Discussion Question

I’m not quite sure how to answer this question. According to the sources I utilized, it would seem that our population is increasing pretty steadily and somewhat rapidly. According to the Population Institute, it took the entire world population until1830 to reach a billion people. In comparison, it was estimated that by 2005, the population was increasing at a rate of 80 million people a year. This is probably due to the constant improvements to modern medicine which both keeps people alive longer and reduces the infant mortality rate. So clearly, we see that there is a pretty big problem. Our planet just can’t really continue to hold the world population if it continues to grow in this way.

However, I still think that there’s no real definitive answer to this question. On one hand, sure, it would probably help out a lot if we moved further into the galaxy. We would have less people on Earth and would be able to have more room and an overall healthier environment. However, I really do not see this happening. There are several reasons for this. First of all, I don’t know if, after so many years of living on Earth, our bodies could adjust to life on another planet. With the different environments and atmosphere, it may take another act of evolution just to survive. That’s not even to mention the food and water needed. Who’s to say if there would be a decent amount of either for a population to survive. And we couldn’t very well ship food from Earth to another part of the galaxy because, if for some reason communication was cut off, that could be disastrous. Furthermore, it would be nearly impossible to decide who to take. Who would want to leave EARTH, where the only known human race has ever existed, and take them into SPACE to some unknown planet where anything could happen?

So, therefore, I guess it’s probably pretty improbable that we would move further into the galaxy in later years as a result of population growth. Though that does seem like the only solution. This is why population growth is so scary. There’s really nothing to be done about it. While you want people to live longer and have healthier lives, you also want a smaller population. It’s really a Catch-22. Perhaps moving into the galaxy is the only solution. But I don’t see that ever happening without some new wave of knowledge coming to us about how large populations of humans could survive off of Earth