Overpopulation Is Not The Problem By Erle C. Ellis

In recent years, Earth’s issues have become increasingly politicized, publicized, and economically important. When you examine how the environment affects us and how we affect it, it’s easy to see that overpopulation is one of earths most pressing environmental issues.

the population is said to reach 9 billion by 2050. The overpopulation of humans is causing destructive impacts on the environment and a high demand for resources. One destructive impact would be climate change because of the exceeding rate of humans, causing pollution in the air. While the Earth is having a tough time sustaining particular resources, the high demand causes the earth to force to get its nonrenewable resources. Overpopulation can lead to dangerous impacts of pollution, depleted resources, habitat loss, etc. Overpopulation is a controversial topic. While there are those who are not paying attention to its effects, the world is displaying its resources will soon disappear due to the depletion of nonrenewable resources such as water, oil, and soil. Addressing the problems and concerns of overpopulation now, can help save the lives of individuals in the future, LITERALLY!

“The Wreck of Time,” written by Annie Dillard, illustrates societies battle with population. Dillard emphasizes the disasters that savage our world. According to the author, “ By moderate figures, the dead outnumber us about fourteen to one. The dead will always outnumber the living.” (Dillard 168) The amount of natural or man-made catastrophes do not affect the population as much as we claim. Dillards opinions are supported with facts throughout her essay, but readers are still left to question, why is our world considered to be overpopulated? Perhaps it is time for our society to consider Earth is not overpopulated in terms of people, but in resources. In addition, humans are struggling to grasp that other ecosystems are also being affected. With the introduction of Darwinism (the theory of evolution, by natural selections), humans are programed with the mentality of “survival of the fittest” forcing our humanity to evolve. Although evolution proved to be beneficial, as our immune system and way of life improved, we sacrificed our natural resources along the way. The problem with our society is not the lack of knowledge, but the ignorance and selfishness within our society. Overpopulation, threatened by the lack of resources, intimidates humans to disrupt biodiversity as we know it. (1) Man-made changes jeopardize our biodiversity. (2) As a result, the Earth’s resources are being depleted due to rapid consumption. (3) Even though we lack resources,

The cause of human overpopulation is birth rates. The high amounts of birth rates are causing overpopulation to grow each year. Research shows in the year 2030, the population is expected to reach 8.5 billion people and 9.7 billion people in the year 2050. Developing countries is straining the already scarce resources. Intensive agriculture practices damage the environment through the use of chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and insecticides. As the population expands further, many natural resources such as fossil fuels, water, and forests continue to plummet. Lessening population will definitely solve many problems such as poverty, species becoming extinct, food shortages, water and air pollution, and even lower crime rate. High birth rates can be solved by spreading awareness, educate people about overpopulation, and increasing accessibility to birth control.

Dr. Forsyth implements plenty of evidence as well as proven statistics to back up his outlook on these issues. The growth of human population is happening at an exponential rate, implying that in a short period of time population growth will double. “We find it difficult to comprehend exponential growth, but it may prove to be our fatal blind spot” [3]. When analysing the world’s population over a long period of time, it took roughly 19,000 years for the world’s population to go from 5million people to 500 million people in 1500 A.D. [4] With an estimated population of 7.5 billion people [5], for a period less than 1000 years, population increased more than 1500 times its size than it was in the 1500’s. In addition, on a more minute scale of time, in 1950 the world’s population was roughly 2.5 billion people [6] in merely 50 years the world’s population has tripled. With these statics, it is evident that the world’s population is increasing at an incomprehensive rate. With populations at their peak, overconsumption is another problem this world faces, as Dr. Forsyth affirms “humans consume far more than their fair share of the Earth’s natural productivity.”[7] Due to this over consumption of resources, there is a vast demand for cheap food which results in the clear cutting of large forest to generate room for new plantations of food. When doing so, humans destroy habitats that

The increasing human population and its impact on the world we live in has always been a prominent topic of discourse throughout history. A common theme that originates from human population is food scarcity. However, is an increasing population necessarily interrelated with food scarcity? Naturally, polarising perspectives on this subject will arise. Some are rather pessimistic and look at extreme population control measures, such as the neo-Malthusian angle that J. Kenneth Smail expresses in his aptly named essay: Remembering Malthus: A preliminary Argument for a Significant Reduction in Global Human Numbers (2002). Other angles on the subject are a bit more hopeful such as the views expressed

We are faced with a crisis not because there are too many of us for the planet to sustain, but because we are collectively using up more resources than the planet can produce. This isn 't just true with valuable resources like oil and ore. The most basic of resources are growing scarce as well; food, potable water, wood. It is commonly believed that the U.S. population is in decline and has been for decades. Hence, the assumption is that limiting our own population won 't address the global problem. Population numbers are still growing in many of the world’s developing countries, including the world’s most populous nation, China, and its close rival, India. Also fertility rates in Africa continue to be among the highest in the world, as many countries there are growing fast, too. Poverty and health problems due to poor sanitation, lack of access to food and water, the low social status of women and other ills continue to cripple these regions. (Roddy Scheer 4) A child born in a first-world country uses more resources and therefore emits more carbon than a child born in a developing country. Limiting births and limiting carbon emissions would be far more effective than addressing only one of these issues. The deadly combination of population rise in large globalized countries, leads to more people indulging in this heavy consumer based environment which is rooted in the overuse of resources. The more people trying to live this “lifestyle” has increased due to

It is obvious to see in today’s society that the world has changed so much compared to the last decade and the many years before that. As time moves forward, the human population also grows along with it. And as the population steadily increases, the environment also deteriorates and becomes heavily impacted by the negative effects of overpopulation. Humans are the main cause behind every damage inflicted upon the world. With the rise of overpopulation, along with the countless number of humans already existing, the world will inevitably suffer severe damages. The world, without a doubt, would be so much better off with a limited number of humans as more would only bring it its demise faster.

As stated in the text “Population Impacts”, India was the perfect example, as even with the massive population increase, the Indian population still supports itself. This further proves the point that it is over consumption that is the issue, relating back to the fact that over farming is an issue we face today we can see that a growing population is still not the current issue needing to be

“Why Isn’t Everyone as Scared as We Are?” is a chapter within a book written by Paul Ehrlich back in 1990 called the ‘Population Explosion’. It follows on from a previous book written by Ehrlich in 1968 called the ‘Population Bomb’ and depicts the bleak future for the earth created by overpopulation. The chapter points out links between overpopulation and problems of today including; pollution, poverty, resource depletion and environmental damage including habitat destruction and land clearing.

Overpopulation needs to stop before the world runs out of run out of resources that the everybody need to survive.The first step is to begin talking candidly about the issues. Overpopulation cannot continue to be the problem that dares not speak its name. Humans are not just fouling their nest, but crowding it beyond its capacity. Only when both problems are taken seriously and become part of respectable discourse will we be able to move ahead on the steps necessary to deal with the self-destructive way we are treating our

Our main topic for today is that fact that there are over 7.2 billion people in the world, with about another billion being added every twelve years, that is about two hundred and twenty thousand people added everyday. With this rapidly producing population comes one big thing, overpopulation, or the function that is to many of a certain species living in a place that does not have the resources to sustain that size of a population. A major example that shows that humans are overpopulated in New York city, New York has approximately 8.4 million people in only about 300 square miles, or the fact that so many people living in the world, and the fact that one in every seven people go to bed hungry every night.25000 of these hungry people died

A Modest Proposal for Preventing Overpopulation of the World caused by the Massive Amount of People being born, and for making the World More Sustainable

In the late eighteenth century, Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus described how human population, when unchecked, grows exponentially while resources (specifically food) exhibits arithmetical growth (Moseley, Perramond, Hapkie, & Laris, 2014). Malthus primarily blamed the poor for high fertility rates and argued for the abolishment of all welfare, believing that if the poor succumbed to the negative effects of poverty, overpopulation could be stopped. While this may seem a distasteful solution to modern environmentalists, one cannot completely erase population from the environmentalist equation. Despite the technological advances that rendered much of Malthus' musings passé, one cannot ignore the idea that the carrying capacity of earth loom unknown

Overpopulation is a prominent controversial topic among society, in which some believe the exponential growth of humanity is detrimental to its future, whereas others conclude this theory is a myth due to human nature and resources. In Isaac Asimov’s, “The Case Against Man”, he elucidated the verity of overpopulation, emphasizing that the disproportion of earth’s carrying capacity and its resources will inevitably lead to humanity’s demise. Introducing the notion that humanity “is one enormous intricately interrelated and interdependent system” (Asimov 431) and using science, mathematics, statistics, and analogies, Asimov declared the sole solution of overpopulation is increasing the number of deaths, or