what are the essential questions for man's future for the point of view of population growth (answer in 100 words)
Answers
Explanation:
The traditional Malthusian concern is
that population growth will sooner or
later run up against the limits of the
earth's finite stock of resources. In his
First Essay on Population, Maithus argued
that the inherent capacity of population
to grow exceeds the earth s capacity to
yield increases in food, because of limits
to the supply of cultivable land. Unre-
strained population growth eventually
leads to falling wages and rising food
prices because, as the labor force
expands, a rising ratio of labor to land
leads to smaller and smaller increments
in output per worker. Population growth
is ultimately checked by rising mortality.
In the twentieth century this argument
has been extended to the availability of
energy and minerals, the effects of rising
environmental pollution, and so on. In
The Limits to Growth, Club of Rome
researchers built a simulation model on
the assumption that the pace of techno-
logical change would be insufficient to
overcome diminishing returns arising
from limited supplies of essential
resources. Falling standards of living and
increasing levels of pollution would lead
to a population collapse within 100 years.
A related view is that some resources
land, forests, fisheries.though fixed, are
renewable, but that their sustainable
yields do have a maximum limit. Some
harvests may exceed this maximum, but
they lead to a permanent reduction in the
long-run productivity of land. A popula-
tion whose needs (subsistence and com-
mercial) exceed sustainable yields will
have lower per capita incomes in the
long run.
The claim of diminishing returns to
resources can easily be criticized for its
failure to recognize that, as resources are
depleted, rising prices reduce consump-
tion and speed the search for substitutes,
stimulating technological change. This
criticism, extended, leads to the argu-
ment that there are no real natural
resource limits, because population
growth itself brings the adjustments that
continually put off doomsday. To quote
from Julian Simon's book, The Ultimate
Resource: "The ultimate resource is peo-
pleskilled, spirited, and hopeful peo-
plewho will exert their wills and imagi-
nations for their own benefit and so,
inevitably, for the benefit of us all."
Simon argues that natural resources are
not limited; that scarcity is revealed by
prices; and that prices of resources are
not rising, at least not as a proportion of
the income of the United States. More
people implies more ideas, more creative
talent, more skills, and thus better tech-
nology; in the long run population
growth is not a problem but an
opportunity.
These different viewpoints each con-
tain important truths. Some resources
are finite; even if prices have not
increased (and they may have done so in
relation to incomes outside the United
States), there have been fundamental
structural changes in the balance
between population and resources.
Human ingenuity might be a match for
these changes, but it might be able only
to maintain income, not to lift millions of
people out of poverty. Or it may reduce
poverty very slowly: even with the
assumption of technological change built
into Simon's model, there are "short-
run" difficulties. His short run is thirty
to eighty years, and in that period he
finds even moderate population growth
to be detrimental to human welfare. In
the short run, ideas may be lost and
Einsteins go undiscovered if many chil-
dren receive little schooling. Policy-
makers and poor people live in the short
run; they do not wish to go through a
period of greater deprivation to adapt
eventually to rapid population growth.
At the same time, there is little doubt
that the key to economic growth is peo-
ple, and through people the advance of
human knowledge. Per capita measures
of income should not be used to imply
that the denominator, people, contrib-
utes nothing to the numerator, total
income. Nor is population growth in and
of itself the main cause of natural
resource problemsair pollution, soil
degradation, even food availability.
This Report therefore takes a position
that is neither hopeless nor overly opti-
mistic. The difficulties caused by rapid
population growth are not primarily due
to finite natural resources, at least not for
the world as a whole. But neither does
rapid population growth itself automati-
cally trigger technological advance and
adaptation. If anything, rapid growth
slows the accumulation of skills that
encourage technological advance, and
insofar as there are diminishing returns
to land and capital, is likely to exacerbate
income inequalities. This is most obvious
at the family level, where high fertility
can contribute to a poor start in life for
children. But it is also true for countries
as a whole.
Answer:
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