Sep 13 1998
Hi, my name is Scott B, and I'm a junior attending high school in
Van Nuys, California. This year, a teacher started an AP (Advanced
Placement) Environmental Science class, and the reaction has been great.
The class is full of smart people who really care and want to do
something to help. I found the page under a search on OVERPOPULATION on
Yahoo!, as part of a project for the class. I am sure that there are
many people in the class who would be willing to help in any way they
can. If you're interested, contact me back ,and I will speak with the
teacher and the rest of the class. Thank you for the informative
website! Hope to hear from you soon
Thank you, Scott. I think there are ways you and your classmates can help
world overpopulation awareness.
I am always looking for factoids that grab attention. For example, 1/3 of
the world's population, 2 billion, are under the age of 20. This means
that the world is in for one terrific baby boom in the next twenty years,
barring starvation, disease (particularly AIDS), and war.
I have put quite a few research resources on WOA's web pages, including
the US Census Bureau, World Watch Institute, the Alan Guttmacher
Institute, and many others. If your class can research these sources on
the Internet, perhaps there will many other attention grabbers that I can
use.
In addition, I am looking for art work, political cartoons, essays,
graphs, animated gifs, and research papers.
I am particularly interested in getting a simple bar chart with the
population in 1900, 1950, and 2000, plus the projected population for 2050
under three scenarios: high, medium, and low expectations. It would help
illustrate to put simple line drawings within each bar: a horse and wagon
for 1900, a few '50s cars for 1950, a crowded freeway for 2000. Or some
other theme.
I quite frequently get questions that I can't answer sufficiently. For
example: Is there, and will there be, enough food to feed the world's
population? How much growth (including offspring) does immigration
contribute to the USA's population? (I get lots of different opinions on
that one, but we need solidly based facts). I could email these questions
to your class as I get them, if there is interest in answering.
Lastly, there is keeping an eye on the news. For example, a person could
go to http://www.cnn.com and click on 'Customize'. This will give you a
'customized' news page. You can select topics such as 'overpopulation',
'starvation', 'immigration', 'birth control', etc., and then get daily
news tailored to your specifications. You could then send a brief synopsis
of a selected story, the custom key word(s), and the URL (I think I can
get it using your custom URL) to me. If you or your classmates are HTML
savey, you can put it in HTML, and send it along via email (not as an
attachment, but as text) to me. Most stories that you get this way will
not be very interesting, but there will be a few that are worth putting on
the web page. If you can research the news item and find it on a regular
news page, that URL would be even better.
Of course, your class could put up your own web page on the subject, if
you wish. I would be happy to link to it. Be careful not to take any
copyrighted material without permission.
WebSurfers! We can use your help! Look at other population groups, news sources, environmental groups, legislation, anything on the web that pertains to overpopulation, and email me the URL (preferably pointing to the item of interest) and a brief description.
Testing hyperlinks (does the click on the colored text take you to a sensible website?)
- we want to be sure they are always accurate. If you have tested a systematic bunch of links, such as a whole page or the first 10 links on the page, your email to us giving the results - whether the links worked or not - would be most appreciated.
Establishing and testing links from other websites
Web Wizards! If you are html knowledgeable: Take a copy of the HTML from the page you feel you can improve, make the necessary improvements on the copy, including the correct HTML, and email the copy to me. The easiest way for me to handle this at the present time is for you to cut and paste into an email document, rather than sending an attachment. Please don't put yourself out trying anything fancy - mostly text and hyperlinks are what we are interested in.
Artists, photographers, cartoonists, writers, researchers - You can help! The world needs your help! Let's get the message out! Send me your materials!
If you do have a picture or drawing in jpg or gif format that we might want to use that is small (thumbnail) an email attachment might work - don't worry about HTML, just send the picture. If it is larger, please email me for arrangements to mail a diskette or FTP directions. Copyright materials cannot be used without the permission of the owner. If it is from a printed publication or another web page, assume it is copyrighted.
We reserve the right to edit or reject materials. Opinions without statistical backing are of little use to us, except the forum page or a testimonial. Please know that we will not make abortion an issue. We may provide a hyperlink to a page that does advocate abortion, but only if the organization has other overpopulation solutions to offer. Likewise we will not hyperlink or publish materials that are against abortion unless they have their own solutions to overpopulation.
We can use specific help on all pages, and especially on the following pages: