What is the greatest problem facing the people in the world today?

Answer 1

Here are opinions from WikiAnswers contributors:

Too many people! Notwithstanding American "diets", we grow 1200 cal of food per person (all 6 billion) per day - and half of that is lost, spoilage, insects and other vermin. If the average is 600, and we eat 2400 guess how many people are staving.

- Poverty and a lack of access to water and sanitation. Both cause massive amounts of disease and death worldwide.

ANSWER:

The greatest problem facing the people in the world today is our own stubborn and willful refusal to accept responsibilities for our actions. We are the species that introduced the notion of atomic global destruction to the world and all we seem to be able to do about it is point our fingers at faceless governments and assign blame. We shake our heads sadly and sigh: "If only the leaders would lead then the people would surely follow." The best we seem to be able to muster up in dealing with nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction is protest. Protest is fine, but it's not enough. Demanding stricter controls from governments proven to be incompetent will not handle this problem nor will any mutually assured destruction solve this problem. This particular problem is overwhelmingly complex and requires a people much wiser and stronger than we are today.

The age we live in today is often called the age of information but if anyone is really paying attention it appears to be more like the age of disinformation. Propaganda abounds across the globe and it is only effective because people are such easy prey to propaganda. It requires a higher level of awareness to discern fact from fiction and truth from talk. That level of awareness will not be accomplished before we learn how to accept responsibility for our actions. Accepting responsibility for our actions requires we become more honest with ourselves and admit we are too lazy and to willing to stagnate on all levels. Our marriages fail because we don't make the effort to keep them working, our children become estranged because we don't make the time for them, our communities fall into disrepair because we let them crumble, all the while waiting for someone else, some expert or someone wiser than us to fix our problems. We eat to much fast food and then turn to our doctors expecting some sort of little yellow pill that can correct the imbalance we created because we eat garbage for sustenance. We turn to psychiatrists and psychologists asking for medication that will help us ignore the mess we've created so we might keep plodding forth making bigger messes. We hide in our churches scolding others because they aren't as holy as we are ignoring the message that comes with attending church. We blame, and we blame and we blame, never satisfied with the results of blaming and so, astonishingly we blame some more.

We are woefully human and to err is human but there is evidence that we are also divine. We build remarkable cities filled with breathtaking edifices and homes, we build dams, superhighway's and learn the mechanics of rocket science. We care and we love just as deeply as we are indifferent or hate. We discover that our actions and thoughts are caused by synapses in the nervous system and brain but we wonder if that is so, how is it we know about synapses. We are much, much more than we've ever been and when we finally figure out how to accept responsibility for each and every one of our actions, we will finally become all that we are and all we are supposed to be. This is quite a problem and solving this problem will not be easy. It appears, however, that life is not easy. Life is hard and it is the struggle we make that defines who we are. All of us are capable of so much more than we have ever accomplished and perhaps one day, the people will face their problems until the only real problems we're confronted with are in the decisions we face in handling new problems. That will be an epoch to remember.

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Clearly the greatest single problem which faces the world is overpopulation. The rate of increase has to be stopped in no time flat simply because there is going to be an ever increasing energy shortage which will continue to impact lives in ever increasing ways in time to come. This energy shortage will impact the ability of the peoples of this world to feed themselves in time to come. Arable land will be used up in cities and industrial areas. There will be crises which people will not be able to overcome.

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Any one who has ever flown in an airplane over the vast and wide open spaces of this planet would have to ignore the obvious in order to agree that it is clear that overpopulation is a problem at all let alone the single greatest problem the world faces. How would we stop population rises? Is some form of tyrannical licensing of parentage being advocated? Energy shortage? The single greatest abundance in the universe is hydrogen. We are better served to find ways to harnessing this abundant resource and creating a renewable source of energy than we are in oppressing the individual and demanding that we all stop being so successful at propagation. The world is still very large and the universe even larger.

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What is the greatest problem? The need to stop looking and arguing. Dan020350