Vital necessities polluted
By CAROLYN BOWERS Kansan Staff Writer
Food, water, air and shelter.
All are vital to maintain population-but will overpopulation destroy them first?
This question is being asked by those who worry that we will eventually die from lack of air; those who like a little room to live; those who like to eat; those who see children die every day because there just isn't enough food to go around.
FOR YEARS, BIOLOGISTS, ecologists, conservationalists and other experts have researched the various aspects of this question. There is still no definite answer.
Arguments flit back and forth as to whether or not man can afford to reproduce at his present rate and still maintain his vital requirements for life.
Looking at a computer with which he has conducted research of this type, Robert Nunley, associate professor of geography and population biologist, said: "We (population biologists) just don't know."
Nunley is one of hundreds who are searching to answer the question of how our population will affect the earth.
SINCE 1963, HE HAS been conducting a study on the densities of population in Central America and their relation to the physical and cultural environment.
Through overpopulation, we pollute our world today.
"The larger the number of people living in an area, the greater will be the problems of the contamination of the environment," Nunley said.
Referring to the amount of air we have left, Nunley said. "If we don't take more stringent measures, our increasing numbers could change the atmosphere."
OUR GROWING POPULATION should use common sense when using the air, he said, predicting that if no measures are taken within ten years, we will be faced with a heavy crisis.
Although we are still able to breathe polluted air, Nunley said that our increasing numbers would add contaminants that would influence health and length of life.
He also believes our world is definitely in danger of exhausting our supply of pure water.
"There are few major cities with proven inexpensive water supplies to accommodate the forseeable population growth," Nunley said, "As cities grow there is more demand for water per capita."
THE URGENCY IN THE NEED for shelter is less than that for food, water and air.
As tar as mass, people just don't take up that much space," Nunley said, "There aren't that many people in the world."
"What we need to do is make urban living more habitable," he continued, pointing out that inadequate housing is one area in which poverty and pollution are interrelated.
How much food, water, air and shelter we have left depends on how we use them. If we use them wastefully and without proper conservation techniques, our ever-increasing population could easily take them up by the year 2000, many experts warn.
THE DECLINE IN THE four basic supplies can be traced to too many people. A simple example can be shown in what we do with trash and garbage.
Because of our increasing population, we have a mass demand for more things that we eventually dispose of. Some people, illegally dump this waste into rivers and streams. This practice not only lowers the water table but contaminates the water at the same time.
It's also not good to bury the stuff because, sooner or later, with refuse increasing every day, space for burial of trash will run out, too.
SIMPLY DUMPING GARBAGE and trash on the land is out for the same reason as other methods. Not only is it unsightly, but if we kept our waste around, it would probably begin to affect space needed for homes for new generations.
Despite the attempts of Planned Parenthood and other birth control agencies, our population in this country alone is increasing rapidly. In addition, U.S. cities are bulging with people because of the continued urban migration. In 1800, 90 per cent of the population lived in rural areas and on farms. Today, 75 per cent live in or around cities.
These trends in living usher in the age of the megalopolis—the super city—a product of "urban sprawl."
There are three in the United States; Bowash, extending from New England to Washington, D.C.; Chipitts, encompassing Chicago, Cleveland and Pittsburgh; and Sag, on the California coast between San Francisco and San Diego.
FRANCIS S. L. WILLIAMSON, director of the Chesapeake Bay Center for Field Biology, is one of many pollution experts who warn that measures must be taken while we can still keep our population numbers to a reasonable level.
If we don't, any pollution control efforts we may use today or in the future will be useless.
Famine threatens world population
With new mouths opening every day, the world faces a catastrophic famine.
Famine today is a major threat to our future existence. Although common to the world since Biblical times, today's famines are not all caused by locusts or long periods of drought. Overpopulation is rapidly decreasing our food supply.
The United States sends tremendous quantities of food surpluses all over the world, but these don't begin to feed the ever-increasing hungry populations.
SOME SUGGEST SURPLUSES be sent to nations where additional food would have a positive effect. These would not include countries already plagued by massive, uncontrolled famines.
Between 1951 and 1961, India's agricultural production increased 46 per cent due to the utilization of new land. Between 1962 and 1964, this figure stayed the same while the country's population rose by 33 per cent.
In 1965, despite a 10 per cent crop increase, India still failed to meet the needs of its six million people. Seven million tons of food had to be imported.
Many countries have populations that are spreading rapidly into rural and urban areas. This problem of overpopulation couples with the already low income and limited farmland to encourage famine.
OTHER COUNTRIES which were once leading exporters of food, now must use their excess supplies to feed their growing populations.
Pollution poses problem
By CAROLYN BOWERS Kansan Staff Writer
Denver and Kansas City, whose population estimates rose by 80,000 and 22,000, respectively, in the same period, are being warned to guard against already evident smog.
Overpopulation is responsible for a lot of the crud we breathe and drink today.
Los Angeles, with a population that has jumped by over a million in one decade, is notorious for smog.
ALTHOUGH THE LOS ANGELES County Air Pollution district removed 6,815 tons of pollutants daily from the city's air, an estimated 13,730 tons were still put in, according to figures released in 1966.
Alfred Hulstrunck, assistant director of the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the State University of New York in Albany, recently warned that if "transportation continues to grow in the direction its going, its possible that the next generation will never see the sun."
Our growing population also affects our water
supply by polluting it in several ways. After polluting the water, it is faced with trying to make it useable again.
Lake Erie, the worst polluted of the five Great Lakes, exemplifies the first point. It receives waste from Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland and Buffalo, all cities with populations over 300,000.
SINCE THE BEGINNING of industry, Lake Erie has served as a dumping ground for these growing industrial cities. The U.S. Public Health Service has condemned it as polluted physically, chemically and biologically by bacteria.
Although Erie still has a chance to be saved, the cost to do so would run into the billions. To meet the burden of the cities' growing amount of refuse, sewage treatment plants along Lake Erie would have to be constantly updated.
The federal chief of the Federal Water Pollution Control administration commission, said in 1966 that "water pollution can, in the long run, become far more expensive than its control-more expensive in actual dollars, to say nothing of other costs."
Land pollution, caused by overpopulation, also plays a major role in the food problem. More demands are made today on the land to produce more to feed more. In many countries, primitive farming methods are still being used.
Indonesia's population now consumes all copra produced there. The country once was the major world supplier of the product.
These methods were adequate when there were less people but now they cause land exhaustion in terms of soil fertility and deterioration.
Others aren't so sure. The main reason, they argue, is that food substitutes are too expensive to manufacture. Also, they must be edible. Incaparina, a current food substitute, hasn't even been successful in the countries needing it because of its texture and bland taste.
HOW WE GET OUR FOOD is dependent on many more things than methods alone. Water, as well as air, affects the soil in many ways. Our increasing population, with its increasing use and misuse of both resources, slows down the production of good supplies even more.
Because there are so many people, because the trend, not only in the United States but also in major world cities, is toward urbanization, our food supplies and what we eat are affected. There is the need to have food that will sell well in city markets. To get the food to the city and keep it fresh, new methods of transportation and storage must be developed.
Many food experts point out optimistically that we can get food from the sea and by other means if we begin to run out in the future.
ALTHOUGH FARMERS in underdeveloped countries can be taught more efficient means of agriculture, a great time element is involved to carry out such assistance programs.
Food as a necessary maintainer of life differs from water and air because it can be produced, there is no set limit to it. But even this won't make any difference if it's produced too slowly or inefficiently to keep up with a world population that increases by two per cent each year.