Do We Have a Population Problem

Do We Have a Population Problem?

It has been estimated that a thousand years ago there were less than 400 million people in the world. However, in the recent thousand years, human population has increased nearly 200 times. Nowadays the world population has reached nearly 7 billion.

A British economist Thomas Malthus pointed out an abnormal phenomenon that the human population grew geometrically with agricultural productivity grew only arithmetically, therefore the population must inevitably outstrip its food supply and experience famine. Almost like what Malthus predicted, the population passes 7 billion in 2013 rather than 2011. It shows that the population growth is slowing, but the severe problem still exists, resulting from “carrying capacity” of the earth. Carrying capacity is the size of the population that the environment can support. The recent survey sets carrying capacity at 7.7 billion. However, the global population may not stop at that point. One of the most serious problems is that we are already using the resources faster than they can be replenished. With a long time, we will be out of any resource in the world.

In the Yes selection, David Attenborough pointed out that the environmental problems were exacerbated by human population. First, animals were beginning to disappear, such as Arabian oryx, Californian condor, goose, rhinoceros and so on. Second, since more people on the earth, they need space for their homes, space to grow their food, and space to build schools, roads and airfields. Hence, they spread more space. But there are several impacts. The spread of industrialization has change the chemical constituent of the atmosphere. The oceans that cover most of the surface of the planet have been polluted and increasingly acidified. The obvious one is that the earth becomes warming. He also pointed some ideas to prevent these problems, such as breaking the taboo in public, women education, birth control, family plan, government...