- Definitions:
Pessimists/Malthusians: These kinds of people believe that the population will soon outstrip food supply which will then lead to famine, disease, and social disorder. These ideas came from Thomas Malthus; however, he did not foresee the improvements in agriculture, hygiene, and medicine.
Neo-Malthusians: Neo-Malthusians believe that disaster will eventually overtake populations in the world’s poorest developing countries (next 50 years) due to increase in global warming, shortage of arable land, conflicts with fresh water, declining fish stock, and the spread of AIDS/other diseases. These kinds of people also claim that migration, technology, and new farming lands cannot solve the problems in these countries. Like Malthusians, they also believe that the Earth has been exceeding its carrying capacity for many years, at the expense of environmental change.
Optimists: Optimists believe and have faith in mankind’s ability to find innovations (solar and wind energy) that will increase Earth’s carbon footprint. An optimist outlook on population growth (known as cornucopian).
2. After watching the documentary “Kenya’s Human Time Bomb” and the TED Talk “Global Population Growth, box by box”, I determined that both videos have very different viewpoints when it comes to Global Population.
I think that the Kenya documentary has a very Malthusian point of view because they follow the same view point that the world has reached it’s carrying capacity; however, they differ from the Neo-Malthuisians because those featured in the video did not think that technology would be able to solve the problems going on. For example, in schools, they are so overcrowded that teachers feel that they aren’t able to teach students to the best of their ability because a) they don’t have resources to do so, and b) there is just too many kids in one class. This same issue occurred in hospitals with all those who are sick or have been injured from raiders invading their homes. Doctors resources were stretched to their maximum capacity because there just wasn’t enough to go around for everyone. While technology could help this issue, none of the doctors brought this up as a viable option to solve the problem.
On the other hand, the TED Talk video had an opposite view point to global population as it was a very optimistic point of view. He talks about new ideas and visualizations he has based on the advancement of technology and resources for our future world. His main idea is that if we were able to increase the survival of children in developing countries, it could help slow population increase. He believes that since survival rate is so low in many of these countries, families tend to have more children so there is a higher chance of them surviving. This leads to women having up to 8 kids each, with many surviving in these cases so the population just grows rapidly because of this. In the video, he states that a main way to solve this issue is to donate to foundations that support children’s survival, so women in these countries will have less children, slowing the rapid population increase.