Friday, February 11, 2011

The Population Institute

The Population Institute is an international non-profit that educates policymakers and the public about population, and seeks to promote universal access to family planning information, education, and services.  Through voluntary family planning, we strive to achieve a world population in balance with a healthy global environment and resource base.

The Population Institute is a non-profit International organization that is working to spread awareness of family planning and birth control measures.  While you are on their site you can watch a count of the population growth in real time.  If you are there for a few minutes you will be alarmed at the population growth that will occurr in that short of a time.

Through education they hope to teach people that by having smaller families they will be better able to cope in poverty striken areas.  They coach population activists, and try to educate others in regards to why extreme population growth is a problem.

All donations to the Population Institute are tax-deductable.


Read more at The Population Institute

Friday, February 4, 2011

Overpopulation Hypocrites

Most people recognize that there is a pet overpopulation problem. Animal shelters in the USA alone euthanize millions of pets every year to deal with this problem. Pet owners are constantly being encouraged to spay or neuter their pets, in effort to combat the growing problem of having more pets born every year than there are homes for.
 

Even when we go to countries where animal shelters are not present to euthanize excess animals, or to spay and neuter, we see “other” control measures being used. Poison is put out or the animals are tossed into pits to die slow deaths.

 
It seems odd that we, as humans, can recognize overpopulation in other species, and have no problems acting on it. We euthanize the unwanted, and we try to sterilize the masses that remain. Yet most countries do not even allow doctor assisted suicide, and laws that once saw some people sterilized (as in Alberta, Canada from 1928 to 1972) are considered outrageous and a violation of human rights.



On a planet with over 7 billion people, and over 1 billion of those living in dire need, we have crossed a line, and are refusing to deal with the consequences. Those who preach about spaying and neutering pets, need to also consider their own contribution to human overpopulation.

For the record, all my cats are spayed or neutered, and I had my tubes tied months after my first, and only, child was born.

Anyone who is concered about pet over population, and the "animal holocaust" needs to also see the problem as it exists in the human species.  People who worry about too many seals eating fish, too many deer in the forest, and too many unwanted pets, had better look at the growing numbers of humans on the planet too.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

What is the Current World Population?

There is no certain answer as to what the exact human population is.  By following past data we can only predict, or estimate, what the population actually is.  Of course it may be larger than predicted due to the fact that in many nations births are not accounted for properly.

The United States has a "Clock" that reports what it thinks is the current US, and World Population at any given moment.  The Clock is updated every five minutes based on the suggested rate of births, and deaths.  Currently births exceed deaths, and the population climbs by the minute.

A screen shot shows where it is at the time of this blog posting.

So roughly 6.9 Billion people are on the This Shrinking Planet as of February 2, 2011.  To make things interesting, why not check out the ever changing Population Clock yourself, click here.