century, the era we now live in, has many wars around the world. The most notorious war is the war against terrorism in the Middle East conducted by U.S after the event of 09/11/2001, and continued by a chain of events in the Middle East, i.e. Syria, Libya, and recently, Iraq and Ukraine. Many extremist with biased belief raged war just to defend their credence. Tension between countries have risen to an alert rate. This could result in a third World War which could wipe out human race and bring us back to the stone age. The last World War, U.S "introduced" us to one of the most powerful weapon in the world, nuclear weapon, when they bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force Japan to surrender unconditionally. Now, many countries have nuclear weapon at their hands, and if World War 3 happens, human race as we know it would be extinct. A terrible fiasco happened to one of the Malaysian Airplane, MH 17, where it was shot down by a missile while flying over Ukraine. Prior to that, there was a separation of Ukraine leading to an insurgent. The missile killed everyone in that airplane, sadly. In conclusion, war is always a matter that we should not take lightly and try to compromise through peace to augment our world.

World News Map by 21st Century Issues Class

By 21st Century Issues Class (2014-2015)
Directed by Mr. Derek Swanson