While I had expanded more than with my first draft, my own personal blunder of procrastination resulted in little more than just a longer incomplete draft than my first one. However I had created the foundation of what I would build upon.

Spaceman, Spaceman, Spaceman, Them Boys Up To Somethang

[TIE EVERYTHING BACK TO THESIS]

[RESOURCES - ECONOMICS - SUPPLY & DEMAND]

     Near the end of the 1700s, Thomas Robert Malthus, a scholar who would later go on to influence famed theorists such as Charles Darwin and John Keynes, hypothesized in his book An Essay on the Principle of Population, that the human population would eventually outgrow its capacity for food production and subsequently result in starvation, famine, and death, or Malthusian catastrophes, that would reduce the population back down to sustainable levels. In simpler terms, Malthus believed that great tragedies would occur if overpopulation, a situation in which the size of a population exceeds its habitat’s carrying capacity, were to take place. This occurs when a population and the resources available to it fall out of equilibrium; the population has grown too large relative to the resources it taps into, typically either food, water, energy, or land. In this situation, the two paths to resolving overpopulation are either through reducing the size of the population or through increasing the population’s resources. However in the context of the earth, both options are infeasible. Many population projections conclude that the earth’s population will only continue to increase into the next century (Gerland, et al. 234), and many resources we consume are nonrenewable and have a limited lifespan before they will be depleted, such as conventional oil which is predicted to reach its peak production by 2030 and then gradually decline (Sorrell, et al. 1412). With resources already strained, a growing population will only increase the burden on an already burdened [noun] (Peng 586). Alone, the underlying causes would be able to balance themselves out; a large population would be able to sustain itself if given enough resources, and a limited amount of resources would be able to sustain a small population, however put together, a large population cannot coexist with a limited amount of resources. As the population is expected to grow, and resources expected to dwindle, a solution that can solve one of the underlying causes of overpopulation must be conceived.

     Current efforts to curb overpopulation are both ineffective, and certain methods are even morally questionable. Most notable is China’s recently ended infamous “one-child policy.” In reality, China has never implemented a true one-child policy; the policy has only been carried out within urban areas, whereas in rural areas families are allowed two children (Peng 582). Another issue with China’s one-child policy is its resulting high imbalance in its male to female ratio. Strong preferences to sons, the availability of pre-birth sex identification, and a predominantly patriarchal society has led to “sex-specific abortion” (Peng 583) in which female fetuses will be aborted. This has resulted in a male to female ratio of 1.2:1 (Peng 583), which might not seem like much, but when applied to China’s population of almost 1.4 billion, creates a staggering gap between the number of Chinese men to Chinese women.

     [BREAKUP] An extremely notorious example would be the Rwandan genocide of 1994, in which overpopulation, environmental impact, and climate change (the latter two both products of overpopulation), culminated in possibly the most tragic Malthusian catastrophe of the 20th century: the killing of almost half a million to a million Rwandans. While overpopulation was not the only factor that resulted in the tragic event, it was one of the most important factors behind it (Diamond 337). Belgian economists, Catherine Andre and Jean-Philippe Platteau, who studied in and lived in, for a number of months, Rwanda, wrote a report on the Rwandan genocide, and noted that at the time and even today it was not uncommon to hear Rwandans argue that war was a necessary evil to “wipe out an excess population and to bring numbers into line with the available land resources” (Andre and Platteau 42). While effective in lowering the population to a sustainable level, genocide is illegal under international law, and for good reason. Also, while population decline is desirable under certain conditions, sudden or rapid demographic changes could result in disastrous outcomes such as labor shortages (Peng 586-7).

     [OIL INDUSTRY] Moving on to resources, for now, I shall focus solely only on oil, a vital resource that is gradually being depleted. Fueling[pun] the drive for more sustainable technology, many efforts are being made to preserve and discover new sources of this essential resource; some governments offer tax incentives in exchange for driving hybrid vehicles to reduce the use of oil, while private companies are continuously looking for more oil fields to increase the amounts of oil. However these efforts will not be enough to preserve the world’s oil supply. However these do not alter oil’s finite trait. The rate of oil field discoveries peaked between 1960 and 1970 and their number and size have been decreasing since then (Aleklett, et al. 1406-7). Some estimates even project that the world is already at the peak of its oil production (Aleklett, et al. 1407).

     No matter what efforts are made, even if the prices are increased in response to low supply, the fact that some of earth’s resources are finite and will gradually be depleted will not change. Yes, the resources of earth are mainly finite, with only a few exceptions, and while there are still some sources left to be discovered, a majority of them have already been found.

     However there is still one frontier left untouched, and it is with that thought that I shift the context from that of earth, to that of space. The exploration, colonization, and most importantly, the exploitation of space and its myriad of resources could mitigate and possibly even overcome the issue of overpopulation.

     This would not be the first time the world reached out into unknown lands. Throughout the 1700s, European empires extended their reach across the Americas and created successful colonies that helped make their mother nations prosperous while at the same time relocating portions of their population to these new colonies. This would also happen again when these same empires partitioned and colonized Africa during the latter half of the 1800s. In these colonies, raw resources such as sugar, cotton, and rubber would be extracted and then sent back to the mother nation to be processed into products and useable goods that they would then consume or sell for profit. Also, there were large migrations of settlers in these new colonies, primarily in North America, that would later grow into their own nations. Using these two periods of colonization as a reference, the notion of venturing into space and beginning colonies becomes more [adj] as a solution to overpopulation, especially considering the amount of resources already known to be on other planets and astronomical objects.

     [RESOURCES] Planets and other astronomical objects, such as asteroids and meteoroids, are a host to a wide range of resources, resources that can supplement the lack of resources on earth. The moon, the earth’s very own orbiter, is one such host. Native to the moon is an array of resources including water, helium, and the mineral ilmenite, an iron-titanium mineral common on the moon (Seife). The essence of water indisputable; not only is it vital to life, but it can also be split into oxygen and hydrogen for breathing and fueling purposes (Seife). Earlier I mentioned the gradual depletion of oil, one of the most common forms of energy on earth. The moon has amounts of helium-3, which when fused with hydrogen-2 or another helium-3 creates a large amount of energy, more so than energy created from electrical power plants (Seife). Also present on the moon are deposits of ilmenite, or iron-titanium (see fig.1).

[COLONIZATION]

[COUNTERARGUMENTS]

[CONCLUSION]

Works Cited

Aleklett, Kjell, et al. “The Peak of the Oil Age - Analyzing the world oil production Reference Scenario in World Energy Outlook 2008.” Energy Policy 38 (2010): 1398-1414. Web. 17 May 2016.

Andre, Catherine, and Jean-Philippe Platteau. “Land Tenure Under Unendurable Stress: Rwanda Caught in the Malthusian Trap.” [ASK FOR HELP WITH CITATION]

Billingham, John, and William Gilbreath. Space Resources and Space Settlements. Washington, NASA Scientific and Technical Information Branch, 1979. Web. 9 May 2016.

Gerland, Patrick, et al. “World population stabilization unlikely this century.” Science 346.6206 (2014): 234-237. Web. 30 April 2016.

Heim, Barbara Ellen. “Exploring the Last Frontiers for Mineral Resources: A Comparison of International Law Regarding the Deep Seabed, Outer Space, and Antarctica.” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 23.4 (1990-1991): 819-850. Web. 9 May 2016.

Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Penguin Group, 2005. Web. 23 May 2016.

Mautner, Michael. “Planetary Resources and Astroecology. Planetary Microcosm Models of Asteroid and Meteorite Interiors: Electrolyte Solutions and Microbial Growth— Implications for Space Populations and Panspermia.” Astrobiology 2.1 (2002): 1-19. Web. 10 May 2016.

O’Neill, Gerard. “Space Colonies and Energy Supply to the Earth.” Science 190.4218 (1975): 943-947. Web. 18 May 2016.

O’Neill, Gerard. “The Colonization of Space.” Physics Today 27.9 (1974): 32-40. Web. 9 May 2016.

Peng, Xizhe. “China’s Demographic History and Future Challenges.” Science 333.6042 (2011): 581-587. Web. 3 May 2016.

Seife, Charles. “Moon’s ‘Abundant Resources’ Largely an Unknown Quantity.” Science 303.5664 (2004): 1603. Web. 9 May 2016.

Sorrell, Steve, et al. “Global oil depletion: A review of the evidence.” Energy Policy 38.9 (2010): 5290-5295. Web. 16 May 2016.

Stevenson, David. “Europa’s Ocean--the Case Strengthens.” Science 289. 5483 (2000): 1305-1307. Web. 9 May 2016.