Overpopulation and the Environment Essay

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.

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

Overpopulation, pollution, global warming, climate change, genetic modification, ocean acidification, water/soil pollution, deforestation, acid rain, and ozone depletion are among some of the main factors that have a negative impact on the planet. Overpopulation is one the most concerning environmental issues currently. Overpopulation is defined as the human population of a specific area exceeding the carrying capacity. Overpopulation can occur from an increase in births mainly or a decline in deaths. Also, other factors that affect overpopulation can be an increase in immigration or a depletion of resources. It was stated by the United Nations that the worth has a total carrying capacity of somewhere between 4 and 16 billion. Currently we hold over 7 billion humans on Earth. As of 2017 the UN has increased their population predictions to 9.8 billion by 2050 and up to 15 billion by 2100. Pollution we hear about every day.

Impacts on the Environment website). Our population is rising beyond the earth's ability to maintain a reasonable quality of life. This enlarged population has also increased the land uses, resource uses and pollution problems. A raise in land use

Overpopulation can damage or even destroy the environment. The need for resources will grow with the population, but natural resources will not be produced at a fast enough pace. Man may try to produce the resources they need themselves but will there be enough space? According to Young the average person needs a minimum of 100 square feet to feel comfortable in a living space (“How Much Space Do You Really Need?”). Using the estimated population size of 2050, human living space will take up 43.8 billion square feet. Assuming most of these people live in apartment buildings so there is room for farming. Farms will need to switch out crops every year to slow down the process of soil degradation.

This is destroying the land which is harder to grow crops making us buy supplies from other countries. When the country started to overpopulate, the country has a rise of unemployment and this is because the country cant support all of the people and give everyone jobs which lead to many becoming homeless without the governments help. Because of the rise in unemployment there is a rise to crime as people will steal various items to feed their family and provide them basic necessities for life. Also as the population rises the cost of living does as well. The cost of homes, insurance, food, and healthcare. We have to pay to survive and feed everyone in our families. Another contribution to the over population is the increase and more knowledge of sicknesses and how to cure/ prevent them.

This article is about the U.S. overpopulation and its effects on the environment. Our population grows by 285 people per hour. With this increase of 2,500,000 people per year our renewable resources are limited. The need for urbanization is depleting the land needed for growing food and the U.S. consumption of energy is continually rising. As a result, the population growth will contribute to more pollution, overcrowding, loss of open land, and the death of many species. Some of our much needed lakes and rivers are slowly evaporating, which means a limited supply of water for our nation.

Throughout time, scientists have discovered new ways to help save lives and help people live longer, but this causes a major problem around the world. Birth rates are almost double to that of the death rates, and the earth’s population is reaching the seven billion mark. Continents everywhere worry about what is to come with the rising population because it is causes many resources to deplete and diseases to spread. These very problems are already occurring on the continent of Africa.. In Africa, overpopulation is causing an immense amount of disease to spread more competently due to the close living quarters and a lack of clean water.

It is predicted by the year 2050 the world's population will have increased to over 9 billion people. (International...) If this prediction comes true the world will become overpopulated and cause problems like famine, the world already struggles with feeding the amount of people alive today. A second problem is housing, in underdeveloped countries there is already a struggle with giving people places to live, so companies clear land to build houses but that leads to habitat loss and animal loss. The third reason is disease, if a disease was started and spread when the world was overpopulated the disease could eliminate half of the human population.

The absence of virtually any reliable current demographic data has not prevented national and international bodies from generating estimates and projections of population and population growth in Nigeria. The World Bank estimate of Nigeria's 1990 population was 119 million, with an estimated annual growth rate of 3.3 percent. Although other sources differed on the exact figure, virtually all sources agreed that the annual rate of population growth in the country had increased from the 1950s through most of the 1980s. The government estimated a 2 percent rate of population growth for most of the country between 1953 and 1962. For the period between 1965 and 1973, the World Bank estimated Nigeria's growth rate at 2.5

(n.d.). So many things go into human population growth such as deaths, births, and migration; for, all three play a factor when calculating the growth. The more people that live in the area, can affect more on the environment then anything. “For the last 50 years, world population multiplied more rapidly than ever before, and more rapidly than it is projected to grow in the future.” Jordan, J. (n.d.). Human population growth affects things that go un noticed such as in the workforce, environment, and our

Overpopulation, this is so with any society that largely depends on agriculture, African families are often very large. Most of the elderly rely on their children for support, and as much agriculture in Africa is labor-intensive, large numbers of children provide much needed labor for plowing, planting and harvesting. However, overpopulation is a serious problem in urban areas, which have grown enormously since the beginnings of African independence in the in the late 1950s and later. For example, in 1960, 14.5% of Nigeria's population lived in urban areas, that number had grown to 43% by 2000, and is growing at an estimated 5.5% per year, compared to a 2.9% national population growth rate. This is a trend that can be seen throughout the continent.

As the population grows, cities are constructed along rivers and other waterways, and the sources are modified to meet urban needs rather than ecological. More and more food needs to be grown to nourish people. Now, land is degrading and sea levels are rising, making growing impossible in many former farming areas. Because of this, "... 800 million people are chronically malnourished, and 2 billion lack food security" (Dahl, 603). Because agriculture for the masses depends heavily on irrigation, it puts additional strain on the globe's water tables (Dahl, 602). Not to mention that current water sources are being polluted by sewer discharge and industrial waste. Deforestation is another issue. Forests and other natural vegetation help protect against flooding and soil erosion. In the 1990s, 563,709 square miles of land were cleared of forests (Dahl, 602). Without these forests, global warming has been accelerated as more carbon is released into the atmosphere, rather than being consumed as fuel by plants and released as oxygen. For example, in India and Sri Lanka, a tsunami, unhindered by the mangroves that used to grow there, destroyed

This will also have a substantial effect on the environment and the Earth is already overpopulated as it is, this is clearly seen in different parts of the world. Cities go on for miles without any greenery and are overcrowded, roads look disgusting as there are so many cars on the road polluting the atmosphere and if the population increases even more, there will be more cars on roads which will cause even more air pollution in the atmosphere which means that plants and other species will die as the atmosphere will be so toxic or it could potentially introduce new diseases or cancers. Wild animals could also gradually die out and become extinct because of environmental destruction because the humans would be destroying their habitats and also due to over hunting animals. Animal hunting is a very popular activity to do and if there is a higher population, more people will be killing animals which is another factor that will cause the wild animals to gradually die out. Siberian tigers have been classed by the IUCN as being endangered. There are approximately 300 Siberian tigers left in the wilderness in the regions of China and North Korea and the factors that are influencing the lives of these tigers are due to humans capturing, hunting or the killing of the tigers and habitat loss due to humans constructing more buildings or cutting down trees to use for vital everyday things such as fences, buildings, shelves, desks and books. Overpopulation would start affecting many

Have you ever wondered what earth would be like in the near future with over 10 billion people from 7 billion? A newspaper source from Population Peril states that there are 210,000 new people everyday and by 2050 that there will be roughly 9.6 billion people (McClatchy). How are we going to prevent the disastrous measure of pollution, diseases, extinction of resources, more poverty, people and etc.? As the world’s overpopulation problem should be changed to prevent future severe issues.