Sci_230_Wk_5_Essay

SCI 230 Week 8 Day 5 Assignment: CheckPoint Ecology and Population According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s World Population Clock it states that the population in the U.S. as of 01:55 on October 10, 2009 is 307,659,604 and the world total is 6,789,485,571. I rechecked the numbers at 02:17 GMT same day the U.S. is total now 307,659,727 and the world total 6,789,488,913. According to these numbers, the population in the U.S. grew by 123 people in just 22 minutes and the world population grew by 3342 people in the same 22 minutes. The internet states that our world population is growing at about 9,000 people per hour or 220,000 people per day, but if you go by the World Population’s Clock, the world population is growing at roughly 10,026 people per hour or 240,624 people per day. Using these figures the U.S, population should grow by 3,232,440 in one year and the world population should grow by 87,827,760 per year. We have already seen how the human population growth issue has affected our ecosystem. With our every increasing size there is more demand for space to live and more resources being used which in turn generates more waste to be dealt with. Along with the need for more space to live on there is also the need for more space to grow the food, be it crops and/or livestock to meet the ever increasing demand. The only way we can meet these needs is to encroach on our ecosystem and reduce it each time we do so. Every time we take natural land for building we destroy ecosystems of other species. This has to have a long range effect on us and our planet somewhere down the road. We are loosing around 100 species per day with an average of 40,000 per year. (www.zoology.suite101.com) We can only afford to do this for so long before there is nothing left but man on this planet. There are only so many species on this planet and we are not making new ones to replace the ones we loose. Everything I seem to read on this is based on the fact that we can still feed everyone so we must not have reached our saturation point as of yet. Just because we can does not mean that we should. If we could devise ways to feed another 20,000,000,000 people should we allow our population to grow to that number' What kind of impact would that many more people have on our planet' Resources http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html http://zoology.suite101.com/article.cfm/how_many_animals_inhabit_the_earth