Overpopulation In The World

¬¬Earth is currently being populated with over seven billion humans, which just in the last two centuries had increased from one billion in 1835, to two and a half billion by 1950. This figure more than doubled in a mere forty-five years to about six billion (Chiarelli). Now that we have seven billion people populating from all walks of life, this presents us with a dire situation on hand. In fact, overpopulation is the world’s leading problem since it causes a domino effect to many of the predicaments the world is currently facing.

The UN predicts that we could put nine billion people on Earth, however I disagree since our current food and water resources is insufficient even to see to the needs of the current population size of seven billion (Pimentel). According to the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization, over sixty-six percent of the world population

In other words, it would take one-and-a-half Earths to put up with our present-day consumption. Adding onto the additional two billion by 2050 and using just the current environmental indicators to assess our situation, then the environmental decline leading to social and economic decline, has already started. To support an additional two billion people in less than half a century, the world would need another Brazil-sized growing area and by then, 80% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas (Kuo). On the other hand, since the land area of Earth is practically constant, population increases anywhere serve to intensify all of the resulting ecological problems: global warming, deforestation, pollution, famine, desertification, and nonrenewable resource depletion. On this regard, overpopulation is unlike other traits of environmental deterioration since it is the originator that brings out deterioration in the aforementioned areas, the domino effect if you