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impacts of overpopulation on the environment
effects on the environment during overpopulation
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Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years, progressing through several eras and phases. However, questions have begun to appear, with questions if the “Earth is Overpopulated?”, if “With the Earth’s Current Population, will it be capable of maintaining life at a sustainable level? (Heaton)”, and if the Earth is at risk at running out of Resources at the rate we’re consuming them? My answer to all these questions is no, that although the population is currently at 7 billion people, it is not at a point where it could be considered to be overpopulated, and it is not a point where the Earth cannot sustain humans with its resources. In this essay, I will be defending the indefensible idea that we should not care about what happens to our Earth, …show more content…
However, this demand would not be able to be met because “the Earth cannot produce nor provide the resources that is required by demanding population of over 7 billion people (Network).” However, the idea, that Earth is overpopulated, was questioned by Natalie Wolchover, who claims that “although the population of 7 billion people is an alarming number, is it necessarily overpopulated? (Wolchover)” Wolchover claims that in reality the Earth is not overpopulated, claiming that “scientists think that Earth’s maximum carrying capacity is approximately 9 or 10 billion people,” meaning that the Earth’s current resources and land have the capability to feed and provide necessary resources to a population of 9 or 10 billion people …show more content…
(PBS)” or an objection presented in my Focused Inquiry class “if there is enough food, why are there people starving?” These objections are quite insightful, but deals with issues different from the belief of the resources on Earth being scarce. First, farmers would not be able to sell the surplus food for money, because there cannot be “too much production and fewer buyers. (PBS)” The current population on Earth does not demand the amount of food farmers are capable of producing, which if it were produced, not only would it cause farmers to lose money and time, but there would be large quantities of food that would go to waste. Secondly, people are starving, not because there isn’t enough food on Earth, but because of economic issues, typically in undeveloped countries. These undeveloped countries have not yet established programs or have adequate methods for the entire population, in those countries, to receive adequate nutrition and the adequate food resources to live a long, healthy
Humans can not be the only thing that is hurting the Earth. When you really think about it, Earth goes through a lot of natural disasters, which cannot be controlled. According to an activist, Tim Haering, “Tsunamis, floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires, disease nature kills more than we kill each other.” Earth throws in all of these natural ...
All of these are consequences of one question deep at the heart of the quest for sustainable human existence; the question of the maximum capacity supportable by the planet Earth. As is true of a good deal of the puzzles plaguing our time, little consensus is to be found surrounding this topic.
“We are burdensome to the world, the resources are scarcely adequate for us.” Tertullian, a philosopher from the third century had said this about our world when the population was mere 200 million. This statement can be taken two different ways. The first would be to think that our resources are limited and we need to be worried. The second would be to say people have been worried about overpopulation forever but everything seems to have worked out. There is no doubt that there are many people inhabiting this earth but the real question is if too many of us is a real threat to humanity.
severe increase in the size of the population can cause a shortage of food for
In today’s society that we live in, there are countless of environmental problems that we face, such as global warming, fishing, pollution, and many other topics of that matter. These issues have affected our environment for the worse and have caused problems physically and economically. Yet, out of all the issues that effects our world on a daily basis, it is shown that overpopulation is one if not, is our biggest issue in our environment that is only getting worse due time, especially due to the rapid growth of the human population and the limited resources that are left on earth that we absolutely need to tend to our growing population. Even Dr. Charles A. Hall, who is a systems ecologist, states that, “Overpopulation is the only problem, If we had 100 million people on Earth or better yet 10 million, no others would be a problem.” Which helps prove that overpopulation is a major issue that we must act upon if we want to save our world.
Humans are very quickly dominating the globe. Today, the human population is around 7 billion people. Humans are populating at a rate of almost 220,000 per day! Humans are rapidly heading towards Earth’s carrying capacity.
Planet Earth, or Planet Humanity as Engelman expresses it, consists of individuals who are concerned about “[their] diets, [their] modes of moving, and [their] urge to keep inferior temperatures close to 70 degrees Fahrenheit no matter what is happening outside…[eventually] these behaviors are moving basic planetary systems into danger zones” (Engelman 1). Corresponding to Pearce, who considers consumption is a major issue as well, Engelman claims that the effects of humans’ “needs, greed and wants are” a concern and humans ought to confront the disproportion human being consumption on this planet (1). For instance, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) predicts that two thirds of the Earth’s population will be encountering water shortage or urgency in fourteen years (Engelman 2). In addition, Engelman declares that we cannot prevent the hasty population expansion instantly, but if women determine whether or not they want to be pregnant then we can reduce the amount of births (3). As mentioned previously, Kotkin suggests that the decline in child births is the chief obstacle; on the contrary, Engelman opposes Kotkin’s declaration arguing that lower births will aid the planet. In brief, “stopping climate change, reducing water scarcity, or keeping ecosystems intact, by contrast, don 't yet seem to be in our skill
Food is an essential to everyone on the planet. That is why food security is always a crucial issue. It means life or death to many people. Our ability to feed the entire planet is often debated. The root cause of why there are so many hungry people is not always easy to figure out. We see mass amounts of excessive waste in wealthier countries, while many live impoverished and die from a lack of food in other countries. The disconnect seems to always be there no matter the amount of aid that is given or food that is grown. The problem is not always a lack of food, but much more a lack of wealth. You must have money to eat it, it is not a given right. Food is about money, and how accessible food is comes down to the price of it. There
In the past ten years the world population exceeded six billion people with most of the growth occurring in the poorest, least developed countries in the world. The rapidly increasing population and the quickly declining amount of land are relative and the rate at which hunger is increasing rises with each passing year. We cannot afford to continue to expand our world population at such an alarming rate, for already we are suffering the consequences. Hunger has been a problem for our world for thousands of years. But now that we have the technology and knowledge to stamp it out, time is running short.
So now that you have an idea of how big a number 6,000,000,000 is, are you even more convinced that human population has become too large? The evidence, at first glance, appears overwhelming. The world's population has grown from 1 billion in the early 1800s to over 6 billion today. Two nations in the world (namely, China and India) themselves each have more than 1 billion people now. According to United Nations' statistics, around 2 billion people (1 in 3) suffer from malnutrition and dietary deficiencies and more than 800 million (1 in 7) are chronically malnourished. Add to this that resources are becoming depleted and ecosystems (and their animal and plant residents) are being decimated. Worse yet, if world populations continue to grow at the rates observed in 2000, the world's population will surpass 24 billion people by 2100; a very unlikely event given recent reductions in world growth rates (current projections put us at about 12 billion). With all of this evidence is there any doubt that population has grown too large. However, even though the world's human population appears to be overabundant, "super-sized"," or "gargantuan," this tendency to think about the world problems as largely driven by population pressures, as so many thoughtful people do, has its own serious problems and limitations.
Think about a sign that says EARTH Max Capacity 10 billion. Based on what they have the human population plans out parties. They have a lack of space and resources. Anyone who would plan these parties would have to take in account for the amount of people that would have to scrunch in with each other, and how many people would not have enough food to last the party. Which basically makes it so the guests are down to a certain number. Our planet is a close similarity to the already mentioned party. Just like how a large room can only offer a certain amount of resources. Despite this idea, the concepts of overpopulation, and resource degradation still are at large and are a risk.
The reduction of the Earth's resources has been closely linked to the rise in human population. For many thousands of years people lived in relative harmony with their surroundings. Population sizes were small, and life-supporting tools were simple. Most of the energy needed for work was provided by the worker and animals. Since about 1650, however, the human population has increased dramatically. The problems of overcrowding multiply as an ever-increasing number of people are added to the world's population each year.
Ban-Ki-Moon release a resonate truth, “Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth... these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women's empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all” . One of the sole purposes for the Environment Protection Agencies is to give sufficient protection and stop the dangers in our environment such as water, air and wasteland. Over decals, we have heard some torrent reports on how the environmental problems in this nation has increased and has its negative effect has created endangerment to the humanity. The Flint Water Crisis, is a perfect example; and over 100,000 citizens were exposed to high levels of lead and today, many are dealing with some serious health
One of the most complex issues in the world today concerns human population. The number of people living off the earth’s resources and stressing its ecosystem has doubled in just forty years. In 1960 there were 3 billion of us; today there are 6 billion. We have no idea what maximum number of people the earth will support. Therefore, the very first question that comes into people’s mind is that are there enough food for all of us in the future? There is no answer for that. Food shortage has become a serious problem among many countries around the world. There are many different reasons why people are starving all over the world. The lack of economic justice and water shortages are just merely two examples out of them all.
As things tend to go people want to eat things. The only problem is that there is a food shortage and people cannot eat things. This food shortage is one of the major causes of overpopulation. Now we actually produce enough food worldwide to feed 11.4 billion but 1 billion who don’t have access to it. This doesn’t mean that the 6 billion that do have food are gluttonous pigs who eat more than they need, leading an unfortunate billion or so driven into starvation. One of the factors is that our food is eating our food. A lot of food, especially in America, goes to feed livestock. This is to accommodate those of us who are wealthy on a worldwide scale. Truth is, we like our meat. In fact the average wealthy person, whether Japanese, American or European consumes about as much goods as thirty-two Kenyans. (Scishow). The lack of food leads to other issues that connect and fall under the same umbrella, which we will touch on later. Basically no resources is bad news. If we live in places that have limited resources like food, water, shelter or medicine we tend to fight over them. Also if we live in places without resources we have more kids in order to continue our family. Let’s say we just expand the amount of land used for food production. Those tasty cows eat grass and grass is all over the damn place. Unfortunately grass and other crops and in turn livestock don’t grow very well in areas that need it most. Which would be why the