Much of this isn't new, but this is the "official", cleaned-up version of my project proposal.
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I think everyone is well aware of the steep increase in the world’s population. I can still remember the big hype surrounding the birth of the world’s 6 billionth baby, and now we’re up to around 6.8 billion already. These statistics are simply mind-blowing.
The Problem At HandResearchers from a variety of disciplines have suggested that many of the problems we are facing today, such as pollution, natural resource depletion and global climate change, can be directly linked to this sharp population increase. But if this is the case, then people’s efforts seem to have been primarily going toward trying to eliminate the detrimental effects, rather than trying to attack the problem at its source. Even if we somehow manage to reduce pollution, develop alternative energy sources, and halt climate change, in the end, we haven’t really accomplished anything until we’ve tackled the true issue, which is our rapidly-increasing population.
Context & Audience AffectedSince the issues described above affect us on a global scale, it can be argued that the audience consists of everyone everywhere in the world. However, since the scope of the problem itself is huge and such a large audience has varying needs and interests, I intend to narrow my focus somewhat. The people I am most interested in targeting are those who, in my opinion, have the best opportunity to do something about it: people in the developed world who are able to and possibly considering having children.
It is my personal opinion that people are having too many babies—not just in places like Africa, where birth control is limited, but even in the U.S., where people have technology on their side and it is more socially acceptable for women to make various choices on their own with regard to pregnancy. To solve the problem of our rapidly growing world population, I don’t think that bringing birth control and sex education to Africa and the rest of the Third World is enough. I think a complete change in people’s mindsets is in order. I’m not saying that people should stop giving birth entirely, but I don’t understand why adoption isn’t more widespread than it is.
Goals & OpportunitiesMy goal is not to preach to my audience, but to present them with three different data sets (world population growth statistics and birth rates, adoption rates, and some generalized facts about environmental changes) and hope that this presentation of the issue will encourage people to think about it in a way they haven’t before—that we are rapidly overpopulating the earth, and that adoption is one of the best solutions.
Project ApproachSince most of this information can be represented through numerical statistics that are constantly changing, I imagine the representation taking the form of an interactive chart or graph on a computerized device. In order to avoid information overload, the data might be presented in layers, where the user, through a menu of sorts, can gradually add more data to the graph as desired. In this way, the user can not only compare all three data sets at once, but also compare one data set in isolation (for example, population growth), as well as two out of the three data sets (such as population growth vs. adoption statistics).
