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Group Activities Videos Easter Island Books Literature Magazines |
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6 Billion Neighbors, One Neighborhood - a web page designed for school children (about 3rd - 6th grade) by Population International
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This excellent video is oriented towards teenagers and young adults. It covers population growth, teen-aged pregnancy, and high U.S. consumption levels. A Teacher's Guide is included with the video, presenting pertinent facts, examples, and quizzes. The video begins by stating that as the population of our cities increase, we are threatening to overwhelm the planet. We are already overpopulated, confirmed by the facts that 1 billion go to bed hungry each night and live in slums and 2 billion have no electricity. Our world population of 6 billion now could grow to 12 billion in the near future. Trash and oceans are discussed. 1 out of 25 people who swim in front of an ocean storm drain get sick. Quite a bit of coverage is given to trash disposal and recycling, pointing out the fact that our Western consumption patterns generate a tremendous amount of trash that is polluting our immediate environment. We are taking, making, and wasting way too fast. In a single lifetime, a typical person in the U.S. will consume 43 million gallons of water and 3,000 barrels of oil. A typical American uses 32 times more energy than a person in India, and 374 times more energy than a person in Kenya. Therefore it is important to keep U.S. family sizes small and at replacement level. Michael Tobias, Co-producer, stated that 60% of other plants and animals can disappear. He believes that: People are afraid to talk about overpopulation and say they want fewer people. But we are all in the same boat together. Overpopulation is the number one environmental nightmare on this planet - everything else is related to it. The video then discusses teen-aged pregnancy. In a moving interview with a teen-aged mother, she stated that she regrets having a child at her age. It is hard and stressful and she should have waited. Alexandra stated that population has nearly doubled in her lifetime. Won't diseases and war limit human population? From 1964-1983, natural diseases killed 2.5 million people, but it took only 11 days to add back that number of people. In the 20th century, wars killed 10 million soldiers. This number was added back in 7 weeks. We are adding 100 million per year to the planet. Consumption was again addressed as Alexandra interviewed teenagers on shopping trips. The average teenager views 20,000 commercial messages per year on TV -- 50 per day! The message is that "you alone are not enough". We are now spreading this message to developing countries, and this is wrong. Reducing family size has benefits for all. In Kenya, a small family planning association has reduced village family size and quality of life has improved. It is particularly important for Americans to maintain small family sizes due to the impact of our consumption. It is important to wait until you are ready to have kids. The video concludes by stating that: There are 3 times as many people now as when our grandparents were born. During the time you have spent watching this video, world population has grown by 5,500 people. Summary: this well-presented video weaves discussions of overpopulation, consumption and waste, and family planning in a manner so as to stress the important messages, but not overly dwell on single topics. This video and the associated Teacher's Guide is an excellent teaching tool for young persons entering their reproductive years. This video should be shown in every High and Junior High classroom in the country. Summary by Fred Elbel |
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I suggest an exercise that does not assume that population is an issue,
because population is not an issue with most people. Any number of studies show
this, and a series of focus groups sponsored all over the country for the Pew
Global Stewardship Initiative showed that the American public is generally
incapable of making the connection between population growth and environmental
degradation.
The game, or exercise, is this: Ask the participants to gather news
clippings about environmental problems that are clearly influenced by population
growth. Water shortages, rain forest destruction, urban sprawl, traffic congestion, and even flooding and mudslides, are usually population-driven in some measure.
If you're doing this for a single-sitting meeting, save the clippings
yourself and photocopy them for participants. Lexis-Nexis is also a great source of thousands of these stories.
Ask participants to count how many news stories connect the problem
discussed in the story to population growth. If you're doing this in a setting where participants don't have time to wade through a lot of news clips, give a
different clip to each audience member and after five minutes' reading,
check around the room to tally results.
Your audience will see that the news seldom connects environmental problems
to population growth. To take the exercise a step further, of those few stories
that do connect environmental problems to population growth, see how many
mention population stability as a possible solution.
This exercise helps people to realize why population remains a nonissue, and
why population stability remains a loony-fringe notion within mainstream
America.
To conclude the exercise, pass around photocopies of some of the direct and
unambiguous statements of concern about population by various scientific
groups (e.g., the National Academy of Sciences and the British Royal Society).
These provide a useful contrast to the causal amnesia we find in the news.
From the standpoint of communication theory, an exercise like this is
designed to break what is called the "spiral of silence." The core idea of this
theory is that people have a built-in barometer of prevailing public opinion. If
they feel their views on a subject are unpopular or out of kilter with the crowd,
they tend to keep their views silent. In this model, the media legitimate
what views and perspectives are safe to voice. If a perspective is regularly
aired by the media, people feel it's socially acceptable to discuss that
perspective. If the perspective is consistently avoided by media stories
(as population growth is), people feel that it's socially dangerous to discuss.
Helping people to understand why population is an important issue, even
though no presidential candidate ever mentions it, is a useful lesson to many
people and a starting point for many future population activists. I use this
exercise with college classes, but I think it would work equally
effectively with any civic group or other gathering.
Dr. T. Michael Maher,
Assistant Professor of Communication |
The population grew, their civilization flourished. Huge statues were carved from the volcanic rock. More palms were cut down and used to roll and lift the huge statues into place. More palms were cleared to create fields. The palm forests were completely gone by 1400. The delicate tropical soil eroded. With no forest to absorb the rain, springs and streams dried up. As resources became rare, warfare between islanders increased, as did cannibalism.
The population peaked at around 10,000 in 1600, while the quality of life continued to decline. Then the population crashed. When the island was " discovered" in the 1722, it population was below 2,000.
Brave New World Revisited
- by Aldous Huxley ... Review by Nancy C. Bell
About a year ago, I read 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley. The book portrayed a very upsetting picture of the future, and I was especially intrigued by it because the future it portrayed was essentially possible, unlike just about any other science fiction novel I have read. This made the impact of the book stronger, and suggested several deep, philisophical questions about man's nature, but it is not what inspired me to write this. What inspired me was a book which Aldous Huxley wrote 27 years after writing "Brave New World", titled "Brave New World Revisited," in which he examines what had happened since 1931,(when he wrote "Brave New World") and what it suggests about our future. This book has very little to do with the actual story of "Brave New World," despite its title, but actually more of an essay on the feasibility of a situation like "Brave New World" happening in the future.
The entire first chapter is on the effects of overpopulation, not environmentally or demographically, but socially and politically, and its findings are truly frightening. The argument is presented quite logically and is very well written. Almost as frightening as the argument itsself is the fact that it was written in 1958, over 40 years ago, yet its message is more important today than ever. Indeed, many of its findings are far too evident in today's society.
I especially like the way he relates the cause of overpopulation:
"Penicillin, DDT, and clean water are cheap commodities, whose effects on public health are out of all proportion to their costs. Even the poorest government is rich enough to provide its subjects with a substantial measure of death control. Birth control is a very different matter. Death control is something which can be provided for a whole people by a few technicians working in the pay of a benevolent government. Birth control depends on the cooperation of an entire people. It must be practiced by countless individuals, from whom it demands more intelligence and will power than most of the world's teeming illiterates posses, and (where chemical or mechanical methods of contraception are used) an expenditure of more money than most of these millions can now afford. Moreover, there are nowhere any religious traditions in favor of unrestricted death, whereas religious and social traditions in favor of unrestricted reproduction are widespread. For all of these reasons, death control is achieved very easily, birth control is achieved with great difficulty. Death rates have therefore fallen in recent years with startling suddenness. But birth rates have either remained at their old high level or, if they have fallen, have fallen very little and at a very slow rate. In consequence, human numbers are now expanding more rapidly than at any other time in the history of the species.Moreover, the yearly increases themselves are increasing. They increase regularly, according to the rules of compound interest; and they also increase irregularly with every application, by a technologically backwards society, of the principles of Public Health."
How familiar does this sound? (keep in mind he's writing this in 1958!) -
" ...every four years mankind adds to its numbers the equivalent of the present population of the United States, every eight and one-half years the present population of India. At the rate of increase prevailing between the birth of Christ and the death of Queen Elizabeth I, it took sixteen centuries for the population of the Earth to double. At the present rate it will double in less then half a century. And this fantastically rapid doubling of our numbers will be taking place on a planet whose most desireable and productive areas are already densely populated, whose soils are being eroded by the frantic efforts of bad farmers to raise more food, and whose easily available mineral capital is being squandered with the reckless extravagance of a drunken sailor getting rid of his accumulated pay."
He also talks about the effects of overpopulation quite clearly:
"As large and increasing numbers press more heavily upon available resources, the economic position of the society undergoing this ordeal becomes ever more precarious. ...In parts of Asia and in most of Central and South America, populations are increasing so fast that they will double themselves in little more than 20 years. If the production of food and manufactured articles, of houses, schools, and teachers, could be increased at a greater rate than human numbers, it would be possible to improve the wretched lot of those who live in these underdeveloped and overpopulated countries. But unfortunately these countries lack not merely agricultural machinery and an industrial plant capable of turning out this machinery, but also the capital required to create such a plant. Capital is what is left over after the primary needs of a population have been satisfied, but the primary needs of most people in underdeveloped countries are never fully satisfied. At the end of each year almost nothing is left over, and there is therefore almost no capital available for creating the industrial and agricultural plant, by means of which the people's needs might be satisfied. Moreover, there is, in all of these countries, a serious shortage of the trained manpower without which a modern industrial and agricultural plant cannot be operated. The present educational facilities are inadequate; so are the resources, financial and cultural, for improving the existing facilities as fast as the situation demands... And practically every attempt to improve the situation has been nullified by the relentless pressure of population growth."