1) Population growth benefits the human race because more people have more ideas, are inventive and work. Necessity is the mother of inventions. If we run out of living space, we build high-rise blocks of flats; if we need more food, we intensify production.
2) Economic growth is a good thing because it means more people can have safe drinking water, sanitation, collection of refuse.
3) Economic growth is a bad thing as it means we use more resources - fossil fuels, chemicals.
4) Human population growth is leveling off so we shall reach the carrying capacity of the environment and the numbers will fluctuate around it. We can clean things up then.
5) Individuals suffer less from disease as medicine improves so we should save as many lives as possible.
6) Contraception is against nature so we should procreate naturally.
7) Any attempt to limit population growth will have to be made in LEDCs and this could be construed as an attempt by the "haves" to limit the "have nots" and so safeguard their own lifestyle.
8) Increasing affluence gives people the ability to clean up the environment but at a cost to the distant environment - e.g. factories move to LEDCs.
9) Increased population size in LEDCs leads to subdivision of farms for children until they are too small to support the family, encroachment on forest to gain more land, migration to cities or MEDCs, illicit trade, poaching, etc. as unemployed people become desperate.
QUESTION: Do you agree with these statements? How would you classify each... technocentric, cornucopian, environmental manager, or ecocentric?
Source: pp170 of Course Companion, ESS, Jill Rutherford
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