Young Adults and the Environment

Of course, this does not mean that environmental issues are somehow isolated from other issues, as Wilson (2003) so eloquently argues in his book The Future of Life in which he (taking a metaphorical voyage to Walden Pond) he draws connections between economics, politics and the environment. He reminds us forcibly that to the extent that they are all related to each other we must attack environmental problems along with social issues. For example, poverty is a great contributor to environmental problems. People who are poor are far less likely to respect the borders of a national park when they are gathering firewood or to consider whether an animal is endangered when they set out to find their dinner. A starving person may be good and moral, but she or he is still starving and can think only of food. Thus issues of basic social justice and fairness are in fact woven in with issues that are directly about the environment.

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the growing human population. This increase in people can be seen as the root cause of many of the world's other problems, because more people need more land and more water and more resources of all kinds. Fewer people would leave more of everything for all other species. Yet even citizens of the First World - who certainly do not need large families to work in the fields any more - have more than two children. Governments can discourage this - although they must be constantly aware of the fact that population policies are often seen as genocidal. Certainly enforced sterilization or infanticide are not good answers. But why can't tax systems be changed so that families pay more in taxes for each child (unless she or he is adopted) rather than less? One of the major problems in limiting human population is that most people do not see the connection between their own three or four or five children and the larger impact of human population on the world at large. However, these links are there and they are in many cases dire, such as the link between a rising population and epidemics, which are more likely to occur when the individuals in a population are crowded and undernourished, as is increasingly the case in the most populous
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Approximate Word count = 1494
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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