An overarching issue that concerns all people due to its far-reaching implications is the subject of overpopulation. In the last two centuries, the global population has dramatically increased from 0.9 billion in 1800 to 7.6 billion in 2017. Some people may say growing population is beneficial since more people generates a bigger market and a bigger economy. On the other hand, the ramifications from dramatically increased population demonstrates the irrefutable negative facts on overpopulation. To understand the effects of overpopulation, it is imperative to explore its negative impacts on the environment, people’s lives, and the economy. Population growth comes with increased carbon dioxide since the people combust more fossil fuels …show more content…
In Andrew Steer’s journal article, he substantiates the severity of pollution by mentioning that “carbon-intensive growth is already responsible for about 5 million deaths a year— 400,000 as a result of hunger and communicable diseases exacerbated by climate change and 4.5 million as a result of associated air pollution” (Steer 5). By illustrating the severe mortality rate caused by pollution, the author emphasizes the seriousness of the influence of pollution on the people’s health. Furthermore, the research demonstrates that the economic cost of environmental damage is tremendous: “the drought in the United States that began in 2012 is expected to cost 1 percent of GDP; it is the costliest natural disaster in U.S. History” (Steer 6). On average, countries around the world use about 8% of their GDP for the annual cost of environmental damage. Hence, the combination of adverse climate and rapidly growing demand has led to sharply higher food prices over the past few years: “The spike in food prices in the second half of 2010 alone was estimated to have driven more than 40 million people into poverty” (Steer 6). Presented with these concrete facts, it is obvious that overpopulation makes people’s lives harsher by causing diseases, falling economies, and increasing food prices. Not only does overpopulation affects the people’s lives, but it also influences the
The worldwide population is approaching 7 billion and is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050 (Baird). This projected population number is down from a once predicted 16 billion (Baird) and while some are not concerned, others are worried about any increase in population. Population growth is discussed in the articles “Too Many People?” by Vanessa Baird; “Population Control: How Can There Possibly Be Too Many of Us?” by Frank Furedi; and “The Population Bomb Revisited,” by Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich. Baird and Furedi concur that a concern for population growth has been around since mathematician Thomas Malthus, in 1798, warned that overpopulation could lead to “the collapse of society” (Furedi). Furedi claims that too much human life is being used as an excuse, by population control supporters, for the world’s current and future problems. Baird tries to discover if “the current panic over population growth is reasonable.” For Ehrlich and Ehrlich the concern over population growth is very real, and they reinforce and support their book “calling attention to the demographic element in the human predicament” (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 63). While taking different approaches to their articles, the authors offer their perspectives on population growth, population control and the environmental impacts of a growing population.
The world’s population is rising rapidly from seven billion to the estimated nine billion in 2050 (Ellis, Overpopulation is Not the Problem). Every human being adds stress to the Earth’s resources. Numerous places like Africa and China maintain a copious amount starvation and poverty. There are days when people go without food, water, or shelter. There is even such happening in the United States. In such places, it is difficult to find contraception, or birth control, which leads to unplanned pregnancies. These situations are rooted down to overpopulation, which is when there are too many humans. However, there is a multitude of ways to reverse such negative effects. Population control is a necessary act that will benefit the world through sparing natural resources, decreasing famine, and controlling unplanned pregnancies. A worldwide effort would have to take effect in order for a successful future.
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.
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.
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.
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
Initially, it is argued that increasing population may lead to environmental issues to the world by consuming nature resources and causing variable pollution at the same time. According to Hinrichsen and Robey (2000), with a rapid growth of population, the needs of most developing countries to improve living standards are urgent. To meet the demanded of developing, both developed and developing countries consume resources much faster than they can regenerate. That means humans are destroying resources needed for future to satisfy present needs. This is supported by Loucks (2005) who reports that with population tripled in the 20th century, the water withdrawals have increased by 6 times, that means water use inc...
The past many decades have revealed a dramatically large increase in the global population. For example, the population increased from about 2.5 billion in 1950 to over 7.3 billion in 2015. This huge increase in population resulted in a need for many changes to be made in society. Global population growth is leading to deep changes in the demographics, economies, ecology, health, and governments of the world.
If it weren't for natural disasters, famine, or policies set for limiting birth rate, the present as we know it would be very different. In the beginning of the development of human beings, we probably had a big explosion of a population. Compared to today, it was most likely a narrow population. It is probable that many diseases that we know of today, were not around at that time, so it grew fast enough to keep us from going extinct. Back then, It was very beneficial for us to reproduce, now, on the contrary, it will be why we might go extinct. Due to the world already being considered overpopulated, some policies have been established. According to National Center for Biotechnology Information, between the years of the 1930s and 1970s China had a massive growth of population; specifically, an increase of 500 million people. In 1979 China introduced the One-child-Policy for the reason to keep a stabled economy. As of today, that policy has slowly faded out. This is a big concern to many scientists because it is alarming that the results of the policy are implying that we have insignificant control over overpopulation. Equally important, The Economic and Social Affair stated in the book “World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision”, “by 2100, the world population will reach 11.2 billion.” That being the case, These statistics are agitating and should be concerning everyone.
Overpopulation has become an issue around our world without ever being properly addressed; until now. This issue needs to be addressed and solutions for it proposed now and that is what I am here to do. Overpopulation is depleting our already low resources and creating issues among the poor by putting more of a strain on them. Along with the poor, the wealthy are also being affected due to their world and the world around us running low on resources and space to put us all.
Genetic engineering could potentially create little genetic variation within the human population because individuals would have a similar genetic makeup. Individuals within a population share a gene pool which is the total sum of different alleles within an interbreeding population. Genetic variation is the measure of the different genetic combinations that are in the gene pool and the amount of genetic variation within the population can affect the survival of the entire population, in this case the human population because the environment is constantly changing such as climate change, introduction of new predators or a new disease than the organisms with the favourable alleles will survive and reproduce and pass those alleles onto the future
Overpopulation is an issue that majority in the world may never face, however, the ones that do experience this issue know the struggles that it can pose to the overall quality of life. There are multiple reasons on why overpopulation is an issue and why it can affect quality of life, but ones that have a major impact on the world is the shortage of food, overconsumption of fossil fuels, and decline in health care. These specific issues were selected as a result of the widespread availability of information. With over seven billion people on the earth, there are numerous areas that deal with overpopulation, but to classify an area as overpopulated we must first establish what overpopulation actually means. Overpopulation is defined as “an undesirable
(Mahatma Gandhi) This quote holds true when debunking the population myth that there are not enough resources to support the human species. The meaning of overpopulation is when there are not enough resources to support an environment. Overpopulation is often defined by the number of people, not their behavior. But it is often the way we act that affects those around us and it is our willingness to survive that changes is it. Overpopulation is a myth because humans have the ability to create their own carrying capacity by inventing, thinking and innovating as proven in Anthropogeny studies and in history.
Overpopulation is an undesirable condition where the number of the existing human population exceeds the carrying capacity of Earth. Overpopulation is caused by a number of factors. Reduced mortality rate, better medical facilities, depletion of precious resources are a few of the causes which results in increasing the population. In the future, overpopulation will become a huge catastrophe. Because of overpopulation, countries will run out of their resources, and they wanted to obtain more and more resources to destroy the environment. This undesirable condition cause destruction of forests and water shortage, but I think people can change some polices, and they also can promote
Overpopulation is a growing problem all over the world. This is a very important environmental issue and needs to be dealt with. This environmental problem is affecting many countries in the world, but mostly the poor and impoverished countries that don’t have the resources to help deal with these issues. It also affects the environment like plants animal life and air quality. When the population of people expands we need more natural resources from the environment, so we consume more then we can produce. This leads to the lack of resources in many areas. When expanding we create a lot of pollution in the air, water, and land. The pollution affects many humans health. Overpopulation is doing more harm than any other environmental issue. Overpopulation also causes many of the other issues we are dealing with. This is very dangerous to not only us humans but the planet. Even though many wealthy countries are not affected by this overpopulation, I feel like they should help the cause. There is always two sides to an issue like this. Some people don’t think that overpopulation is a big problem and the ones who say it is an issue that needs to be dealt with.