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 19th 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.
