Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Global Issues

This Fourth Edition of TAKING SIDES: CLASHING VIEWS ON GLOBAL ISSUES presents current controversial issues in a debate-style format designed to stimulate student interest and develop critical thinking skills. Each issue is thoughtfully framed with an issue summary, an issue introduction, and a postscript. An instructor’s manual with testing material is available for each volume. USING TAKING SIDES IN THE CLASSROOM is also an excellent instructor resource with practical suggestions on incorporating this effective approach in the classroom. Each TAKING SIDES reader features an annotated listing of selected World Wide Web sites and is supported by our student website, www.mhcls.com/online.

PART 1. Global Population

ISSUE 1. Are Declining Growth Rates Rather Than Rapid Population Growth Today’s Major Global Population Problem?

YES: Michael Meyer, from “Birth Dearth,” Newsweek (September 27, 2004)

NO: Danielle Nierenberg and Mia MacDonald, from “The Population Story...So Far,” World Watch Magazine (September/October 2004)

Michael Meyer, a writer for Newsweek International, argues that the new global population threat is not too many people as a consequence of continuing high growth rates. On the contrary, declining birth rates will ultimately lead to depopulation in many places on Earth, a virtual population implosion, in both the developed and developing worlds. Danielle Nierenberg, a research associate at the Worldwatch Institute, and Mia MacDonald, a policy analyst and Worldwatch Institute senior fellow, argue that the consequences of a still-rising population have worsened in some ways because of the simultaneous existence of fast-rising consumption patterns, creating a new set of concerns.

ISSUE 2. Should the International Community Attempt to Curb Population Growth in the Developing World?

YES: Robert S. McNamara, from “The Population Explosion,” The Futurist (November/December 1992)

NO: Steven W. Mosher, from “McNamara’s Folly: Bankrolling Family Planning,” PRI Review (March/April 2003)

Robert McNamara, former president of the World Bank, argues in this piece written during his presidency that the developed countries of the world and international organizations should help the countries of the developing world reduce their population growth rates. Steven W. Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, an organization dedicated to debunking the idea that the world is overpopulated, argues that McNamara’s World Bank and other international financial lending agencies have served for over a decade as "loan sharks" for those groups and individuals who were pressuring developing countries to adopt fertility reduction programs for self-interest reasons.

ISSUE 3. Is Global Aging in the Developed World a Major Problem?

YES: The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), from Meeting the Challenge of Global Aging: A Report to World Leaders from the CSIS Commission on Global Aging (CSIS Press, 2002)

NO: Rand Corporation, from “Population Implosion?” Research Brief, Rand Europe (2005)

The CSIS Report, Meeting the Challenge of Global Aging: A Report to World Leaders from the CSIS Commission on Global Aging, suggests that the wide range of changes brought on by global aging poses significant challenges in the ability of countries to address problems associated with the elderly directly and to the national economy as a whole. This Rand Corporation study suggests that because of declining fertility, European populations are either growing more slowly or have actually begun to decline. Although these trends "portend difficult times ahead," European governments should be able to confront these challenges successfully.

ISSUE 4. Does Global Urbanization Lead Primarily to Undesirable Consequences?

YES: Divya Abhat, Shauna Dineen, Tamsyn Jones, Jim Motavalli, Rebecca Sanborn, and Kate Slomkowski, from “Today’s ‘Mega-Cities’ Are Overcrowded and Environmentally Stressed,” (September/October 2005)

NO: Robert McDonald, from “A World of the City, by the City, for the City,” ZNet/Activism, (December 20, 2005)

Jim Motavalli, editor of E/The Environmental Magazine, suggests that the world’s major cities suffer from a catalog of environmental ills, among them pollution, poverty, fresh water shortages, and disease. Robert McDonald, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, suggests that global urbanization presents a great opportunity for the world to achieve international peace. It creates new possibilities for democracy and a sharing of common interests across national boundaries.

PART 2. Global Resources and the Environment

ISSUE 5. Do Environmentalists Overstate Their Case?

YES: Ronald Bailey, from “Debunking Green Myths,” Reason (February 2002)

NO: David Pimentel, from “Skeptical of the Skeptical Environmentalist,” Skeptic (vol. 9, no. 2, 2002)

Environmental journalist Ronald Bailey in his review of the Bjorn Lomborg controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (Cambridge University Press, 2001), argues in the subtitle of his critique that "An environmentalist gets it right," suggesting that finally someone has taken the environmental doomsdayers to task for their shoddy use of science. Bioscientist David Pimentel takes to task Lomborg’s findings, accusing him of selective use of data to support his conclusions.

ISSUE 6. Should the World Continue to Rely on Oil as a Major Source of Energy?

YES: Red Cavaney, from “Global Oil Production about to Peak? A Recurring Myth,” Worldwatch (January/February 2006)

NO: James Howard Kunstler, from The Long Emergency (Grove/Atlantic, 2005)

Red Cavaney, president and chief executive officer of the American Petroleum Institute, argues that recent revolutionary advances in technology will yield sufficient quantities of available oil for the foreseeable future. James Howard Kunster, author of The Long Emergency 2005, suggests that simply passing the all-time production peak of oil and heading toward its steady depletion will result in a global energy predicament that will substantially change our lives.

ISSUE 7. Will the World Be Able to Feed Itself in the Foreseeable Future?

YES: Sylvie Brunel, from The Geopolitics of Hunger, 2000–2001: Hunger and Power (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001)

NO: Janet Raloff, from “Global Food Trends,” Science News Online (May 31, 2003)

Sylvie Brunel, former president of Action Against Hunger, argues that “there is no doubt that world food production… is enough to meet the needs of” all the world’s peoples. Janet Raloff, a writer for Science News, looks at a number of factors—declining per capita grain harvests, world’s growing appetite for meat, the declining availability of fish for the developing world, and continuing individual poverty.

ISSUE 8. Is the Threat of Global Warming Real?

YES: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, from “Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis,” A Report of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2001)

NO: Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick, from Taken by Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming (Key Porter Books, 2002)

The summary of the most recent assessment of climatic change by a UN-sponsored group of scientists concludes that an increasing set of observations reveals that the world is warming and much of it is due to human intervention. Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick, Canadian university professors of applied mathematics and economics, respectively, attempt to prove wrong the popularly held assumption that scientists know what is happening with respect to climate and weather, and thus understand the phenomenon of global warming.

ISSUE 9. Is the Threat of a Global Water Shortage Real?

YES: Mark W. Rosegrant, Ximing Cai, and Sarah A. Cline, from “Global Water Outlook to 2025: Averting an Impending Crisis,” A Report of the International Food Policy Research Institute and the International Water Management Institute (September 2002)

NO: Bjørn Lomborg, from The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (Cambridge University Press, 2001)

Rosegrant and colleagues conclude that if current water policies continue, farmers will find it difficult to grow sufficient food to meet the world’s needs. Water is not only plentiful but also a renewable resource that, if properly treated as valuable, should not pose a future problem.

PART 3. Expanding Global Forces and Movements

ISSUE 10. Can the Global Community "Win" the Drug War?

YES: Federico Mayor in collaboration with Jérôme Bindé, from The World Ahead: Our Future in the Making (UNESCO, 2001)

NO: Harry G. Levine, from “The Secret of Worldwide Drug Prohibition,” The Independent Review (Fall 2002)

Mr. Mayor, former director-general of UNESCO, suggests that drug trafficking and consumption "constitute one of the most serious threats to our planet," and the world must dry up the demand and attack the financial power of organized crime. Harry G. Levine, professor of sociology at Queens College, City University of New York, argues that the emphasis on drug prohibition should be replaced by a focus on "harm reduction," creating mechanisms to address tolerance, regulation, and public health.

ISSUE 11. Is the International Community Adequately Prepared to Address Global Health Pandemics?

YES: Global Influenza Programme, from “Responding to the Avian Influenza Pandemic Threat,” World Health Organization (2005)

NO: H. T. Goranson, from “A Primer for Pandemics,” Global Envision, (2005)

The document from the World Health Organization lays out a comprehensive program of action for individual coun...