The People Bomb Video Analysis

The People Bomb was a CNN film from 1992 that focuses on the many issues of economics and health due to the continuing swell of human population. The video examines the growth patterns of the population boom, which some countries are at the greatest risk, and what can be done to help. The video emphasizes the estimate that at the current population growth rate, there will be over three times the number of people on the earth at the end of the 21st century as there were at the beginning. This estimate was made nine years ago so I can only assume the numbers are worse now. There are many approaches discussed throughout the video to help the overpopulation issue. In the first part of the video they showed how a very poor family in Nepal was contributing to overpopulation a lot less than a wealthier family in America due to waste and the large amount of goods consumed by the American family. They suggest recycling more for a start. They emphasize that if Americans used less recourses on a daily basis, it would help the problem. Some health workers in Ethiopia are trying to educate people about family planning by making house calls and teaching sexual
responsibility and contraception at schools. Habib Humman stated, “More than 350 children die every day. If a jumbo jet carrying 350 passengers were to crash in the Himalayas, it will make headline news.” This suggests that we need to spread this terrible information with a more powerful force because these children are dying silently. Spreading information is the biggest key to saving our planet from overpopulation. In India between 1975 and 1977, the government put many of their citizens through a horrific program of forced sterilization.
They tricked thousands of people into being painfully sterilized so that they could prevent the reproduction and multiplication of members of the population considered to be carriers of defective genetic traits and to reduce the population growth rate. In my opinion this is a crime against humanity by definition. I understand that the Indian government needed to take action during their state of emergency but their solution for overpopulation was irrational and very harmful to the citizens affected. I believe there were other reasonable ways to relieve the overpopulation situation. Spreading information about birth control, one way to help overpopulation, was discussed throughout the
video. In one part of the video called Desperate Decisions, the focus is on Ethiopia’s effort to spread knowledge of birth control. Nearly one third of the women in Ethiopia do not want a child but only a small percentage uses birth control. The most surprising fact I learned from the movie was that people in these countries simply don’t know anything about contraceptive methods. Another reason the contraceptive problem exists is that they do not want to break out from their cultural traditions. The major lack of money is a big issue preventing women from obtaining birth control. It is interesting to learn that there is a black market for birth control pills that drives up the price even more. In the video, an Ethiopian couple was interviewed about birth control. They did not know about the birth control pill and it was obvious they didn’t know about other methods either. The man said, “We will take as many children as God gives us.” This is understandable when you take into consideration how little they know about preventing pregnancy. Being a naive American, I had no idea that people were so unaware of contraceptive methods. This urges me to want to help this situation in 3rd world countries because information is such an east thing to pass along. The fact that these people don’t know anything about birth control makes me want to go to Ethiopia and put up huge signs with contraceptive information on them. In my opinion they need to start giving out condoms at government clinics, not just at youth centers. Overpopulation is an issue that can be looked at from many different perspectives, many of which kind of contradict each other. There is the idea that there are too many people in the world for the earth to handle. This is most likely true based on how quick the earth’s resources are depleting due to the ever-growing human population. Considering that humans are the only animals with the intelligent gene, it would be impossible to stop our progression of knowledge of our species and world. Our increasing knowledge of our species and world is a major contribution to the increasing human population. The further humans advance medicine and technology, the more humans stay alive longer. It is a simple concept that can be a very touchy subject to talk about because medicines are a blessing in the short run but could have adverse effects on the world in the long run by adding to the overpopulation. I believe that we need to put our energy towards the long run future and find ways to use our technology to save humanity down the road. The People Bomb is a very informative video that opened my eyes to the dreadful problem of overpopulation. CNN did an excellent job creating this video to spread valuable information regarding overpopulation. The goal of this video was to show how fast the population is growing, the awful effects it has on society and the earth, and how to slow it down and save the earth. Their main tool in aiding the problem is to spread information. They did exactly that with this revealing video.