A World at War with Itself
The podcast will be for a year, where Julie Finch-Scally, writer and broadcaster can interview people about life and the current situation of the world. She will discuss how so many things have changed over the past 80 years since her birth, and what the world needs to change to improve and save the planet from ourselves.
A World at War with Itself
Population
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Is the world overpopulated? Find out what several people think about this subject when Julie asks them some interesting questions.
Hi there, Julie Finchley here again with another episode of A World at War With Itself. We are now getting close to the final episode of this podcast, and as I am now touching on subjects that have, in most cases, so many opinions on how and why, I have found it easier to use several people to answer the same questions. And what is the subject this week? It is population and its growth. Once again I am speaking to the same six people with whom I discuss patriotism and equality, and they are not necessarily in the order of speaking, but in order alphabetically. Gabe, Mary, Sharon, Stuart, Tim, and Tristan. My first question was many people nowadays are saying the world is overpopulated. Do you agree with that? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04Too many people. Too many humans. Yes. Not enough other things. Too many humans. Yes.
SPEAKER_01It depends how you judge to be overpopulated, if you think it's environmental, if you think there's a sociological detriment or a benefit to having a certain amount of population. So there are a lot of factors that for that question, and I don't have an answer for it.
SPEAKER_03Yes, I do. I think from a climate perspective, environmental perspective, we have some very huge challenges ahead as to how to m manage people's lifestyles, their income, their ability to earn an income. Food shortages into the future are going to be a huge problem. Even just water alone will become a resource that we need to manage. And yeah, we need to really consider where the world is going as far as population.
SPEAKER_06Yes. You've only got to look at some of the nations in Africa and see how the population there is really affected by too many living there. They can't afford to feed them. They can't afford to house them. Because everyone wants to go and live somewhere else because they're not being looked after in their own countries. The world's got eight billion now. I think we have to put a stopper on that. Right across the whole world. There are a lot of countries with too many people living in them.
SPEAKER_05I think there are places in the world that can't sustain the population that they have. We aren't one of those countries. I think there are obviously very deep problems in Africa, India, China, billions of people, and the infrastructure and for the quality of life that we would expect to be acceptable under the human rights is not there for everyone. So yes, I think the world's overpopulated, but it's it's very bad in some places and not so bad in others.
SPEAKER_02Yes, I do. I think there are way too many people for the resources we have at hand.
SPEAKER_00And the second question, quite long, but you'll see why. Many of the Western countries have reduced the number of children being born. And in some countries where women are now being educated, there has also been a reduction in childbirth. Do you think that education could slow down the rise in population?
SPEAKER_01I think education is one of the factors that have slowed down childbirth. Economics is another, whether people can afford to have a kid, as well as career opportunities for women that didn't happen in the sixties, maybe another factor that can slow down. So I think it's one of many factors that can slow down population growth.
SPEAKER_05I think education's one aspect of reducing uh population growth. Obviously, educ allowing women to have a choice is a pretty good way of controlling population because not many women perhaps would choose these days to have eleven or twelve children into one family if they couldn't sustain them monetarily or financially or with food, etcetera. So I think the I don't like the idea of the state controlling how how many babies should be had, but I also think that education and access to medical information particularly should be the right of all women and that would make a big difference in controlling population around the world. The trouble is that in some cultures uh there and and still in some cultures within Western countries uh birth control uh is frowned upon. And so there has to be ways if women don't believe they should be able to have birth control, then there has to be other ways that they're educated to say this is more sustainable, this is you m you must sort of not just contribute babies to the world but maybe look at what the world is that you're bringing them into.
SPEAKER_03From my own personal opinion, I don't know. But I have read in the past that when women are educated the fertility rate does go down. Women have children a lot later in life, and this can, I guess at times some people might view that as a negative, but also when women are educated, the general health of the community tends to go up and is improved. So if you combine both those two things, then educating women to both slow down the population growth and to improve people's lives in general.
SPEAKER_02I think education can result in a slowdown in population. Probably two reasons I can think of that. That women through education are refocusing or prioritizing their career, and that may come ahead of family, and also they're delaying childbirth. And sometimes when childbirth is delayed, uh you find you can't do it.
SPEAKER_06Yes, it's worked in the past. China, one child, families. That was more of a government policy, but a lot of education went into that as well. Education of the number of of people living in a family is only part of the solution though. Well, actually there's a number of ways of educating, because it's educating parents and particularly mothers not to have children, or not have many children, but it's the government also saying, by the way, if we have too many people, we can't look after you. And that goes right across the whole world.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely. Education of women, education of men, also uh uh education in the more general sense where the reason for having lots of children uh historically has been that lots of children die, and the more uh developed a society the lower the infant death rate, the less infants we need to have. So it all feeds into itself really. But yes. In short, yes, education reduces children.
SPEAKER_00And my final question. I don't want to be a scaremonger, but what do you think could happen if the population keeps growing as fast as it has over the past few centuries?
SPEAKER_03Well, we are gonna if it just keeps going up and up and up. We we've got to really think about resources, food, land for people to build homes, and then all that impacts the environment and other species on the planet can't become a monospecies planet because we just simply won't survive. We need all the other species on the planet, both animals and plants, in order to support human life. And if we become monospecies, it's just not going to work.
SPEAKER_02I think we're likely to end up with a situation where we don't have enough resources to feed the entire population, and of course, then all sorts of things can happen. People will go to war over the fight for the use of resources.
SPEAKER_01If the population keeps growing, it's hard to tell because there's certain countries that have lower birth rates, but the world population is still growing. So you can sort of use immigration to even it all out a bit, especially with the aged care industry. Most countries usually import labour from other countries, which sort of helps sustain an aging population.
SPEAKER_04If we do not control our own population, our environment will control our population for us. It it's inevitable. There will either be another pandemic, which will be many people will die, or there will be famine. Yeah, we control our population or th the environment will control our population.
SPEAKER_06Oh, we won't better look after ourselves. Without Australia producing all the grains and wool and meat and all that, and all the countries doing that, we won't have enough resources to look after us. It's almost like that now, you know. There's shortages and all sorts of things. I think we've got to watch our population everywhere because the future doesn't look bright if there's too many of us and not enough food to go around.
SPEAKER_05Look, I think it just goes in waves. I would be surprised if it does keep increasing. I think it'll be waves. After a war there's always an increase. After a world war, whatever. When times are good, there's an increase. It's it's like sheep in the paddock. When th there's enough to eat, they'll have twins. When there's not, they won't. I think there's a natural way of control. Um population control and environmental issues are going to be a part of it. The planet can't sustain at the levels that it's going, but there's usually s some decrease, it may be a technological revolution.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's it for this week's episode of A World at War With Itself. I do hope you found the answers to my questions by Gabe, Mary, Sharon, Stewart, Tim, and Tristan as interesting as I did. Many thanks to them all for taking time to discuss the subject of population with me. I will return next Wednesday with another episode of A World at War With Itself. I look forward to you joining me then.