Effects Of Overpopulation

A Debate on the Effects of Overpopulation

Overpopulation is a major challenge that humans face today. The human population is close to 8 billion, and at our current birthrate, we are adding nearly one billion more people every 12 years. Issues including depending on natural resources, degradation of the environment, poverty, unemployment and other dangerous effects which are extremely likely to effect the human race as a cause of overpopulation.

In” Overpopulation is Not the Problem,” Erle C. Ellis makes the claim that humans will adapt to population growth, as they did in archeological records. Ellis makes the claim that people don’t understand the ecological system of societies. Archeological understanding shows that technology and man-made

Tal’s views on overpopulation suggest that its chief effect is upon universal famine, land erosion, species exhaustion, and other social issues affecting the earth. According to Ellis, as mentioned above, the ecology of farming in China has suggested that technology has often surpassed carrying-capacity through history. However Tal debates this claim, however, in saying that: history has shown “long tetany of famines”, because carrying capacity is outdone by a rising populace. In fact, the Chinese food crisis, which lasted from 1958-1961 and caused low land fertility, triggered the death of over twenty million people. As a cause, the United Nations has reported that one in eight people on earth suffers from starvation, causing over 200 million deaths worldwide. Thus, if family planning was promoted years ago, this could have been avoided. Currently, global drifts are predicting that this will double by

Ellis, in Walker’s view, scientific evidence has shown that environment and anthropomorphic harm has been caused to overpopulation, calling Ellis’s view “nonsense.” Although the earth has limited resources, Ellis debates that “there is no such thing as carrying capacity.” All living beings on earth will be agonised as they die off due to erosion of natural resources, mainly food and water. Modern humans, however, are an exception to this, as they are innovative. Although Ellis’s predication states that, “humans have altered natural environments so as to increase the carrying capacity for our species,” Walker makes the claim that, “past performance does not guarantee future result.” Walker concludes by answering the question begged by Ellis in saying that; counteracting overpopulation is: “not just silly, it is dangerous