Too Many People :: Populating Environment Papers

Too Many People Introduction Do people realize that there is a population problem? Can our earth support and sustain the incredible number of 5.6 billion people, constantly increasing at the rate of 1.7 percent each year (conservation 67). At this rate 95 million people are added to our world every year. To bring this into perspective, every month 11,000 new babies are born, every second, three new people are added to the already over populated planet (Ehrlich 14). Every person added to the world has a claim to the earth's food, energy and other resources. We must also realize that there is not a single factor that limits how many people the earth can support. The rising population will only aggravate the problems staring us in the face right now, such as food shortages, and damage to the environment. The Club of Earth, whose members belong to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, released this statement in 1988. Arresting global population growth should be second in importance only to avoiding the nuclear war on humanity's agenda. Over population and rapid population growth are intimately connected with most aspects of the current human predicament, including rapid depletion of nonrenewable resources, deterioration of the environment and increasing international tensions. (Ehrlich 18). The human population has drastically increased in the last couple of centuries. The earth will not be able to sustain the growing population due to increasing environmental and economic stresses. We must confront the issue and come up with workable solutions. Why Are People Not Scared. In order to come up with solutions, one must first realize the problem. Why are people not aware of the population crisis? Up until just recently, in Cairo, Egypt where a dialog and a Programme of Action was established to confront overpopulation by the United Nation International Conference, there has not been much talk on this issue. One of the main reasons people do not recognize overpopulation to be a problem is it's slow developing nature. Over two thousand years ago there was an estimated 250 million people. It took 1650 years before the population first doubled. Since then the doubling time of the population would shrink to 200 years, and continued to shrink to a time span of just 35 years. But even with these incredible increasing growth rates, it is impossible to notice these "slow motion changes" as compared to an every day event (Ehrilich 15).