No New Worlds By Dr. Adrian Forsyth

There have been many other extremely knowledgeable humans who agree that eventually, “the earth’s carrying capacity will no longer be able to keep up with population growth, and civilization will end unless large swaths of human beings are killed, so the question is: How do we want to do this?” In a very credible and well-esteemed publication, Dr. Edwin Peters, a Cambridge University ecologist followed up this statement by asking a critical question: “Do we want to give

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

No matter how many people do claim overpopulation is not a relevant issue, it very much is because of the simple fact that starvation and pollution are very real and existing issues that are ultimately offset by overpopulation. In an article titled “Overpopulation Is Not the Problem,” author Erle C. Ellis uses the analogy “Like bacteria in a petri dish, our exploding numbers are reaching the limits of a finite planet, with dire consequences,” to argue that overpopulation is not a problem by stating the opposing claim. “We are nothing like bacteria in a petri dish,” Mr. Ellis solemnly asserts, “...these claims demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the ecology of human systems. The conditions that sustain humanity are not natural and never have been. Since prehistory, human populations have used technologies and engineered ecosystems to sustain

The future of our planet has been a great concern for the global community for many years. In their article ‘Can a Collapse of Global Civilisation be Avoided?’ Paul and Anne Ehrlich explore the current ecological and socio-cultural trends that they believe, if left untreated, will lead to the inevitable collapse. Unlike past civilizations, the modern global community has the knowledge, skills and technologies to solve the several pressing issues Ehrlich presents in this article. So what are those issues?

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

The topic of overpopulation has different perspectives regarding whether or not it is happening as well as its apparent effects of both the environment and its inhabitants. The idea of human overpopulation being a problem most clearly begins around the time of Thomas Robert Malthus’ publishing of An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers. In his writing, Malthus describes how the growth of the human population will always outgrow the resources required to maintain it. “The increase of population will take place, if unchecked, in a geometric progression, while the means of subsistence will increase in only an

The sustainable society Dr. Robert puts forth is a utopia or an ideal world in which nature and human beings live in harmony and our activities have minimal impacts on the ecosystem. Yet, in reality, beside the irresponsibility and ignorance toward the environment of humans, our overpopulation is the main reason why we are increasingly causing damage to nature. The needs for natural resources are getting high and higher while it takes time for the environment to bounce back to its original state. This high demand of resources along with the ignorance of humans has transformed nature and endangered our own life. We have broken the Earth’s natural cycles with our lifestyle and development, and rapidly transformed our resources into useless garbage. This is a linear process of human development and as Dr. Robert has stated, "all linear processes must eventually come to an end," the only way to save ourselves from the consequences, in his view, would be to restore the cyclical processes of nature.

Throughout time the human species have relied upon and utilized the Earth’s natural resources in order to survive everyday life. As years pass by human population is growing at an alarming rate and resources, in time, can and will become limited if proper steps aren’t taken now. During the 1970’s three men, John Holdren, Bary Commoner, and Paul Ehrlich developed a formula which measures the human impact on the environment. This formula I=PxAxT, refers to human being’s impact equals the product of its population multiplied by affluence and technology. “The world population is at 6.8 billion. That figure will rise to 9.2 billion by 2050. Meanwhile, climate change is speeding up alarmingly. So, are there too many of us? And if so, how long before our planet becomes unfit for purpose?” (Lord 24-26). In this essay, I will attempt to explain my understanding of the IPAT model and evaluate its current data trends within the human population.

We, as humans, are in a very dire situation. Sometime near the year 1800, the population of the Earth had reached one billion residents (Roster & Ortiz-Ospina, 2013). In the last two hundred years, however, the population of Earth has exploded to almost eight billion. The rate of increase is like nothing we have ever seen before in the history of the planet. One billion new earthlings were added in the last fourteen years (Roster, 2017). Many factors are at play which have directly impacted this exponential population growth. With limited resources and land available, we as humans are reaching a defining moment (Dimick, 2014). Protecting necessary resources such as clean air, fresh water, and a sufficient food supply, while simultaneously supporting steady population growth will be a huge challenge in our future. The population growth rate of humans on this planet will become a huge factor in the survivability of our species. Taking responsibility and changing our behavior may be the only way to save ourselves.

The population continues to grow throughout the years. Currently with seven billion people in the world, has shown how much the population has grown from the 1960’s. Humans live trying to be comfortable and free, in a sense humans want to live a good, perfect life that will benefit them. As doing so, humans do not see the danger the ecosystem, animals, and especially ocean life goes through. The environment is being effected by humans, why are we humans not doing enough to balance out the human and environmental needs? Human population is the root of most pressing environmental problems including wildlife, extinction crisis, habitat loss, and climate change.

Throughout most of human history, the population of humans on earth has been kept in check by environmental factors. With humans relying completely on the resources near to them, if a population began to grow too large it would be held back by a need for resources such as food and water. Once a civilisation grew large enough to have the food produced outside of larger cities and sold to the people in the cities, Diseases were the main factor holding population in check. However in the early 1800’s, the population of the world increased drastically due to advances in medicine that greatly increases the expected lifespan as well as reducing the infant death rate. In today’s world, the population is growing at a rate that is devastating to the earth. The United Nations has projected a population of nine billion people by 2050. In order to see how the effects of this growth can be reduced and reversed, one must examine the impact it will have on basic needs such as food, water, and energy.

There is an enormous amount of speculation regarding population growth and overconsumption as problems for the environment. Some believe that the root cause of the deteriorating environment is overpopulation. Others believe that the overconsumption of resources in developed countries contributes more to the overall overuse of resources than population does. Economist, Julian Simon, didn’t find growing population to be a catastrophic problem. Instead, he explained that with a larger population comes development in markets and ideas. I agree with Simon that human ingenuity will continue to outpace environmental degradation. While the argument can be made that overpopulation directly drives overconsumption, it has been found that the

Overpopulation is a major challenge that humans face today. The human population is close to 8 billion, and at our current birthrate, we are adding nearly one billion more people every 12 years. Issues such as dependence of natural resources, degradation of the environment, poverty, and unemployment, are root causes of overpopulation. Though opponents of this theory, such as Erle C. Ellis uses archeological records, and the history of human evolution to argue against overpopulation. Robert Walker, on the other hand, disagrees. He uses scientific explanation to anticipate that all living beings on earth will are under torment as they die off due to: erosion of natural resources, mainly food, and water. Next, Joel Kotkin claims that an

From Neo-Malthusianism or deep green perspective, capable of the earth to produce resource is limited compare to rates of human’s consuming pattern. In his essay, Malthus states that power of the earth 's production is simply less than power of the population (cited in BBC horizon documentary 2009). This view is supported by another research, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF 2008) indicates global ecological footprint in 1988 was over the earth 's productive capacity and by 2005 it will be more than 30 per cent of the earth’s capacity (cited in Harding, R, Hendriks, &, Faruqi, M 2009). If we continue to absorb a mass consumption, we will be living in rare natural resources

The population of the world increased by 200,000 people in one day; making a current total of 6.9 billion humans on the planet (GeoHive-Population Statistics). In Mathus’s time, there were merely 1 billion people, which means in about 200 years, almost 6 billion people have been added to the planet. Malthus may have made incorrect predictions on the state of food production today, but this does not make his actual theory false. Almost 7 billion people inhabit this planet. Simply compare our population to any other life form on Earth that is close to our size, and it will be clear how much more we’ve expanded even when compared to animals that have been here much longer than us. Siberian tigers are the largest wild cat in the world, yet there are less than 400 of them left in the wild. We consume more resources than any other living being on this planet due to our numbers, and eventually we will reach carrying capacity. Even those who make arguments about our ability to keep advancing (and keeping up the food supply) can’t argue that with a continuously increasing population, eventually there literally