Impact of Overpopulation

Overpopulation is a problem that we don’t have a clear solution to. The population is growing and resources are being used up faster. Scientists have predicted that in 2100 the population will be around 11 billion. This problem wasn’t much of a problem back then but around 1760 during the time of the Industrial revolution, people have started to have ideas about new creations and invent solutions to things that make their lives harder. One of those things was better medicine, and that led to longer lifespans and less disease. Around this time, the population took off and started growing a lot faster. Now with medication and new inventions, the average lifespan went from 29 years to 80. This meant faster population growth. The population grows about 1.2% per year today.  

This has become a problem due to the demand on resources. It will only get worse since the population is now increasing very fast and resources are being used up faster than they regenerate. Habitats are being lost, cities are getting bigger, and carbon emissions are growing. With more people brings more pollution and more litter.

These things affect other humans and animals because now some humans are dying because they don’t have enough of the resources they need and animals are losing their habitats and have less food. Marine life too is suffering because of plastic trash and the ocean pollution.

The growing population is not the problem because the problem is how it affects other existing problems like pollution and resource consumption. It acts like a problem multiplier and worsens the effects of other problems happening today. The best solution would be to work on the other topics of problems to lessen the impact of overpopulation. This isn’t a perfect fix to the problem because it will take a whole lot of time to have people listen and solve most of the world’s problems. It will also only make the world’s problem of overpopulation a little bit better and there’s going to be a time where there will be too many people and the population won’t be sustainable. Another problem that could rise when acting on this fix is the other countries around the world. That fix will not work that well if other leaders choose to ignore it.

I feel that this is the best solution because it is one not many people will be upset with and while it is being fixed that means less animals and marine life dying. It is better than spreading laws about the number of children to have. Pushing out a vaccine to the whole world would be a very tough problem once the population gets to too much of a big number. Everyone should follow because it not only lessens the impact of overpopulation but it also fixes other problems along the way.

 If people choose not to follow or some countries don’t have the resources to follow, then this fix will not be as effective and if no one else chooses to follow then that would have been lots of work and resources wasted. It will only be effective if we aren’t the only ones trying to get rid of our problems.

Fixing every problem we had would take up a lot of time and resources but would definitely benefit because that would lead to less resources being used in the future. If the world contributed to this, the impact that the population has on the earth would be lessened by a ton. This definitely isn’t a fix by itself because it won’t stop the world from growing so a lot more solutions need to be thought of.