Overpopulation

E10-1

Claire

Summary

• Overpopulation is a condition when the number of a kind of organism is exceeding the carrying capacity of its habitat. For humans, it refers to having too many people in a certain area or on the Earth. It can result from an increase in birthrates, a decline in mortality rates, or immigration.

• The population of human beings in the world has been increasing for the past several centuries and reached 7 billion in 2011.

How Does this Problem Affect Us?

• There are deficits in resources like water, food, land and fossil fuels.

• Many people are suffering from starvation and malnutrition.

• Too many people in a certain area will cause species extinction and unbalance of ecosystems.

• Another thing is that the unemployment rate might go up in some areas since there are more people competing for the same jobs.

Solutions

• One of the things that is tried by the Chinese government to control overpopulation is the one-child policy. As it does contribute to reducing population, it has its drawbacks. It is not the right thing to do for the humanists because it takes away human rights to have as many children as they want.

Statistics

• Population• Year Billion• 1804 1• 1927 2• 1959 3• 1974 4• 1987 5• 1999 6• 2011 7

United Nation's population projections by location

Possible Solutions

• One of the methods that can be used to control population is the birth regulation. For example, China carried out the one-child policy to regulate the growing population.

• Another thing that governments can do is to educate people about the negative effects of overpopulation so that people can be aware of the problem and contribute to regulating it.

• Also, people can spread out and live in some of the remote areas and get the resources there.

• Scientists have come up with the idea of extraterrestrial settlement. It may be possible that we can live in some other parts of the Solar system in the future.

What Will be the Result if This Problem ISN’T solved soon?

• There will be continuous shortage of raw materials and water, food and land resources.

• People in poorer regions will suffer from starvation and malnutrition.

• Unemployment rate goes up and leads to increase of crime rate.

References

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation

• http://www.jayhanson.us/page27.htm