Overpopulation Is The Problem

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 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,

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

He believed that there would eventually be more people on this Earth than it would be physically possible to feed. Eventually, food would run out and result in a catastrophic mass starvation of the worlds population. The idea makes sense. People seemed grow on an exponential scale, eventually there will be too many people if we continued at that rate. This idea has evolved over the years, but the general idea remains the same. There will eventually be too many people, or will there? Several estimations predict that the human population will eventually level out. This means overpopulation is not the real issue. A new perspective on this topic will allow for an accurate goal post shift away from common misconceptions. This goal post shift will offer a new win-lose relationship for overpopulation in terms of environmental ethics.

“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.

Junior Thesis: Effects of Overpopulation and How to Solve It Society includes both good and bad elements that make society better or worse. People in society all hates problems that occur in the society. Sadly, there are many problems the society may face today and people in the society may realize these problems too. The terrible conflicts in the society can lead to destruction to the economic and social life.

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

In the article Overpopulation Is Still the Problem, Alon Tal (2013) claims that overpopulation remains the number one problem facing the world today and discusses various problems and possible solutions. Tal unveils the falsely assuring news stories refuting overpopulation as a problem. He particularly dissects Ellis Erle’s assertions, in the New York Times, concerning China’s seemingly magical works of technology. Erle comes to the conclusion that China’s amazing technology has and will always be able to keep them out of any problems regarding overpopulation. Of course Tal is able to rhythmically rebut Erle’s claims by explaining that, “Anyone with a teaspoon of historic sensibilities about the country 's environmental history might want to mention its long litany of famines which occurred precisely because carrying capacities were consistently outstripped by a growing population”. Tal then goes on to explain other problems linked directly to overpopulation in China like the food crisis from 1958-1961 which led to the starvation of over 20 million people. He also discusses the Chinese one-child policy describing it as “tough medicine” although the application of the policy was flawed he depicts how it has prevented the next round of famines. Tal ties the China population problems into the rest of the article which is mainly about how quickly the world is growing and what we need to do about it. He presents distressing facts like 1 in 8 people in the world suffer from

Overpopulation is blamed for many of todays problems around the world including poverty, hunger, and war. In reality, overpopulation is not the issue. In fact, the term “overpopulation” shouldn’t even be used because it makes one infer that there is too many people on this planet. That, however, is not true. There are plenty of resources to go around and the population may actually be declining instead of growing. Overpopulation will not be an issue for the future of planet Earth because the poverty rate is decreasing, there is plenty of food for everyone, and birth rates are going down.

As our global population count continues to exponentially climb, many people are under the impression the world is overpopulated. A lot of society wonders how we will be able to sustain such a large population. An overpopulated planet could cause or enhance problems such as natural resource depletion, global climate change, and starvation. The majority of people believe overpopulation is our world’s most crucial problem, including me. Or at least I did before I read What to Expect When No One is Expecting. This book definitely made me think twice.

In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus was ahead of his time. Malthus, an English economist and demographer, brought to life his theory on how an over-populated planet would not be able to provide for those who reside on it (Macionis, 2013 p .635). Although Malthus was an economic pessimist, he brought to light a very real truth. Now, 218 years later, Malthus’s theory has in some way become a reality. Although rich nations have slowed in regards to reproduction, poor nations continue to have high birth rates which put a strain on the global aspects of the environment. As our planet now holds over 7 billion people (US Census Bureau, 2016), scientists, economists, and environmentalist’s struggle to find a solution to our “growing” problem.

The question does not concern whether or not overpopulation is an environmental issue. The evidence is clear, the majority of researchers address this established issue with their own reasoning behind what the biggest cause or effect is. Overall, Hardaway (2014) found that around every one third of a second, the world creates room for one more human. Creating room for another person requires 3.2 tons of carbon, 2,000 square meters of fresh water, and 207 gigajoules of energy (Hardaway, 2014). This takes up more room and resources that the earth does not have. With this rapid growth in population, by the year 2050, the earth would need to have another living area the size of Brazil to accommodate for all the people (Kuo, 2012). With the lack of land availability, overpopulation will be impossible to survive off current natural resources. Researchers focus on why and how overpopulation is effecting the earth such as pollution, consumption, lack of resources, and overcrowding (Kuo, 2012; Wutich and Brewis, 2014). Overpopulation has numerous effects on the environment, and there are many different views on what is causing the biggest effect on the earth.

There are currently seven million people inhabiting earth. By 2050, it is predicted that population will reach up to 10.63 billion and by 2300 it is predicted to be 36.44 billion. In less than 300 years, population will grow by more than 30 billion people. The earth is meant to hold about six billion people and since humans have already already exceeded its limit, it is crucial for strong actions to take place in order to prevent overpopulation or else serious, irreversible problems will occur. The damage that overpopulation does to people and to the earth is unknown to many, but there are simple ways to control and prevent overpopulation. People have been debating the topic of

Overpopulation is arguably the world’s most serious environmental problem, because it exacerbates all of the others. The global population grew from 3 billion in 1959 to 6 billion in 1999, an increase of 100 percent in just 40 years. According to current projections, the world population will expand to 9 billion by 2040,

The current worldwide population is around 6.9 billion and is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050 (Baird). This projected population number is down from the once predicted 16 billion (Baird) and while some are not concerned others are worried by 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 the concern over population growth has been around since mathematician Thomas Malthus, in 1798, warned that overpopulation could lead to “the collapse