Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

When he went on the popular television show Larry King Live, Professor Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University was asked what worries him the most. Hawking, often referred to as the most intelligent man alive, replied that his biggest worry was population growth, saying that “if it continues at the current rate, we will be standing shoulder to shoulder in 2600. Something has to happen, and I don’t want it to be a disaster” (“World”). Hawking has sound reason to worry about the growing population of Earth’s human inhabitants. Our numbers are increasing at rates unprecedented in history, adding our last billion people in a mere twelve years (“World”). None can say for sure what impact we will have on the planet that we call home, but one thing is for certain, the Earth has only so many resources, which we surely cannot survive without, and we are consuming them at an alarming and unsustainable rate. We will run out of resources, it’s simply a question of when. One of the most important resources, one which does not usually spring to mind when natural resources are thought of, is space. The Earth is only so big, with only so much space for us to live, grow our food on, raise our animals on, and to move aro