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Paul Ehrlich's Essay: Can We Prevent Population Growth?

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Paul Ehrlich's Essay: Can We Prevent Population Growth?
Living in New York, walking on crowded streets, and bumping into people no matter which corner I take, I can see the issues that arise when people think of population growth. It’s an issue we don’t usually think about, but one that Paul Ehrlich feels strongly about. He believes that it’s only a matter of time that we run out of food, and that humans will cease to survive. As seen in the first video, Ehrlich elucidates his point by repeating the word “finite” in the video. He refers to our planet and our resources as finite, and thusly juxtaposes the two to population growth, saying that population growth cannot increase without the resources to support it. This coincides with the theory that Thomas Robert Malthus came up with, which said that there were only two ways to prevent population growth, and to keep it in check; one way would be to limit births (preventative check), and another would occur if there were war, famine or disease (positive check).
My stance on this issue is a rather unbiased one. I believe an extremely high population will be …show more content…
Shiva uses Tehri as an example- the capital of her region that was flooded so that surface irrigation would be possible. Mining of aquifers and building dams causes chemicals to seep into the water, which now contaminates the ground water and river water. As a result, people are leaving Punjab in search of cancer treatments due to the exposure that they’ve received. The language that Vandana Shiva used to share her opinion on the Green Revolution is very persuasive, and compelling. She uses appeal to fear by bringing up cancer and floods that arise with irrigation. As a person who has seen the effects of the Green Revolution first hand, she brings up her own town in India, and speaks about how she sees surrounding areas ‘drowning’ because they’ve been exposed to
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