Overpopulation and the Environment: We Must Act Now 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.

2,000 years ago the world, in terms of population, was only the size of the United States of America, 300 million people. Today, the world’s population is at seven billion and counting. If the population rose at a steady rate from year 0, we would’ve reached 1 billion people by about 210 A.D. This, however, was not the case. We reached 1 billion people in 1800 A.D, which means that there had to be very odd growth periods for the population as a whole REWORD ME. From 0 to 1000 A.D. the population only rose about 10 million people, “and well into the second millennium, [the population] grew less than 0.1 percent each year” [1]. However, from the year 1800, with 1 billion people worldwide, to 1930, the world gained another billion people. We then reached three billion people in 1960, five billion in 1987, and 7 billion in 2013. One can clearly see that once we entered the 19th century, the world’s population started growing like a 14 year old boy going through puberty; rapidly, and without any warning. One thing that can explain this growth is called the Demographic Transition.The Demographic Transition is a theory that explains the growth.

The demographic transition is a three-stage model of population growth in Europe. In the first stage there is a stable population because birth and death rates are both high. The second stage happens as mortality rates begin to slowly decline, but birth rates stay high. When this stage happens, there is fast population growth. During the third stage, the population is more stable as both birth and death rates are low and are more or less balanced. In more recent years, a fourth stage as been brought on by Anti-Malthusians. During this stage, population shrinkage occurs because the deaths begin to outnumber the births. Europe provides a great example to the theory of demographic transition. After speedy population growth of stage two, Europe settled at stage three with a stable population. It is currently in stage four with a shrinking population. In most European nations there are lesser births than deaths which could ultimately create other social problems.

The first stage of the demographic transition is called pre-industrial. In this stage, the population is stable. The birth and death rates are both high. The death rates are at a high due to the increase of disease, poor medical and personal hygiene care along with the limited supplies of food. With the death rates being high, people are having more babies to help with mortality rates being so high. With the birth and death rates being equal, the population growth stays at a zero.

Demographic transition is the process by which a nation/country moves from high birth rate and high death rates to low birth and low death rates as the growth population in the interim (Weeks, 2005). Some of the nations that have gone through this transitions are; Canada, Germany, United States and England. The demographic transition to an industrialized society is harmful to the environment. Industrialized countries also have the largest ecological and carbon footprint comparative to developing/non-industrialized nations. Nevertheless, demographic transitions have some notable advantages. Countries that have gone through demographic transitions have low birth and death rates. Citizens in

Some demographers believe that the demographic transition will happen to countries everywhere. With urbanization and modernization, they claim rates of natural increase will naturally fall. This is needed most, of course, in much of Asia, Africa, and Latin America where there is great poverty and rapid population growth. Most of the developed world has gone through the transition, and population in the wealthier countries is nearly stable. Detractors of this argument point out that those poorer countries today are very different from the wealthy ones during their early stages of economic growth. They also say the political and economic environment today also work to the disadvantage of the poor

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.

Explaining the demographic transition model is when model changes during time. The demographic model educates how crude birth and crude death rates changes over time. Yet, the demographic transition model has its difficulties; the model doesn’t show procedures as to how lengthy it takes a country to get from stage 1to stage

The Demographic Transition Model is a simplification for the conventional process of shifts in population growth in our world’s countries. The Demographic Transition Model, also known as DTM, is derived from Great Britain’s model of their demographic cycle between the 1750s and the 1900s. It consists of five different stages, with the phases being low growth, increasing growth, population explosion, decreasing growth, and declining population. These phases are defined by a triple line graph of the crude birth rate, crude death rate, and the total population per one thousand people. The DTM applies to almost every country, but the different stages of the model the countries fit in varies. There are no countries remaining in Stage 1 anymore. Though, some are making it into Stage 5, and the addition of a Stage 6 is being considered.

Demographic transition involves the changes a less industrialized country undergoes regarding birth rates and death rates from being an industrialized country. The change implies the reduction of birth and mortality rates from a less industrialized country into an industrialized country with reduced birth and death rates. Several countries, especially the European countries, exemplify this mode of transition in their historical information. Besides, the changes involved in demographic transition filters down to the environment in the long-run. The surrounding environment suffers from the expanded industrialization and due to the demographic transition (Smout, 2009).

According to Kunkel in “Global Aging: Comparative Perspectives on Aging and the Life Course”, the Demographic Transition Theory is a “... set of interrelated social and demographic changes that result in both rapid growth and aging of a population” (Kunkel 77). This theory essentially consists of stages that explain how most, but not all, countries undergo a stage of rapid fertility and death then see a decline in births, thus leading to a growth in the aging population.

Think about a sign that says EARTH Max Capacity 10 billion. Based on what they have the human population plans out parties. They have a lack of space and resources. Anyone who would plan these parties would have to take in account for the amount of people that would have to scrunch in with each other, and how many people would not have enough food to last the party. Which basically makes it so the guests are down to a certain number. Our planet is a close similarity to the already mentioned party. Just like how a large room can only offer a certain amount of resources. Despite this idea, the concepts of overpopulation, and resource degradation still are at large and are a risk.

Demography is the study of the components of population variation and change. Death rate and birth rate are two determinants of population change. Theory of Demographic Transition is comparatively recent theory that has been accepted by several scholars throughout the world. This theory embraces the observation that all countries in the world go through different stages in the growth of population. A nation's economy and level of development is directly related to that nation's birth and death rates. Population history can be divided into different stages. Some of the scholars have divided it into three and some scholars have divided it into five stages. These stages or classifications demonstrate a

There are many kinds of environment: the physical environment often thought of as nature, psychological environments built out of human interactions, and political environments rife with manipulation and posturing. While there are some obvious effects that large human populations would have on the natural environment, there are also less evident psychological and political ramifications. Thus, overpopulation is today's most pressing environmental issue.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how overpopulation causes social problems. To do so you must take many things into consideration, such as different views of racial problems and conflicting definitions of a social problem. Social problems can be defined in many different ways. They effect everyone and some of us encounter problems everyday as a result of our race, religion, gender, or low income. Others experience problems from technological change or declining neighborhoods, others are affected directly by crime and violence in their own neighborhood, and sometimes definitions of social problems are changed by society because of changes around you. Finally in