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Effects of overpopulation on the environment
Effects of overpopulation on the environment
Effects of overpopulation on the environment
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Jacques-Yves Cousteau once said, “Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today” (“Population,” Internet). With the current statistics, Jacques could not be more accurate. Every second, 4.2 people are born and 1.8 people die, which would be a net gain of 2.4 people per second (“Population,” Internet). At this steady rate, the environmental health is spiraling downwards, and it is safe to assume humans are responsible for this. As the population increases, harmful effects on the land, water, and air also do.
First of all, overpopulation drastically affects the land. Possibly the most prominent example of the depreciating health and amount of land is the need for developments. Due to the exploding population in the United States, about 1.2 million acres of land every year is being converted to subdivisions, malls, workplaces, roads, parking lots, resorts, and many other developments (“Overpopulation,” Internet). That is a substantial amount of land being overturned to satisfy human desires. To put it in better perspective, between 1982 and 1997, the land mass lost to development is equal to the size of Maine and New Hampshire combined, which is approximately 25 million acres (“Overpopulation,” Internet). While soil is being ruptured for human preference, the number of cities has remarkably modified. In 1975, Mexico City, Tokyo, and New York City were the only cities considered as megacities (“Special,” Internet). In today’s world, that number is considerably small. Now, there are 21 megacities in the world. A megacity is when the population of that city becomes greater than 10 million people (“Special,” Internet). Therefore, the 21 megacities that are currently in the world holds more than 21...
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Works Cited
Fitzsimmons, Juliette. "Environmental Effects." Overpopulation - Home - GEOG 3104. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Mar. 2014.
"Human Population Growth and Oceans." Center for Biological Diversity. Center for Biological Diversity, n.d. Web. 7 Mar. 2014.
"Overpopulation: Environmental and Social Problems." Effects of Overpopulation on the Environment and Society. Institute for Population Studies, 2010. Web. 2 Mar. 2014.
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"Special Series: 7 Billion - National Geographic Magazine." Special Series: 7 Billion - National Geographic Magazine. National Geographic Society, n.d. Web. 02 Mar. 2014.
Stancheva, Tina. "Effects of Overpopulation on the Environment." Human Nature, Technology & the Environment. Swarthmore College Environmental Studies, 6 June 2003. Web. 2 Mar. 2014.
Parfit, Derek (2004). “Overpopulation and the Quality of Life.” In J. Ryberg & T. Tännsjö (eds.), The Repugnant Conclusion. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 7-22.
Overpopulation does not only affect humans and put a greater risk of getting in a vehicular wreck caused by a deer running out in the highways and interstates, but it has tremendous effect on environmental
Overcrowding, overpopulating, limiting resources, worsening air and worsening water, dying species, paving of farmlands, deforesting our wilderness, and ultimately and eventually killing ourselves; our own people have such negative and false thoughts for this world and its’ resources. Why? Overpopulation and over consumption are only two of numerous false theories that people lead themselves to believe about our world. My conclusion: this world and we the people…are fine; things are not as bad as people exaggerate them out to be and we are neither overpopulated or over consuming.
and is existing surely because of humans themselves- overpopulation. “Overpopulation is the problem” and causes other externalities such as pollution, deforestation, and a greater handful of biodiversity losses. In addition, overpopulation causes economic and political factors such as more consumption per person and the reduction of resources that can be provided per person. This contributes to the strain on ecological systems and the economic and population growth. With overpopulation, many resources become finite and an umpteen amount of ecosystems are being destroyed. Overpopulation relates to the impact of humans on pollution. Obviously with more human life, there is more necessity for jobs such as factories that give off fumes, automobiles, and the use for burning fossil fuels. In greater extent, this leads to an environmental factor in that it accumulates chemicals in food chains such as mercury, arsenic, and copper. It can lead to political problems as well, when trying to interact with other countries and stop the problem of global pollution and eventually endin...
The population of the world is nearing eight billion people. The population is taking over the world, and the food is diminishing. The population is growing too large for the planet to sustain. There must be rules about the growth of the population if the human race is to survive and grow together. If the race that is humanity wishes to survive, population control must be in effect.
Malthusian theory also deemed population expansion would have a direct correlation between the environment and its future destruction. The environment is the home not only to humans but also to the wildlife, vegetation, and other living species of the world. “Population will have a very serve, even catastrophic, impact on the natural environment and human welfare (Walker, On Wall Street). Over-populat...
... Sylvia. Darlene Crist. Gail Scowdoft. James Harding. World Ocean Census. New York; Firefly Books Ltd. 2009. Print
"THE EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING." Effects of Global Warming. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Mar. 2014. .
1.1 INTRODUCTION Since humans have populated the planet throughout the centuries, it is evident to see that they are the most significant consumers of the natural resources in the world. In many cases, human impacts are unsustainable leading to consequences like threatening to the point of extinction of many species, habitats, ecosystems and environments. This includes the loss of all the environmental services and goods they could have potentially provided. An attempt at analysing the distribution of the combined human impacts on the world’s oceans concluded that overall the highest levels of impacts were at the coastal regions due to the relatively high human populations there.
Southwick, C. H. (1996). "Chapter 15: Human Populations." Global Ecology in Human Perspective. Oxford University Press, 159-182.
Human population growth is the leading factor we have in place to sustain a more perfect ecosystem for future generations. Over development has led to extinction, habitat loss and climate change that scars the Earth and will never be recovered again. According to the Center for Biological and Diversity we are adding 227,000 more people on top of the 7 billion everyday which is causing species to disappear 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than the rate of natural selection. It is time we get over our greed, religious biases and having more children equal’s more money mentality. The Earth and its ecosystem should be protected by every individual to keep it as pristine as the day they were born to pass off on future generations to inherit.
There are various systems in handling population rates and its various issues that connect with threatening our environment. The population and environment debate will forever be a back and forth problem because there is possibly no way to completely stop carbon emissions but ease its production. To help the environment, we must incorporate all potential solutions in governing population such as family planning and governmental involvement and practice renewable resources and stop on using nonrenewable resources, as well as ways to tackle overconsumption to support our corrupting environment.
One of the most compelling problems we face today is the degradation of the Environment. Though nature does contribute to the degradation of the environment through natural disasters and wildfires, the most apparent and controllable contribution of harmful acts to the environment are humans. Some factors that cause this degradation are overpopulation, pollution, deforestation, human interference, and government corruption, landfills and land disturbance. These then go on to affect loss of biodiversity, impact on human health, ozone layer depletion and of course loss of tourism industry.
Arresting global population growth should be second in importance only to avoiding the nuclear war on humanity 's agenda. Over population and rapid population growth are intimately connected with most aspects of the current human predicament, including rapid depletion of nonrenewable resources, deterioration of the environment and increasing international tensions. (Ehrlich) What we need to know is that unless we address the causes of overpopulation in a timely manner, we will see a point in which the earth cannot support the number of people
Westing, Arthur H. "Overpopulation and Climate Change." The New York Times. The New York Times, 17 Feb. 2010. Web. 18 Mar. 2014. .