Jooyoung Kim- 'Merica!

Jooyoung Kim

PhySci 2

Prof Difiori

20 November 2012

                                                                       'Merica!


    Since the birth of religion and the creation of the Holy Bible, many have rejected modern science and new discoveries that disproves the gospel. One of the more famous discoveries that contradicts the Bible is that of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. Darwin observed on the Galapagos Islands that there was a process of natural selection and that the animals that inhibited the island had to evolve in order to survive. The idea of evolution was seen as blasphemy and that it violated the belief of God's creation of Adam and Eve. Even today there are those among us that still believe in creationism. Like Darwin, Paul Ehrlich's ideas were rejected as well. Ehrlich witnessed, during his trip to India, that people were suffering through famine and poverty due to the lack of natural resources found in certain locations. After this life-changing experience, he theorized that population growth will soon be the end of civilization and that certain measures must be taken that threatens the American way of life. Like many naturalist theories, Ehrlich's theory was rejected by many, but also recognized by others. According to Paul Ehrlich, the human race would slowly die out as overpopulation would indefinitely exhaust our natural resources, but there are other factors of overpopulation that Ehrlich may have not taken into account that may contribute to our demise as well.
    Before Ehrlich wrote his famous book about overpopulation, he was a naturalist who took interest in butterflies and other plant life. His life as a naturalist lead to a particular trip to India, changing Ehrlich's life and career. Ehrlich witnessed thousands of Indians who were struggling to survive with little to no food and scarce access to clean water. He saw the damages that could be done because of the overpopulated country and the death that it brought with it. In this short trip, Ehrlich changed the direction of his studies to that of the cause of why so many people were living in hellish conditions which lead him to his fame. The controversy arose when Ehrlich wrote a book called The Population Bomb which explained the many consequences of overpopulation. Ehrlich estimated "that hundreds of millions of people would die of starvation during the 1970s because the earth's inhabitants would multiply at a faster rate than world's ability to supply food" (nationalcenter.org). At the time, this theory not only shocked the world, but it built awareness to the level of urgency about the situation during the 1960's. Many stood with Ehrlich while others argued against him. Even though Ehrlich stood by his grim hypothesis, the opposite happened. Sometime after Ehrlich's predictions, the world prospered more than it ever did before because of the "Green Revolution." This revolution shot up the amount of food being produced with science and technology. It helped those who were starving and those who were poor and proved Ehrlich's theories wrong. His mistake was that he overshot the number of those who will die and underestimated the world's ability to manipulate the natural resources that were available at the time. As this outcome has been beneficial in the 1970's, Ehrlich's predictions may be right in a different way in the modern 2000's.
    The world's technology has been advancing faster than it ever has before. While it may seem like it only holds benefits at the moment, the truth is that it has countless cons as well. Ehrlich created a formula that calculated the impact that different factors can have on the world. The formula stated that the environmental impact is caused by population, affluence, and technology. This formula is better known as IPAT (Impact = Population X Affluence X Technology). The "IPAT has been chosen by many scholars in both the social and natural sciences as a starting point for investigating interactions of population, economic growth, and technological change" (Chertow). This formula not only brings a way to roughly calculate the damage being dealt to the planet, it also show what the factors are that contribute to the problem. One of these main problems is technology. Technology does not seem to affect the United States as much as it affects other countries so our society dismisses the thought that technology is harmful. What most people do not see is that the technology that they depend on so much harm the ecosystem greatly.
    Air pollution may not be directly associated with the technology itself, but it has an indirect connection to modern devices. One of the more common examples can be found in the way America makes its food. As America industrialized through the green revolution, chemicals were used to kill bugs and other pests that may stunt the growth of food, but what they did not realizes at the time was that "chemical pesticides pollute water, degrade the soil, and destroy native wildlife and vegetation" (Eitzen 78). The more food America needs, the more pesticides are used in the process of making those foods. This is one of the ways that over population plays into effect into destroying the earth's natural ecosystem with technology being one of the factors that contributes toward it. Even breeding the food is a threat to the ecosystem. In this land of plenty, the United States have grown accustomed to eating a lot of meat so Americans have genetically mass produced cattle over the past. This may not seem like a harmful thing to the planet at first, but after taking a closer look to all the ripple effects that raising cows have, it can be devastating. First, in order for the cow to live and grow, they need grass and food. In large areas where cattle are, they start to degrade the soil by consuming large amounts of grass and energy from the earth. Not only do cows soak up the worlds natural resources like a vacuum, the very place they stand is being drained of its usefulness as the weight of the cows degrade the land beneath them. This rots the land and sucks the nutrients out of it making it unusable for future farm or vegetation. The American way of life is a threat to the worlds ecosystem and it will just get worse as more and more people live and over populate.
    Another way that technology can slowly destroy the world is air pollution. It is commonly known that burning fossil fuels and coal release an abnormal amount of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere therefore causing global warming and the green house effect, but what most American's do not know is that they create the most form of pollution through the daily use of cars and automobiles and that Americans are the leading makers of green house gases even though our population is small compared to countries like China or India. Even though the U.S. is the biggest consumer in gas and fossil fuel, "The world consumes 84 million barrels of oil a day" (Eitzen 97). As the world's population increases, so does the world's pollution. It is a simple and obvious fact overpopulation correlates with the air pollution and pollution in general. Big factories pollute the lands and the waters as it manufactures goods. Forests are burned to the ground to develop more space for expanding parking lots of creating more factories. When Paul Ehrlich stated that technology impacted the world, it didn't seem he knew about other factors such as this as he didn't put a big enough stress on technology. Instead, he focused on the inevitable depletion of our earth's natural resources.
    Of all the ways the world can destroy itself, depleting our natural resources sound the most serious of them all. Global warming is pretty disheartening as well, but the limitations that the world has on its resources and the rate of our population growth is one of the scariest factors that people these days tend to ignore. The truth is that the world only has a certain amount of usable resources and the modern world has been exploiting it faster than ever. The rate of using resources escalates with the rate of population growth. If the population continues to grow it is only natural to think that the world will soon run out of these resources. As the world's population grows, they tend to over consume things, especially America. Along the lines of  over consumption is a theory called the Tragedy of the Commons. The tragedy of the commons is "what can happen in groups when individuals act in their own best self interests and ignore what’s best for the whole group" (Grohol). This can be best shown through the example of sheep and their herders. If a group of herdsmen share a pasture and one of the herdsmen decide to increase the amount of sheep, than the room for the other sheep decrease while only benefitting that one herdsman. Also, it may be unintentional, but it can destroy the land the sheep are on by grazing. Similarly, the world's companies are the herdsman and are using so much of the earth's natural resources that it will soon hurt all of us in the end. The more we consume and feed the market, the more big time companies pollute and produce more goods. It is an endless cycle that the American lifestyle has been trapped in for a long time and it is bad for the world and us as a result.
    Paul Ehrlich was a Naturalist who changed the course of his life to try and better the wrongs that the world has done. Even if his sudden theories of mass destruction was a little disturbing to the public, it raised awareness in a society that was oblivious to the realities of the world. Even if he was a little wrong in the end, it was because of his theories and his will to change modern ways that a lot of us are still aware of the changes happening around us. But it is a serious issue that must be addressed sooner or later, and it will one day be very clear that the world is running low on its resources, but until that day, we Americans will focus on the next iphone and what time that really popular movie starts.