Overpopulation. Yes, sadly enough, this is yet another rising problem that has surprisingly gone unnoticed for quite some time. Unfortunately, our Earth is closing in on the 7-billion mark worth of people living on this planet, and the population is still rising at a staggering rate. By 2050, researchers believe that up to 9 billion people may be living on this planet, which is a 25% increase in people in only half a century. Small farmlands have grown into large, industrious cities, and people are now settling into once-deserted places just to find somewhere to live. But what we fail to notice is that while our numbers increase, Mother Earth is slowly deteriorating at our expense--glaciers are melting and landmark forests are being bulldozed into towns for people to inhabit.
According to Robert Kunzig of National Geographic, the problem is lies in the country of India. With over a billion people living in India, the government is failing to keep control over its people. With slums, ghettos, and small towns sprawled almost everywhere, people are making towns of their own while stealing electricity from electric companies. Due to the lack of regulation by the government, places are slowly becoming overpopulated without the required supervision needed to keep the country at a certain population level. As more and more people are being born, the requirement for more resources is also increased, expending a lot of the energy and materials our planet has to offer. In some places, the expenditure of resources makes crops harder to grow as it puts a strain on the land and planet itself to continue to reproduce food.
But it isn't all bad. India is slowly coming out of being a developing country due to the large amount of youth that inhabit the country. The average income level is rising fairly quickly, and hopefully, the government will find a solution to its problem. But meanwhile, the problem of overpopulation is still eminent, and we must find a solution before we use up all of Mother Earth's given abundance.
With regard to the whole world and not just India, what do you guys think is a good way to stop this rising problem? Can we fix it, or are we too late? What might be the consequences if overpopulation occurs in the future?
1 comment:
There's some good news. While it's true that statistics predict the population going up to 9 billion, as you said, at that point it will approximately level off as developing countries stabilize their birthrates. That, eventually, will allow the countries themselves to stabilize as their food capacity begins to catch up to their dwindling population. The population surge itself isn't good, but once it levels off it brings stability. There are a lot of bad side effects to deal with in high-population areas, but stability may well outweigh the benefits. Will there be environmental damage? Of course there will. But that's as much a product of industrialization as the population boom. The currently "developed" countries experienced the same cycle; now it's the rest of the world's turn. At the end of the process, in what I'd wager would be sometime around 2080 (number pulled out of thin air, sort of), developing nations today will look much like developed nations do now.
The interesting thing is that while all this is going on, the birthrates in developed nations are already going down and will continue to decrease. This creates its own sets of issues. Labor may well become much more scarce than it is today as more and more people move into white collar jobs. The consequences of that could be quite interesting.
Ah well. Let's see how it plays out.
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