Human Population Crisis

There are numerous problems with the environment today. Problems that are in dire need of attention. However, what needs to be acknowledged is that the vast majority of these problems cannot be corrected in the long run without first dealing with the problem of overpopulation.

When people think of population, they're most likely to think of swarms of people. Overpopulation is not population density, but rather the number of people in an area relative to its resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities. Even more important than the number of people are the resources consumed by each person, and the damage done by technologies used to supply them.

As the population of the United States recently surpassed 300,000,000, many people are still incapable of sensing the problem of overpopulation. They point to the fact that there is enough wide open space available to hold numerous times the present population. But what they don't realize is that most of the open space that they are talking about is not inhabitable.

Sure there are other countries that have many more people per square mile than the United States. But these countries are either third world countries that use just a small percentage of the natural resources that we do, or else they rely on other countries to supply them with natural resources. Overpopulation is when the number of people can not be permanently maintained without depleting resources and without degrading the environment and the people's standard of living. Because we are rapidly using up resources around the world, virtually all nations are overpopulated.

If you were to take a standard sheet of writing paper .1mm thick and cut it into two sheets, placing one atop the other, it would then be .2mm thick. Then, cutting the stack of two and making a stack of 4 sheets, it would then be .4mm thick. Believe it or not, if you continued to do this just one hundred times, doubling the size of the stack each time, the thickness of the stack would be 1.334 x 10¹¹ light-years. This is an example of exponential growth, where the rate of growth is always proportional to it's present size.

Exponential growth also applies to the the human population. It begins growing very slowly, but over generations the growth rate increases more and more rapidly, similar to a snowball affect. It took the human population thousands of years to reach 1 billion in 1804. However, it took only 123 years for us to double to 2 billion in 1927. The population hit 4 billion in 1974 (only 47 years), and if we continue at our current rate, the human population will reach 8 billion in 2028. Doubling from our present count of 6.6 billion to 13.2 billion will have a much greater impact than our last couple doublings combined.

Overpopulation is not population density (amount of people per landmass), but rather when the number of people in an area exceeds the resources and the capacity of the environment necessary to sustain human activities. So much focus is placed on the rapid population growth in third world countries. However, when we compare lifestyles of the rich countries vs. the poor countries, the rich countries are a much greater problem. Just as much as the population size, we need to consider the resources consumed by each person, and the damage done by technologies used to supply them. Overpopulation is when the number of people can not be permanently maintained without depleting resources and without degrading the environment and the people's standard of living. Because we are rapidly using up resources around the world, virtually all nations are overpopulated. This applies even more so to the rich nations. As we use up the resources, the earth's carrying capacity continues to decrease.

Just like with people, an overpopulation of animals is not defined by the number of animals that could hypothetically fit within a specific area, but rather when the number of animals that occupy their habitat are not capable of behaving as they naturally would. Unfortunately, the animals' behavior is often altered not so much by their number, but by humans encroaching upon their habitat and then claiming the animal to be a nuisance to man. We should practice the saying "live and let live, " but we do not have the resources to do this while our number continues to increase.

Lifespan/Quantity vs. Quality
One thing which must be taken into consideration is the amount of time, money, and effort we have spent toward saving and extending lives. Billions of dollars have been spent in this field, and successfully. However, something that we also must look at is the effect this has had on our own number. How much have we contributed to birth control, family planning, and preservation of the environment? Nature is a balance of existence. In order to coincide with nature, we must balance the saving and extending of lives with controlling the number of lives which we produce. We mustn't use resources any faster than they can be reproduced. We need to respect ourselves by learning to respect the environment which we depend on for our own existence. If not, we will cease to exist.