Top 5 World Problems

     For a more detailed description of each problem and solution, visit  http://cxgoss.blogspot.com/2016/01/worlds-biggest-problems.html or search posts on January 19^th in the archives.

     Top Five Problems

1. Deforestation

2. Spread Of Infectious Disease

3. International Terrorism

4. Natural Resource Depletion

5. Poverty

     I didn’t find this list difficult to make at all. I approached the list by looking at my “10 World’s Biggest Problems” list and identifying the one that are a threat to life. In my opinion, deforestation would affect the most number of people even if it would take place over a longer period of time than others on the list. Deforestation is affecting the air we breathe, specially the level of oxygen present, and without oxygen humans and most animals will not be able to survive.

     Spread of infectious disease and international terrorism are almost tied on my list because in some causes infectious diseases can be used as a weapon by terrorist. It’s a common fact that the most efficient way to spread a disease to a large amount of people is to target their food sources. Therefore, both of these rank high on my list but terrorism ranks just below disease since terrorism is largely a conscious decision made by individuals while spreading a disease can happen by accident. 

     Natural resource depletion is a serious problem but not as serious, as say deforestation, because we have already made efforts to combat the depletion in addition to the fact that a number of the resources that have been depleted are not essential to everyday life. Poverty is the least serious problem of the five because the fact is that poverty will always exist. Even if the poverty line is improved, there will always be people that fall below it; similar to how someone will always be a the bottom of the totem pole.

     Top Five Realistic Solutions

1. Deforestation

2. Access to clean drinking water

3. Unemployment

4. International Terrorism

5. Spread of Infectious Disease

     I found this list harder to make because I tried to approach it by looking at which solution would be easier to implement but found that while most of my solutions seems simple to start, there is a lot of issues with follow through. My solution for deforestation is by far the simplest solution to carry out because everyday people can do it. Access to clean drinking water is a little trickier to solve because although common people can make a difference, a lot of contamination comes from big companies. 

     Unemployment and international terrorism are both great examples where the follow through of the solution will be the difficult part. Both involve shifting the focus of the problem; for unemployment it’s focusing on ways to increase the demand of jobs and for terrorism it’s identifying the real reason behind the fighting. Terrorism is ranked below unemployment because I find unemployment to be a  little more realistic to solve before we are able to please everyone and cease the fighting.

     Spread of infectious disease is ranked last on the list because although it seems simple to solve, with the continually growing population it is unrealistic that we could vaccinate everyone.