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The Earth is not anywhere near over-ppopulated.
It is exploited and made poor use of, but it is not over-populated.
43% of Earth's land mass is easily habitable, not counting
any mountains or deserts. Land
This represents 15.77 billion acres of most easily habitable land.
There are at most, 7.3 billion people on earth.
You do the math.
People aren't the problem. It's HOW people do things that IS the prolem.
So let's take your statement (above) as a fact. If it were true what possible benefit is there for mankind and all the other inhabitants of this big blue marble if we continue to expand our population? What is the ultimate goal in your mind, to grow in number exponentially till we find the breaking point and then are forced to reduce our population? Would it not be better (if your statement is true) to try as a society and as a species to engage in zero population growth at a point when we know we have adequate resources?
The earth itself isn't overpopulated just certain areas of the planet are. Too many people are densely packed into certain areas. I believe that if humans were equally spread out across the globe we wouldn't have most of the problems we have with violence, anger and other things.
Like i posted before the earth can handle all the people, it's the people who can't handle all the people.
So let's take your statement (above) as a fact. If it were true what possible benefit is there for mankind and all the other inhabitants of this big blue marble if we continue to expand our population? What is the ultimate goal in your mind, to grow in number exponentially till we find the breaking point and then are forced to reduce our population? Would it not be better (if your statement is true) to try as a society and as a species to engage in zero population growth at a point when we know we have adequate resources?
Curious...
Most of the developed world is not reproducing and at the current fertility rate Europeans and Japanese will become extinct. Overpopulation is only a problem in the African continent. India and Latin America are now having relatively low birth rates.
In the US the educated class does not reproduce either.
The Earth is not anywhere near over-ppopulated.
It is exploited and made poor use of, but it is not over-populated.
43% of Earth's land mass is easily habitable, not counting
any mountains or deserts. Land
This represents 15.77 billion acres of most easily habitable land.
There are at most, 7.3 billion people on earth.
You do the math.
People aren't the problem. It's HOW people do things that IS the prolem.
The notion that human population problems are somehow connected to the lack of living space denies the reality of our reliance on resources, and not necessarily a reliance on the availability of raw land. Modern humans depend on large scale agriculture, large scale mining and manufacturing ventures, and an ever growing technology that serves as the underpinnings of these necessities. Raw land is simply that, raw and undeveloped space, hardly a paradise of ready to inhabit land.
I see the problem of too many people as a now thing, many are couching the problems of over population, or we could call it over concentration of people as a future problem, but it comes down to the same daily reality of too much traffic, too much concentration of employment opportunity, pollution, social negatives, and, a rising infrastructure cost that many are reluctant to bear.
The thought of creating a better spread of the American populace has a ton of obvious restraints, mostly due to our insistence upon land use regs that discourage large regional gaps in development, but, even if we could change that, the present reality is one that includes the overcrowded cities and suburbs across America. Resources necessary for human existence doesn't equate with a plentiful bounty of resources per square mile, tons of our open spaces are devoid of those resources and therefore not part of any formula that would posit land as an answer to the need for population dilution across the globe.
Many like Paul Ehrlich weren't taking a long enough view of the potential problems of over population, he was soundly criticized for his doomsday views of the near term problems, but the very long view certainly does include some possibility of disaster, for me and others who have noted the changes in their own backyard, the problem is here and now, and there isn't much we can do about it.
When we're thinking of global problems we have (weather, pollution, poverty, war...etc.) it seems governments, politicians and scientists are overlooking the real problem.
I think Earth is massively overpopulated.
Providing necessary wealth and prosperity is almost impossible.
Billions of people living without drinking water and food.
Can't we tackle all these issues with some sort of control mechanism??
It seems whole world will turn into a Mad Max land with all animals wiped out except dogs, cats , rats and fish
So sad to see that people are largely ignoring this
I think we are headed for a severe crisis in the next 50 years or so. People really need to decide if they need to have children. This is a big part of why I'm likely not going to have kids.
Most of the developed world is not reproducing and at the current fertility rate Europeans and Japanese will become extinct. Overpopulation is only a problem in the African continent. India and Latin America are now having relatively low birth rates.
In the US the educated class does not reproduce either.
And the African continent could have population controls if the developed world would propping the population up with food hand outs.....need to thin out the ranks there for sure.
Do you think overpopulation of Earth is being overlooked??
Not overlooked, but certainly not being emphasized.
I think that many of our current political and socio-economic issues are directly related to overpopulation. The shrinking US middle class is largely due to the worldwide cheap labor glut. The refugee crisis in Europe and Britain's Brexit response are also reactions to the symptoms of unsustainable growth. Most current and future conflicts will be over access to resources that are ever more strained by growing populations.
I think we are headed for a severe crisis in the next 50 years or so. People really need to decide if they need to have children. This is a big part of why I'm likely not going to have kids.
Having children or not is your choice. But you should do real research on the issue instead of believing hype. The OP is completely wrong.
Global fertility rates have dropped from about 4.5 children / woman in the 1970's to about 2.5 children/woman today. It's higher than average in rural Africa and South America where women do not have access to birth control. It's lower than average in developed countries like the US, Europe, Japan where many professional women do not have any children and even lower in countries like China with enforced birth control. Population in the US is still growing, but only because of oddities caused by the baby-boom plus greatly extended life-spans. But our birth rate has fallen well below the key threshold of 2.1 births per woman. The extra 0.1 is required for a stable population to account for mortality before children reach breeding age. In a few years the baby boom generation will start rapidly dying off at a rate faster than the birth rate. If not for immigration, the US population would level off then start dropping rapidly.
Assuming worldwide fertility rates continue to drop (as more women gain access to birth control and general human rights), and assuming the standard random assortment of wars and diseases continue, the global population will level off at about 11 million around the beginning of the next century. It's a little over 7 million now.
India has a population density of about 1000 people per square mile, including dense cities and uninhabited mountains. The United States has a population density of about 85 people per square mile, Russia is at 22 people per sq. mile, and Canada is at about 10 people per sq. mile. Plus vast areas of low population in South America, Asia, Australia, etc. Even assuming that large areas of land are uninhabitable (deserts, alpine mountains, swamps, arctic tundra, etc.) or used for farming/production (California valley, great plains, etc.), the world can easily handle well over our current population... assuming we get a little smarter about water usage.
The earth, in my opinion, is considered overpopulated when natural resources are used at a faster rate than they can be regenerated due to the amount of human usage/consumption.
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Do you think overpopulation of Earth is being overlooked??
