Overpopulation is becoming a bigger issue year by year. This problem is creating pressing issues that are growing greater in magnitude throughout the world.
Causes of Overpopulation
Overpopulation has been nothing more than an aftereffect of how much humans have contributed to scientific and medical research. As better technological and medical advancements become possible, the lifespan of humans tend to extend. All of our time, money, and effort we have spent on saving and extending lives have caused a backlash against the survival of our species as well as the future of our earth.
Similar to resource use, we must learn to balance the saving and extending of lives with controlling how many lives we produce. If resources that are used faster than they are produced, they would cease to exist. Similarly, if there are too many humans on earth, they would face many issues that are critical to their survival.
Effects of Overpopulation
As more people start to inhabit the Earth at an increasing rate, overpopulation starts to generate multiple issues that need to be addressed otherwise the survival of our earth and its inhabitants becomes extinct. Overpopulation is creating problems underlying global warming, habitat destruction, extinction of biological life, and resource overuse as well as others.
The increasing world population is contributing to the problem caused by global warming. As more people start to exist on this planet, the total amount of carbon output in an area is increasing drastically.
Dr. Allan P. Drew, a forest ecologist, put it this way: “Overpopulation means that we are putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than we should, just because more people are doing it and this is related to overconsumption by people in general, especially in the ‘developed’ world.”
Industrial countries such as China would have a larger carbon output per area because of the amount of pollution being produced by the factories. In addition, because of their larger population, a greater amount of people drive gasoline vehicles that produce a carbon dioxide output. We, as the inhabitants of Earth, are setting ourselves up for the destruction of ourselves as well as all life that exists on the planet.
Another major problem created by overpopulation, may lead to the complete eradication of the food supply. In order to meet the demands of the increasing population, more food is needed. This leads to the obvious, more and more animals are killed, which could eventually lead to the extinction of an entire species. In addition to the eradication of animals, farmers also need to meet the demands of the people. What other way to achieve this then to obtain more land by the destruction of a useless forest?
Destruction of land causes an extreme loss to biological life and diversity. In some cases, entire ecosystems are eliminated, which used to be the home of over several hundred thousand species. With the destruction of these ecosystems we have lost a great amount of animals, trees, plants, and microorganisms.
So what if we destroy ecosystems for farmland?
Ecosystems are a necessity to the success of all life. Everything in the biological world works in a cycle. Microorganisms, such as bacteria, are needed for countless reasons. They are responsible for fixing nitrogen in the soil so that it is useable by plants. This is very essential to life because fixed nitrogen is needed to make nucleotides which are responsible for making amino acids and proteins. Bacteria also live in the intestines of animals, helping them digest food. Plants are needed to convert carbon into oxygen and to produce food. Herbivorous animals, in turn, consume the plants which are, sequentially, consumed by the heterotrophic animals. The heterotrophic and herbivorous animals excrete waste that is then broken up into organic compounds by microorganisms, and the cycle repeats once again. If all ecosystems are obliterated and humans are the only form of life on earth then: there would be no way of obtaining food, the soil would be infertile, there would be nothing to convert carbon waste back into oxygen for humans to breathe, the atmosphere would deteriorate, eventually leading to the extinction of all life on earth, including humans.
Similar to the destruction of forests for farmland, more people means that more space is needed for them to occupy and live in. In order for this to occur, forests must be torn down at a larger magnitude to make room for housing and its complements.
The Problem and the Solution
“Worldwide, women now average 2.6 children during their lifetimes, 3.2 in developing countries excluding China, and 4.7 in the least developed countries.”
PRB
There are many ways of preventing us from destroying our earth. As more developed countries have an increasing stable population, the less developed regions of the world are reproducing more than the amount needed to displace the current population.
“Africa's infant mortality rate is nearly 15 times that of the developed world”
PRB
Many organizations such as Child Family Health International (CFHI), help to spread medical advancements to the less developed regions of the world, thus the less developed world would feel more secure in the survival of their children.
"Dramatically different age structures and fertility rates will mean that the populations of many less-developed countries will continue grow more rapidly than those in Europe," says Carl Haub PRB senior demographer.
Until we are able to provide security to these adverse regions of the current world, we can expect them to reproduce at an exponential rate, and additionally contributing to the existing world population. Relief efforts will hope to achieve a decreasing trend on the number of planned children in third world countries; overall, organizations such as CFHI will help reduce the total world population by guaranteeing the world medical security.
There are multiple ways one could help resolve the overpopulation crisis other than donations. In the current world, there are countless children that are in desperate need of a family to take care and love them. By adopting, one can help out an innocent child, who has suffered without any parents to protect and care for them, and at the same time would be helping to contribute to the relief of the world population problem. Instead of reproducing, a family can adopt a child which can help reduce the total amount of planned children per family. D
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That's a very interesting idea, adoption helping resolving overpopulation. Have you considered other methods like family planning? What do you think about that?
ReplyDeleteThat can also be taken into account.
ReplyDeleteBut these children who are adopted tend to grow up in a life where they have no one they could truly call "Mom" or "Dad." They've already been born, so why not give them a home to give them the opportunity to lead productive lives? Furthermore, instead of a family having 3 biological children, a family can choose to have 2 biological ones and 1 adopted one, or 2 adopted and 1 biological.
Even with family planning, a woman can still have unplanned pregnancies despite being more educated about the consequences that come with having a child. Many people in the U.S. and around the world are hesitant/against having abortions, so they will have to give birth to the child anyway.
Adoption allows you to still accommodate for the size of the family you want while giving birth to less children, and thus, make overpopulation less of a problem than it already is.
For instance, Angelina Jolie can give birth to several children like the Octomom or the Dugger family already have, but instead of adding more people to the world (although she's already had 3), she's adopting children to make her family as big as she wants it to be.