Essay 3 - First Draft

Dev Sethi
Writing 100 - Technology and Nature in New England
Professor – R. S. Deese
10/28/09
First Draft – Paper 3

Here are the statistics - a new baby is born every half a second in some part of the world; the death rate is almost half of the birth rate; doctors have increased the average age of a person from 47 to 65. It seems that the world is growing in every way possible, with more babies being born and people living longer, but is there enough of space for such growth on our planet? In one of his essays in his book “Technology Matters”, author David E. Nye writes that he feels the world’s carrying capacity is defined by the way we decide to live, rather than it being a scientifically derived number. Although I do not disagree with what Nye has to say, I feel the Earth’s carrying population is defined by both the way we choose to live and a scientifically proven number on a limit on the number of people that our planet can take.

Nye finished off the essay by saying “Ultimately, the world’s carrying capacity is not a scientific fact but a social construction”. What he means by “a social construction” is that it was created by people in order to follow certain rules and regulations relating to particular societies. The way people decide to live is an example of a social construction. An example that Nye talks about is Robinson Crusoe. Basically he is a person stranded on an island with nothing with him. Over time he uses his knowledge and social experiences to make something out of nothing on that island. He builds a habitat and learns to make the most of what he has. Eventually, after many years, he builds a fully functioning society by getting people to migrate to the island. This shows how a social construction can affect the larger part of the society. This statement in context of the essay sums up his view that the daily trivial choices that we make can impact our world in the long term. For example, if a person decides to build on land that is for forestery, it not only reduces the space that we have but it also uses up precious resources.

Nye cites a lot of examples to prove his point of view, ranging from real life experiences to his opinions on historical happenings. The examples that I feel that relate to this argument are mostly real life examples. After the experience of Robinson Crusoe, he moves on to talk about farms in Europe and the Atlantic coast. He says that those farmlands, once huge areas of greenery used for farming and forestry, have now been turned into industrial land with factories covering them. The cutting down of trees not only affects our oxygen supply but it also reduces the resources available to us for the future. He moves on to talk about the change in the way we have started to think about nature. Before we viewed it as gods creation that needs to be preserved for as long as possible, and now we view trees purely as an economic resource to make tables and chairs with. Quoting what Henry Ford said about machines “it is a symbol of the man’s mastery of the environment”.

We’ll my opinion about this topic does not differ much from what Nye says. I definitely agree that the way we decide to live affects the carrying capacity of the world. But I also feel that there has to a precise amount of number of people that can physically fit on our planet. The earth’s size definitely isn’t getting bigger so as more and more people fill the world, the space definitely has to be reducing. A simple observation of the traffic on the roads in every part of the world shows us that soon there will more people than space in some cities. Although it isn’t a factor of concern right now as we have other environmental issues to deal with, in the near future it will be one of our main concerns.

Nye’s argument has a clear purpose to it and only time will tell us weather he is right or wrong. As for now we should all do our part to conserve nature on our planet so that we do not run out of it in the future.