Will Vaughn
Writing 150
Myers
11/10/16
Issues Paper – Intro rough draft
Over the past several decades, the populations across the Earth have skyrocketed. There are currently 7.5 billion people on the Earth right now with a population growth of almost 72 million just this year. With more than two births for every one death, there shows no sign of this trend slowing down. With numbers like these, the Earth is projected to have a population of 9.7 billion by the year 2050. This begs the question of what effects these numbers have on our planet, environment, economy and living conditions. The truth behind this matter is that this unstable rate of growth is a threat to the livelihood of the planet. The Earth is being overpopulated. Billions of people are living in terrible conditions due to this. The environment in these crowded areas is quickly if not already converted into a third world country, health risks are at all time highs, and the economy is taking a dive. Overpopulation is the reason for a spike in global warming, environmental pollution, habitat loss, the sixth mass extinction and the mass consumption of finite natural resources such as fresh water, arable land and fossil fuels. It also contributes to emergence of new epidemics and sharp rises in unemployment, crime rate, and violence. Unless action is taken and continued efforts to combat these problems or allow for further populating, a limited amount of time and space will remain for mankind on this planet and will ultimately end in crisis.
While many countries are industrialized and 1st world, the problem does not lie in them. Overpopulation is occurring in mostly developing countries in comparison. Almost 5.3 billion of the Earth’s inhabitants are a result of these underdeveloped countries and by the year 2050, this number is expected to reach around 8 billion, where as the population of 1st world or developed countries will remain in the low 1 billion. The reason behind this outrageous growth is largely a result from three categories. These include an increase in agricultural harvest/productivity, lack of education/family planning, and especially advances in medical technology. Because there are now higher birth rates and lower mortality rates, populations are living longer and growing larger in these underdeveloped countries. Between engineered farming, lack of family planning, the push for early marriages and many children and the fact that birth is now becoming increasingly safe and life expectancy is increasingly rapidly. Now this all seems good right? This sounds like people are getting smarter and living longer and advances in technology are helping humans prosper. This is true, but the cons far out weigh the pros. Overpopulation of this planet will lead to terrible results and huge problems.
One of the major problems arising from overpopulation is the loss of fresh water. Statistics from the United Nations Water list that 75% of Earth is covered in water. 97.5% of that water is saltwater from oceans and only 2.5% is fresh water. Of that freshwater, 70% of it is glaciers and other arctic ice caps. The rest of the 30% is ponds, lakes, groundwater, and rivers. And of this water, less than 1% of it is actually accessible and usable by humans for direct use. The actual number is .0003% of the freshwater. This is a statistic that is beyond scary. With a population that is growing more and more every day, the amount of usable water is further threatened. The Global Outlook for Water Resources has said that by the year 2025, more than half of the world population will be encountered with water based vulnerability dangers or exposure and the demand for freshwater by humans will exceed 70% of the usable water available on this planet. Most people do not actually know the state of the fresh water supply, but according to the United Nations, the Earth is currently in a global water crisis. Freshwater is without a doubt the most important limited resource available and yet humans are consuming it 10 times faster than it can be replenished. While this is often overlooked, to me it is one of the most important issues dealing with overpopulation. While the planet is continuing to be overpopulated, the amount of usable freshwater will further diminish.
Another result of overpopulation includes the human induced greatest mass extinction of species since the wiping out of dinosaurs. There are around 64,000 species worldwide and around 20,000 are currently vulnerable to extinction. This means that since the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago, the earth is now experiencing the largest era of mass extinction all due to human overpopulation. Animals are going extinct 1000 to 10,000 times faster than they would normally. People do not normally think that just a simple matter of increasing the number of individuals would bring about this kind of damage but it does. It has complete control over our planets chemical or biological conditions and limits. We are losing 30,000 species per year which equates to about three species per hour. This is faster than new species can evolve.
Human population is expensive. It demands a lot of resources to keep growth ongoing. Some of these resources include the finite amount of natural resources that our planet has to offer. These include fossil fuels, fresh water as stated earlier, arable land, coral reefs and forests. All of these natural resources are continuing to plummet. This is leading to a lessened quality of human life. Research and analysis from the UNEP Global Environment Outlook shows that “human consumption has far outstripped available resources. Each person on Earth now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the planet can supply.” This is a daunting fact that tells us this problem of overpopulation is seriously outweighing the tolerances of the planet. Humans are demanding now more than ever, more than Earth can supply. The groundwork of the ecosystems has changed more in the last half of the 20th century than any time in human history. All of these ecosystems have been changed through human action alone. If a change such as this continues to worsen, there will be little to no ecosystems left to provide natural resources and even further problems will happen. As human populations continue to increase, ecosystems, their resources and the species that live within them will soon deplete completely.
Human overpopulation is also bringing about problems relating to the increased emergence of new epidemics and pandemics. Reports, research and studies by the World Health Organization show that as the environment degrades and the world population increases, there are massive increases in human diseases. These diseases contribute to the malnutrition of around 4 billion people around the world, making them far more accessible to disease. The World Health Organization has also said that “Every 3 seconds a young child dies – in most cases from an infectious disease.” Between the years of 1346 to 1353 a pandemic erupted in Europe that wiped out upwards of 200 million people. This infamous pandemic was called the black plague. The reason why this plague had such a mortality rate was because of overpopulation, damaged immune systems due to malnutrition and the density of people in Europe at the time. If overpopulation continues to occur, then another pandemic such as the black plague may develop and wipe out large amounts of people. The likelihood of this happening increases as the population continues to rapidly grow, especially in underdeveloped countries, where overpopulation is occurring the most.
Another negative effect of overpopulation that plays a serious role in human day to day life and also the longevity of the planet is increased global warming and climate change. Global warming and climate change deal with the heat the planet gets from the sun and how that affects the global temperatures in each season and location. The planet has something called the greenhouse effect, which means it contains a certain amount of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere and this causes a warm blanket of heat to stay around the earth. The Center for Biological Diversity says that “The largest single threat to the ecology and biodiversity of the planet in the decades to come will be the global climate disruption due to the buildup of human-generated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.” There is a safe amount of gas in the atmosphere and too much will cause large climate change. While many people around the world are making efforts to decrease their carbon footprint, uncontrolled population growth easily overwhelms these efforts. One of the biggest problems with climate change is that it is not addressed in any political or economical means. No world leaders debate over this topic which disregards the basis of civilization. Businesses could care less about climate change because it negatively affects their productivity to be challenged by environmentalists and cleaner methods of producing goods. So with no backing from world leaders, businesses and no check for a growing population there is only one possible outcome if nothing were to change. Greenhouse gases would continue to rapidly increase thus causing further climate change, which will jeopardize the atmosphere and overall wellness of the planet we live on. This is yet another hugely problematic outcome from overpopulation.