The Problems with Human Population Essay

Never in the history of the human species have we been in such a rapidly changing environment. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, we have been making social, economical, scientific, and environmental changes and advancements at an unprecedented rate. Societal advancements, while much appreciated by the average Joe, have been detrimental to our environment. Every days forests are cut, rivers polluted, and once ecologically important areas are cemented over to compensate for our rapidly growing population. As the status of our natural world becomes more critical by the year it is important that we look at the driving factors and reasons for this destruction of the natural world. While pollutants and globalization are the driving

The world is being over populated with humans not only in China but in the United States of America as well. The problem isn’t as obvious in the United States as in other countries, but I believe over-populated nations will soon become a problem everywhere in the world. Population is not a bad thing in all situations, but I think that our population growth problem is un-healthy and needs to slow down. I believe there are several ways to come about this problem as well. Population can be slowed down in many ways; it’s just how we choose to execute this problem.

The human population is growing rapidly, and Earth doesn't have enough space for it. In 1967, Earth had a population of 3 billion, and only about 50 years later, that number had doubled into 7 billion. There are many reasons why our population is increasing so fast, in so little time, but I'll only go over two. The first, and foremost the most recognised reason, is the birth to death rate ratio. Every minute there is almost twice as many births then there are deaths; 200 births to 100 deaths. There is an estimated 350,000 born every day with only 150,000 deaths, making there 4 births every second and 2 deaths every second. Overwhelming right? Well the second reason which goes hand in hand with the birth to death rate, is, over the last few hundred years, we have become more intelligent, and more self aware. Our knowledge on medicine has grown like no other, and our life expectancy has grown with it. With many more factors modifying our population rate, these two show it best. We are living longer and having more babies, but soon we’ll need to stop.

According to the lecture, “If the birth rate is higher than the death rate, then population growth will be exponential.” What sets us apart from history is the fact that our death rate has greatly decreased due to our ability to fight leading causes of death. In historic times, the average projected age of survival was far lower than it is now due to the lack of knowledge on how to deal with and prevent different diseases. As time passed, humans began to learn more about medicine and treating sicknesses, but this was a slow and steady process. Plagues like the Black Plague during the 1300s killed off millions of people in Eurasia, preventing the population from growing exponentially. Couple with war and crime that was at its peak during the 1940s, the population did not have room to grow up. But as time continued, the rate of war and crime decreased, leading to one less reason of death to worry about. Famine was also a huge cause of death during 1870 but begins to decrease in 2010. The combination of the decrease in causes of death that stems from the better technology to deal with diseases, less wide-scale wars, less famine, and the continuous birth of new live caused the population to seem rapidly grow from around the 1950s onwards (this makes sense as it was right around the end of WWII, the last major war to affect the entire world). The migration of people and intermixing

There are many causes for overpopulation than just increasing numbers of people. Modern technology, improved medicine, more opportunities to get out of poverty, low fatality rates, immigration, and the "lack of family planning" (Rinkesh); all lead to overpopulation.

Overpopulation is a foremost challenge that humans face today. According to www.Worldometeres.info, the human population is heading to 7.5 billion, and at our current birthrate, we are adding nearly one billion more people every twelve years. Issues such as dependence on natural resources, degradation of the environment, poverty, and unemployment, are root issues caused by overpopulation. Though opponents of this theory, such as Erle C. Ellis, use archaeological 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 are under torment as they die off due to erosion of fundamental natural resources such as food and water. Next, Alon Tal argues that carrying capacity will be at a standstill as the population continues to rise, so we need to prepare ourselves for overpopulation. Finally, Joel Kotkin claims that an exiguous amount of babies will cause economic hardship, which will, in turn, cause the economic annihilation of societies; there are too few young people to replace the elderly workers. This essay will review the claims of issues and effects of overpopulation made by the authors mentioned above.

Overpopulation has been a growing problem over the past 60 years with an additional gain of 4.5 billion people since the 1950s. In 1750 AD the human population was at 800 million and had reach only 2 billion by 1927 (Schriever), however, in just merely 90 years, the population dramatically skyrocketed to 7.6 billion. In 1980, China tried to manage the overpopulation problem by releasing the one child policy, however, when it ended in 2016, their population increased a whole 0.46% (Verrill), that’s nearly 350 million people. There is no denying that humans are now the most dominant species to inhabit planet Earth. In fact, humankind is using natural resources at a rate 44% faster than what the world can regenerate, putting a strain on the world’s life-sustaining resources. The growing worldwide population is the cause of most environmental problems.

Overpopulation is an undesirable condition where the number of an existing organism exceeds the carrying capacity of the earth. It is simply when the world has more than the number of an organism it can support. Human overpopulation is one of the most pressing environmental issue, and still, our population is growing at an alarming rate. “About twenty years ago, Population Reference Bureau (PRB) estimated the world’s human population to be 5.84 billion.” Today, the population of the world has risen to about 7.6 billion and according to the United Nations predictions, it is expected to reach 9.7 billion people in the next 33years.

There are many causes of human overpopulation. One cause is advances in technology and medicine. This is because new tech saves lives of more people so the death rate goes down drastically. This ties in with declined death rate and increased birth rate. More people are overcoming poverty quicker too, so less people are dying in poverty.

What is something that continues to grow every second of each and every day? The answer to the question is the human population. The current human population is around 7.2 billion and is expected to grow by one billion in the next twelve years. Also, it is supposed to reach over nine billion by the year 2050. This may not seem like a big deal, but what many people do not think about is how we are going to feed all these people. With the population getting this big we will not only need more food, but we will also have to find new ways to grow it. The reason being is that when the population gets that big, people will need to have places to  live, and this will take away from farmland to grow on. With farmers having less farmland that means that they can not grow as many crops as they have in years prior. There is only one logical solution to the problems above. The solution is Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO). A genetically modified organism is where a scientist takes genetic tissue from one species and replaces it with the tissue of another. For example, they can take the genetic tissue from corn and replace it with genetic tissue from another plant like soybeans. They do this to allow plants to grow faster, produce more in smaller plots of land, help the environment, and to help plants thrive in certain environments.

Image this: One day, you wake up and 240,000 more people are living in your mansion. It is a big mansion with normally ample supplies to sustain your lifestyle. However, with 240,000 more people inhabiting that same area, it has become cramped and small. The next day, 240,000 people more come to live with you. This happens everyday for many years, soon supplies start to stretch thin and space starts to be a rarity. Unfortunately, this is not fiction. It is reality. Everyday, 240,000 babies are born around the world, according to United Nations’ Population Fund (UNFPA). This figure works out to be about 12,000,000 people over the next 50 years, if the growth stays, steady. However, as stated by World Population Profile: 1998, the

Human overpopulation occurs when the number of people in a group exceeds the carrying capacity of the region that they occupy. This can be the result of an increase in births, decline in infant mortality rates, increasing immigration or depletion of resources. The human population has been growing since the end of the Black Death, but the most significant increase has been in the last 80 years and it is mainly due to medical advancements. Currently as of November the 11th 2014, the human population is estimated at around “7.27 billion people” [1]. Scientists have estimated that

Nature is all around us, it’s beautiful and complex, and believe it or not, it’s dying. Environmentalists and scientists have been warning us for decades and yet, due to playing down by the media, the state of our environment has only continued to deteriorate. Ever since industrialization, our carbon footprint has grown exponentially, resulting in what we now know as global warming. If carbon emissions continue to rise and the pollution and destruction of the earth continues, life as we know it will eventually cease to exist. This is why we must stop idly watching and actively participating in the destruction of our environment; if there’s no life-sustaining environment there can be no life. It is time to take action and preserve our

From 1950 to 2005 the Earth’s population has risen from 2.5 billion to 6.5 billion according to the Population Reference Bureau. One of the first people to say that human population growth is not always a good thing was Thomas Malthus. In 1968 Paul Ehrlich wrote a book called The Population Bomb, which rose awareness on the possible impact of a rapidly growing human population. When this book was written the thought of controlling the population was not a popular opinion, and not all of the predictions he made in this book happened, but that does not change the fact that the quickly growing population has a big impact on our environment.

While overpopulation is a problem that plagues many developing nations, it would be wrong to assume that it is their main problem, or that the countering of overpopulation should receive priority above all else. There are more serious problems facing the third world. Poverty and the unequal distribution of wealth are two that must be dealt with first.