Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein's interview with Democracy Now! did not have any relevant information for me to incorporate within my group's topic, overpopulation.

Though she had an interesting point on how climate change is affecting the world's fertility rate. A good quote:

"Climate change was playing out in the natural world is also often as a fertility crisis, that we were making the world less fertile, whether we’re making the soil less fertile, whether we’re deliberately making seeds less fertile so that they can be patented and owned, or simply that warming temperatures and acidifying oceans are wreaking havoc on many species’ ability to reproduce"

Overpopulation.

Earth currently houses 7.125 billion people. With the resources we have today, we can only support up to 3 billion people. That leaves a littler over 4 billion out of resources or struggling to find resources.While some may argue that Earth can support up to 9 billion people, that still doesn't justify the fact that we will all have access to the same resources because we barely have that today. We are currently exhausting all of our resources today and are not thinking of our future generations due to our impulsive desires. With the lifestyle many rich nations live in today, our natural resources will deplete. With the booming growth rate of people, Earth is losing many of its natural resource.

For instance, Earth is currently losing many of it's forests to make room for more people to live in. While Earth does have many open uninhabited areas, we are not thinking of the long term effects it will have on us. Without forests, we are killing of numerous amount of species which is leading to their extinction. Not only are we the cause of extinction for some species but we're also taking out our own oxygen supply. Trees take in the CO2 (carbon dioxide) from our air and transforms it into oxygen for us humans to breath. With the loss of trees, there is a loss of oxygen and CO2 building causing global warming.

Also, Earth is also facing a loss of fresh water supply. With all the pollution the world is doing, it is being absorbed into our air and then released back into our atmosphere as acidic rain which pollutes many of our rivers and oceans causing the contamination of our water supplies. The United States has many rivers and lakes polluted with toxic chemicals such as Mercury and Cyanide. With the contamination of our waters, we're also affecting aquatic life which in return provides us with food and fresh oxygen.

With many being oblivious or ignorant towards the fact that our world is overpopulated, we need to all realize that our "free ride" on Earth may soon be over with the way we are abusing every aspect of "her". We must think and know about the long term effects of our actions because "putting it off" simply won't cut it as we are wasting our resources or using them greedily when we could be sharing with parts of the world that are in dire of need of these particular resources. I for one firmly believe that history in one way, or another, repeats itself. As it did for the powerful Syrian and Roman empires, the United States and many other top nations will soon become nothing but an example of rich nations falling to their inevitable demise.As said in Ozymandias, sonnet about the fall of great empires, "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains...the lone and level sands stretch far away".

References: 

https://brainmass.com/file/1432392/oskamp_2000_a%281%29.pdf

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/section4group5/implications

Essay Topic + Quote

Topic: The world's overpopulation and the forthcoming effects.

Quote: "City-state populations, however, have a steadily increasing food supply...as a result, their population [grows] without limit until they hit the sudden wall of famine or plague or the end of their energy resources" (210).