Human Overpopulation

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!

Population Growth is an issue that exists in today’s world that needs to be confronted before it becomes out of hand. The population itself has reached overwhelming numbers making it a problem that could turn to be dangerous. The amount of humans that the earth can support or the carrying capacity is slowly rising but at a much slower rate than the population growth rate. The increasing growth rate has its negative effects environmentally, agriculturally, socially, and economically and also has its positive effects nationally, and economically. The government is brainstorming and trying to come up with ways to decrease

The United States already had an overpopulation problem. Now that the population is growing even more we have more cities and states being overpopulated. According to Support U.S. Population Stabilization (SUSPS), if our population trend continues, we will be able to add enough population to create another New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, San Francisco, Indianapolis, San Jose, Memphis, Washington D.C., Jacksonville, Milwaukee, Boston, Columbus, New Orleans, Cleveland, Denver, Seattle, and El Paso - plus the next 75 largest cities in the U.S. - by 2020. According to Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), low-ranking countries have high population growth and high ranking countries have lower population

Throughout the last few hundred years, humans have built a foundation. Compared to all of the other animal species on Earth, humans are the most intelligent. We have built houses everywhere, developed a system to sustain ourselves, and now inhabit almost every piece of land on earth. Humans are smart, strong, and know how to fend for themselves. But, humans have a tendency to take it too far, and we have already done so. There have been numerous advancements over the past few hundred years which could ultimately lead to the downfall of the human race. The main issue is overpopulation due to the advancements in technology and general knowledge. The statistics from an article by Kenneth Smail show that “In the year 1900, there were almost 2 billion humans living on Earth. Throughout the 1960’s, the baby boom, there were 3 billion humans on Earth. Today in 2016, there are just over 7 billion humans living on Earth.” Currently, we have taken up just over half of all available land on this planet, and with increased amounts of people having kids, our population will only increase. Overpopulation is becoming a serious problem all around the world, especially in countries such as China and India. There are many global problems associated with overpopulation that are becoming more and more prevalent, which will all have dangerous effects on the foundation that humans have

Human population growth is becoming a huge issue in our world today. The population is increasing rapidly. The reason that it is becoming a concern is because it has affected the economic, environmental, and social aspects of our world. In the film Frontline: Heat, we can see how there might not be a future for our planet unless we are able to reduce the emissions and make our world a safe place. Not only for the present but also for future generations so that they are able to live long and healthy lives.

In fact, the average fuel efficiency of new passenger vehicles steadily declined from the 1980’s until 2004. This was due to the loopholes which car manufacturers found in the CAFE standards. CAFE treated “light trucks” much more leniently than cars, and allowed them to have considerably less fuel efficiency than cars. This caught the attention of car manufacturers, who then looked at how CAFE defined a light truck. They

While new trucks and cars emit about 90 percent fewer pollutants than they did 30 years ago total annual vehicle miles driven have increased by more than 140 percent since 1970 and are expected to increase another 25 percent by 2010. The emission reductions from individual vehicles have not adequately kept pace with the increase in miles driven. As a result cars and trucks are still the largest single

The American Auto Industry, in the form of vehicles it produces, account for almost one-fifth of emissions in the United States. Subtracting emissions created from production,

In this lab, we conducted basic measurements and calculations to estimate the area impact of vehicles used by Camden County College as well as the contribution of vehicle-based pollution from the county, state, and nation. To determine this, the class needed to estimate the annual average emission produced by an average car at the college. With this data, we were able to determine the amount of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and hydrocarbons that are released into the atmosphere every day. In my original hypothesis, I assumed that the numbers we were going to find would be extremely high, however, I was still surprised by the actual amounts we deduced. However, I did hypothesize that older cars who receive lower amounts of miles per gallon would produce the larger amounts of emissions, which happened to be the case in this instance.

The American automotive industry is a massive force, to say the least. The historical impacts of automotive technology and assembly line manufacturing has effected economies around the world and has also created world-wide ecological challenges. Governments, under pressure from environmentalists, have had to realize, create, implement, and constantly refine manufacturing and emission standards. Consumers, who foot the gas bill for vehicles, continue to express their desire for less expensive autos that require less fuel without sacrificing style, comfort, safety, or performance.

According to Greenpeace, cars are responsible for about 13% of the CO2 released in the atmosphere. Car makers must focus on the production of fuel efficient cars in order to decrease emissions. Americans love big cars. Unfortunately, hybrid engines work well on smaller cars. When it comes to bigger cars they are not as efficient. Some efforts must be made towards lowering the cars weight. The heavier the car, the more emissions it produces.

Transportation is the number one thing we consumers do that harms the environment. Transportation causes the highest amount of environmental damage overall - nearly half of the toxic air pollution and more than a quarter of the greenhouse gases traceable to household consumption. Over time, however, sales of trucks, vans and SUV's went from 16% market share to over 50%. One big auto manufacturer even shelved their work of the last three years, spent updating their most popular selling economy car, so they could spend the money getting SUVs to market faster.

Americas need for more has brought upon an increase of SUVs. SUVs have bigger engines that burn more gas than economy size cars, which leads to more toxics released into our air.  We also have freight trucks that run on diesel to worry about. You can see how our form of transportation is a major problem for our air quality.  The Journal of Industrial Ecology points out how, “California, where the demand for freight transportation is forecast to rise 1.8% per year and the state has greenhouse gas reduction goals. With this growth in demand, energy us and GHG emissions will increase unless alternative (or improvements in) vehicle technologies, fuels, or logistics are adopted.” (Nahilk, et al. 317)  If we use more eco-friendly fuel types and change the way we manufacture cars, we could reduce air pollution. Finding a more eco-friendly form of transportation can benefit the environment and our health.  Instead of using a more eco-friendly fuel type we continue to keep gasoline, a crude oil as are primary source of fuel for our cars.  There are still toxics being released from the exhaust from cars that we do not even know about.

Truck transportation has been the backbone of freight movements in the United States and across the globe for decades. While utilizing trucks is an economical way to move freight for short hauls of less than a 1,000 miles, there are high environmental and infrastructure costs for utilizing this mode of transportation. According to Lowe, road transportation’s use of energy resources rose 103 per cent in the period since 1970 (2005). Additionally, Lowe points out that road transportation’s emission of green house gasses, “increased by 76% between 1971 and 1989” (Lowe, 2005, p. 112). Furthermore, road transportation is the largest polluter in the industry. It utilizes “over 80% of the total energy used in the transport sector and contributes over 75% of its total CO2 output (Lowe, 2005, p. 113). Finally, freight transportation by heavy vehicles causes pavement damage at significantly higher rates than passenger traffic (SSTI, 2011).