Draft 1

The rate at which the world’s population is growing is at a high at which the world’s resources cannot keep up with. The world’s population is at a whopping 6.7 billion and does not seem to be slowing down. By 2050, the population of the world will increase nearly 50% to 9.4 billion people. The present population of the world is already causing major problems on the global economic scale. In forty-two years, imagine the impact of 2.7 billion more people will have on current problems. Waiting on Mother Nature to do her job with disease and natural disaster cannot be the only thing the world’s citizens do. An active approach on reducing the world population growth rate must be taken. With all the situations going on in the world such as HIV, wars, and the prevailing threat of natural disasters, the smallest action taken can have a large effect.
Mother Nature has been doing its best with the ever-growing population growth rate. In the 14th century, the Black Death, scientifically known as the bubonic plague, out broke in China where it eventually spread to Europe through Italian merchant ships doing business in the Black Sea. With this disease came new opportunities for European families. “Depopulation caused by the plague in Europe created abundant available land and labor shortage (42).” It became easier for people who needed jobs to get one and for those who needed land to raise a family could get some. Within five years, 25milion people died in Europe from this agonizing disease. A similar situation is happening in the world today. Presently, 33.2 million people are living with HIV with 2.5 million new cases per year. This virus claimed the lives of 2.1 million people in 2007. Natural disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes deal quite a blow to the population. The 2004 tsunami that struck countries on the Indian Ocean coast killed over 200,000 people.
China has the largest population in the world with 1.3 billion people. In 1979, the one-child policy was implemented to limit the population growth. This policy limits the fertility of families to only one child, hence the name. Since its implementation, China’s fertility rate has fallen from about five per family to 1.7 children per family. These days the law has been tweaked a little to prevent too extreme a drop in fertility rate. When two people who are only children start a family, the law allows them to have two children. Also, if a family’s first born is a female, and then they can have another child.
If the rate at which the world’s population is growing continues its current pace than worldwide problems will increasingly get worse. The world food supply would have to keep up. Unfortunately at its current state, millions suffer from malnourishment and hunger. If the supply can’t keep up now, than how will it possibly feed 3 billion more people in forty years? ? “About four-fifths of total consumption consists of grains, so that the increased demand for grains will add enormously to pressure on natural resources—not only on agricultural land but also on stocks of water, fish, and timber (212).” The supply of land will not increase enough by that time. All those people just simply will not fit.