Human Overpopulation

Angie Fernandez

November 3, 2015

Human Overpopulation

Some people’s priority is to make money and have high standards of living while other people worry about getting to live past adulthood and being able to survive the daily living. One current major problem that humanity experiences these days is overpopulation. If optimum world population is two billion (Daily et al. 1994) then we have a significant issue of 7.3 billion people right now, and according to the United States Census Bureau in only sixty five years the world population should be expecting even more billions of people. Countries with the most population like China and India have developed policies or campaigns in an attempt to lower their birth rates, China successfully implemented this strategy that couples could only have one child and throughout the years we can see how the older generations dominates over young ones.  Even though birth rate is lower, population keeps on increasing thanks to the advances in medicine death rates are lower than birth rates.

People do worry about overpopulation because the more people we have the harder it is to sustain our planet, more people need to eat, more people need to consume electricity, more people need to use water and land, and more people produce waste. We already see the problems that come with high human population, out of seven billion people we have in our planet today 3.3 billion live in poverty conditions struggling in meeting their basic needs and only earning two dollars or less per day (Berg et al. 2011).

I do think that many countries and not only United States should implement strategies to control population, of course it will be difficult and unfair to the people that are used to live with a certain level of freedom if they aren’t allowed to conceive as many times as they want, because of this the government plan should be to educate their citizens starting with the young community. People should learn about the problems that come with overpopulation, and also everyone should learn about their ways of living and their ecological footprint. People in developed countries such as the U.S. consume a lot more resources than people in less developed countries and this is because society is in the cycle that the more money you earn the more you spend and consume. One child raised in a developed country has more environmental impact than twenty children in a developing nation (Berg et al. 2011).

The problem with the planet carrying capacity and overpopulation isn’t just a problem emphasizing the large population we have, but it also implicates how large masses of people live their life, utilization of sources and distribution of these (Ip D. 1997).

Educating our community not only about reproduction but also about ways of recycling, waste, and wise usage of our resources could make a positive impact in our planet. Developed countries represent about twenty percent of the world population, but ironically these developed nations are also responsible for seventy five percent of world’s pollution and waste and consume more than half of word’s resources.

I do think the U.S. should spend time on campaigns trying to educate their citizens about all these facts and maybe population growth can slow down even more and people can be more mindful about our planet.

Literature Cited

Berg L, Hager M, Hassenzahl D. 2011. Visualasing Environmental Science.4rd ed. Hoboken (NJ): John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 492 p.

Ip D. 1997. Full House: Reassessing the world’s population carrying capacity. Sustainable Development. 5(2):99-99

Wostl RL, Walsh MJ. 2015. Biology 1442: evolution and ecology laboratory manual. Laboratory 8: Human population demographics and impacts. Version 2015.06.FA15. University of Texas at Arlington. P 83-95.