Population: The Growing Problem Essay

The world population of 7.2 billion in mid-2013 is projected to increase by almost one billion people within the next twelve years. It is projected to reach 8.1 billion in 2025, and to further increase to 9.6 billion in 2050 and 10.9 billion by 2100. This assumes a decline of fertility for countries where large families are still prevalent as well as a slight increase of fertility in several countries with fewer than two children per woman on average.

On the other hand, Thomas Malthus had little hope for the future. He believed that the world’s population will increase faster than the production of food. The human race, he believed, would starve and there would be periods of chaos. Malthus said that the population increases at an exponential rate, nearly doubling amount. There is no way food growth would be able to catch up with population growth. Malthus’ solution was “War, Famine, and Plagues”. He believed that was the only way to decrease population and hopefully salvage the human race. These events would increase death rates liberating the world of disaster. Malthus tried to persuade lower classes form creating children and from marriage. At that time the lower classes were considered to be given higher wages, which would increase the makings of children and marriages. Thomas Malthus pleaded with everyone to make a change in order to decrease population.

The human population is growing at an exponential rate. It is expected that the human population is going to increase to 9.6 billion by 2050, compared to 7.2 billion in 2013 (Porter). Because of the increasing human population, the rate of food production increases causing food waste produced to rise as well. Food consumption has decreased to less than a quarter of what was consumed in 1961 for people living in developing countries (Porter). These statistics are important to highlight because according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, most landfills are made up of food waste which is causing the emissions of greenhouse gasses. The Environmental Protection Agency also states that cows produce one of the most dangerous greenhouse gas known as methane. Methane is 21 more times stronger than carbon dioxide. The reason why this needs consideration is because beef is the most consumed meat compared to other meats such as chicken, which has less greenhouse gas emissions. Countries with the most greenhouse gas emissions come from great financial economies in which citizens are privileged with what they eat. The increasing rate of releasing emissions by food waste can be dramatically slowed down by, using systems that convert food waste into a source of renewable energy, implementing policies that limit the amount of food waste in each country, and having governmental officials influence citizens to take into consideration the amount of food waste they produce.

Consider that Earth’s population is projected to rise to 10 billion by the year 2050. The current

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

growth rate in the United States is approximately 2.2%. This means by 2050 the population could reach 438 million people (“World Bank Group”) Many citizens do not see any danger of the population rise in the United States. Unawareness might be the biggest factor in why they believe this; however, overpopulation can destroy the environment, including food and water sources, while also raising unemployment rates and the risk of disease.

population increase, now approximately 1.7 percent a year will decline to a little less than 1 percent sometime between the years 2020-2025” (Ehrlich). The more people added on to this earth the more resources we will have to use

In the United States roughly 22 percent of our population is under the age of 15.

Malthus was an economic pessimist to those who disagreed with him and a realist to his followers. He viewed poverty as something that was inevitable because, "If the only check to population is misery, the result of any improvement is ultimately to enable a larger population than before to live in misery, so that resource-improvement actually increases the sum of misery and that betterment of the lot of mankind is impossible without stern limits on reproduction." This means that there is overpopulation, and the natural check of misery (poverty) is coming into effect in order to balance out overpopulation. However, by trying to help poverty, we are (according to Malthus) making the situation worse. In the short run, there seems to be an improvement because those poor people are better off and can do well. This situation would lead to a larger population than before, and therefore would lead to a greater number of people becoming impoverished. He therefore shunned charities and proposed that by leaving poverty alone, and by moral restraint and vice (contraception and population control); the situation would take care of itself. "If the only check to population is misery, the population will grow until it is miserable enough to check its growth."

Robert Malthus has a central argument that populations tend to increase faster than the supply of food available for their needs. Population, when unchecked, will be a problem for the world’s population to survive in the future. The magazine articles, Malthus and His Ghost: When He Formulated His Theory Ignored the Ingenuity of Man and The Numbers Don’t Lie: Why Malthus was Right offer divergent views on Robert Malthus’ famous doomsday theory. It is important to analyze the background of the two articles by drawing a

Briefing Note for The Minister: Report on the issues caused by the growing population of Deer within the UK

Our planet’s carrying capacity for prehistoric Homo sapiens was probably near 100 million. However, without their Paleolithic ways of life and high-tech technologies, the population would be much less - possibly a couple tens of millions. The advance of agriculture allowed even larger population growth to occur, demanding for even greater land-use practices to earn more nourishment from land. At some point, their farming systems could have supported a couple billion people. The world population is currently almost at 7.5 billion, but with our technologies, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.S. has estimated that the people born after we reach nine billion could be sustained if necessary expenses in food policies and anti-poverty

Malthus focused on uncontrolled reproduction, he reproduced through math where he said So you got population growing geometrically and food growing arithmetically, meaning everyone is going to die. Food shortages caused immediate famine where humans would try to live ever more desperate lives as increasing demand would raise price of food, clothing and

Malthus is accurate in that his ideas have been practically supported in that there have been (and still are to this day) famines, for example in sub-Saharan Africa, there are many water-shortages and droughts, such as those in Africa, Australia and California, resource shortages- in terms of non-renewable resources (i.e. coal, oil) and the endangering of species such as different fish as well as climate change. Although there are ways in which some of these problems are now being conquered.

Imagine a world of too many people. How can we deal with this? Can we minimize its effects? How do we take care of the future? The late Carl Sagan played an important role trying to make us understand that our planet is an insignificant Pale Blue Dot, (book) lost in a corner of the Milky Way Galaxy. The awareness, created by his book with the same title, led me to think on the Earth 's land surface which is 149,000,000 km². Well, this number is not going to increase, I thought. As time goes by, more and more people are stepping into our planet which will reach about 11 billion by the year 2100. Although the planet might be able to support this number, what might happen if it is surpassed? Overpopulation is a problem that must be addressed. But, wait! There are people who are convinced that such thing will never happen. Our ingenuity, they say, it is more than able to take care of that situation. Those were the principles and questions that made me embark on this research venture, trying to appeal to a larger discussion, among ecologists/environmentalists, about the pros and cons of what seems to be travelling towards reaching the point of no return.