Sustainability: Population Growth and Carrying Capacity

9781610695060

Aging Population explores numerous impacts of the aging population, including the economic consequences of an aging population, the social and legal issues of an aging population, social security and the medical challenges that face an aging population. The viewpoints are selected from a wide range of highly respected and often hard-to-find sources and publications. By choosing from such diverse sources and including both popular and unpopular views, the Opposing Viewpoints series has adhered to its commitment to editorial objectivity.

. Introduction / Ian Goldin -- 2. Optimum Population, Welfare Economics, and Inequality / Anthony B. Atkinson -- 3. Overpopulation or Underpopulation? / Toby Ord -- 4. Demographic and Environmental Transitions / Sarah Harper -- 5. Towards a Contemporary Understanding of The Limits to Growth / Ian Johnson -- 6. How can 9-10 Billion People be Fed Sustainably and Equitably by 2050? / H. Charles J. Godfray -- 7. Water Scarcity on a Blue Planet / Mark New -- 8. The Metabolism of a Human-Dominated Planet / Yadvinder Malhi -- 9. Safe, Effective, and Affordable Health Care for a Bulging Population / Robyn Norton -- 10. Sourcing Mineral Resources -- Problems and Solutions / Anthony Hartwell -- 11. Governance Matters Most / Ian Goldin.

Paleobiologist Anthony D. Barnosky weaves together evidence from the deep past and the present to alert us to the looming Sixth Mass Extinction and to offer a practical, hopeful plan for avoiding it. Writing from the front lines of extinction research, Barnosky tells the overarching story of geologic and evolutionary history and how it informs the way humans inhabit, exploit, and impact Earth today. He presents compelling evidence that unless we rethink how we generate the power we use to run our global ecosystem, where we get our food, and how we make our money, we will trigger what would be.

What concerns surround population growth? Global population growth poses a serious challenge / Michael Fritz ; The facts refute alarmist concerns over global population growth / New Internationalist ; The taboo of discussing overpopulation must be broken / Tom Flynn ; Discussions of overpopulation often lead to racist and elitist solutions / Andrew Cheeseman -- What problems might be attributed to population growth? Population growth is a threat to the environment / John and Mary Ellen Harte ; Overconsumption, not overpopulation, is a threat to the environment / Fred Pearce ; Population growth strains nonrenewable resources / David Pimentel, Marcia Pimentel ; Global population growth will cause more hunger / Commonweal ; Global population growth will not cause more hunger

Malthusianism, eugenics, and carrying capacity in the interwar period -- War and nature: Fairfield Osborn, William Vogt, and the birth of global ecology -- Abundance in a sea of poverty : quality and quantity of life -- "Feed 'em or fight 'em: population and resources on the global frontier during the Cold War -- The "Chinification" of American cities, suburbs, and wilderness -- Paul Ehrlich, the 1960s, and the population bomb -- Strange bedfellows: population politics, 1968-1970 -- We're all in the same boat!?: The disuniting of spaceship earth -- Ronald Reagan, the new right, and population growth -- Conclusion: The power and pitfalls of biology.

The 20th century was the century of explosive population growth, resulting in unprecedented impacts; in contrast, the 21st century is likely to see the end of world population growth and become the century of population aging. We are currently at the crossroads of these demographic regimes. This book presents fresh evidence about our demographic future and provides a new framework for understanding the underlying unity in this diversity. It is an invaluable resource for those concerned with the implications of population change in the 21st century. The End of World Population Growth in the 21st Century is the first volume in a new series on Population and Sustainable Development. The series provides fresh ways of thinking about population trends and impacts.

By the early nineteenth century England was very different economically from its continental neighbours. It was wealthier, growing more rapidly, more heavily urbanised, and far less dependent upon agriculture. A generation ago it was normal to attribute these differences to the'industrial revolution'and to suppose that this was mainly the product of recent change, but no longer. Current estimates suggest only slow growth during the period from 1760–1840. This implies that the economy was much larger and more advanced by 1760 than had previously been supposed and suggests that growth in the preceding century or two must have been decisive in bringing about the'divergence'of England. Sir E. A. Wrigley, the leading historian of industrial Britain, here examines the issues which arise in this connection from three viewpoints: economic growth; the transformation of the urban-rural balance; and demographic change in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.