- Define Pessimists/Malthusians, Neo Malthusians, and Optimists/cornucopians
The Pessimists: Thomas Malthus was a British economist who began writing about the risks of population growth in the late 1700s. He claimed that population would soon outstrip food supply, leading to famine, disease, and social disorder.
Neo Malthusians: predict that disaster will overtake populations in the world’s poorest developing countries in the next 50 years
The Optimists: Those with an optimistic outlook on population growth are called cornucopians. They have faith in mankind’s ability to find innovations, such as solar and wind energy, that will increase Earth’s carrying capacity.
- Explain by providing quotes and timestamps from the video that justifies your categorization
Unreported World: Kenya’s Human Time Bomb: This video fit into pessimists. The reporter talks about the Kenyan’s population problems and the root causes of the country’s recent violence. The Kenya’s overpopulation leads them to the disease and famine. Within the video, a brutal militia attack Kenya and killed 13 people. Many Kenyan become refugee because poverty and overpopulation. “Refugee agency becomes a refugee in her own country” (7:48).
Hans Rosling: Global population growth, box by box: This video fit into Neo Malthusians. The speaker compares the west and the developing world, the current population and the future population. In the world’s developing, every country has progress in economy and population has grown. However, there still have two extremes, poor people and rich people. As the speaker said, “if the poorest get out of poverty, they get education, they get improved child survival, they can buy a bicycle and a cell phone and come to live here, then population growth will stop in 2050”(5:19). If don’t improve poor people’s economic problem, the populations of poor countries will double.
The Kenya video is probably more Neo-Malthusian as it shows how those living in poverty are facing overpopulation. Try to provide quotes that show how he sees resources becoming scarce as populations continue to grow.
The TED Talk seems more optimistic when he tries to explain how developed populations are more stable and helping poor countries to develop would help to stabilize their populations as well.