Metaphors for World Population-Resource Issues
In your textbook for geography 111, you read an article by Garrett
Hardin, who uses the lifeboat metaphor to talk about world population
and resource issues. Each country is a lifeboat -- the richer, First World
countries, are less crowded and the poorer, Third World countries, are more
crowded. The USA lifeboat has 60 seats, but only 50 are being used. And another
100 people are swimming in the water outside the USA lifeboat. Which ideology
does Hardin use when he selected this metaphor?
The Big Bad World cartoon gives another interpretation of the lifeboat metaphor. Which ideology does the cartoonist use?
What ideology would use a "love boat" metaphor and use the phrase, "we're all in the same boat"?
Optional: view the film, The Titanic, and relate
it to this population-resource discussion.
Which ideology best accounts for
the conditions on The Titanic? Answer: Attend class and find
out!
And what about this metaphor:
A Ship of Fools? [by H. Bosch, 1494]
Look
at yet another version of the boat
metaphor and another
version. Which ideologies do they represent?
Bees and their hives
have commonly been used as a metaphor to describe human populations. Is this
appropriate?
Population fertility rates are related to many factors. In the bar graph, predominately Roman Catholic countries are highlighted with brown circles. Notice the large differences in "contraception prevalence" between, for example, Poland and Czech Republic! Also notice that the USA and Thailand share similar fertility and contraceptive rates, yet the former is a rich First World country and the latter is a poor Third World country.
Restrictive laws do not reduce abortion -- read the evidence from around the world
Foreign aid regarding population seems, on the surface, to be helpful to Third World people. Yet closer examination often reveals contradictions, confusion, and ineffectiveness. Read about the U.S. government's 2003 Third World population policies.
People need to eat to survive. You think this was obvious but many lay people and experts frequently talk about population numbers without context to food and other natural resources (such as water, fuel, building materials).
Read about some very interesting research findings on why people in the USA eat more than they think and how this is affecting their health and pocketbook. Be sure read all six pages -- use the Next Page links at the bottom of the pages.
Read
about the relevance of the ideas of Malthusians and Neo-Malthusians in
the past and today.
Read about the
relevance of the idea of The Commons, which Hardin writes about, in
today's world.
