Overpopulation: Environmental and Social problems

By Frosty Wooldridge

Take a deep breath fellow human beings…humanity by next week expects to hit the 7 billion mark—and keep screaming toward 10 billion by mid century.

Please turn your attention to www.howmany.org as a website where you may acquaint yourself with the challenges facing humans in the coming years.  Become a part of the solution by personal action.

“Human population is growing like never before,” said a spokesperson for How Many. “We are now adding one billion people to the planet every 12 years. That’s about 220,000 per day.

“The list of problems this is causing, or at least complicating, is a long one. It includes shortages of all our resources, war and social conflict, limits on personal freedom, overcrowding and the health and survival of other species.”

This page summarizes many of these problems, and more could easily be added. While overpopulation is not the sole cause of these, it is certainly a root cause. Americans need more coverage in order to educate themselves and their children as to what we all face, and we can solve all these problems more easily if we do.

How about our resources?

Many basic resources are strained by our current population:

·         Food: one billion people, one out of every six people alive, go to bed hungry. It would be easier for food production to catch up if our population stopped growing or dropped to a sustainable level.

·         Water Shortages: About one billion people lack access to sufficient water for consumption, agriculture and sanitation. Aquifers are being depleted faster than they can be replenished. Melting glaciers threaten the water supply for billions. Wouldn’t an ethic of population reduction now, make people’s lives much better? [read more]

·         The Ozone Layer. 50 years ago parents told their kids to go play outside because sunshine is good for you. Many parents today don’t think that way, because the ozone layer of the atmosphere no longer protects us as well from the harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays of the sun. The ozone layer is a region of concentrated molecules of a form of oxygen (O3) high above the earth. Without it there would be no life as we know it here because the UV rays from the sun can be very harmful. But various chemicals from human industries, especially chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), destroy ozone over the course of years. Some of the most dangerous ones have been banned in many countries, which has slowed their rate of increase in the atmosphere, but they are very long lasting and will continue to deplete the ozone layer for many years. Currently the layer is being destroyed at a rate of about 4% per decade.

·         The World’s forests are another resource that is strained by our growing population. Not only are they a source of fuel and building material, recent research has focused on forests’ ability to sequester greenhouse gases and protect us from global warming.

·         We are straining our Oceans’ ability to breed the fish we eat, to sequester carbon, and to replenish the air. In the 50′s and 60′s, Florida was a by-word for the abundance of the sea. Now even some of the “trash fish” of that era are too rare to fish commercially or recreationally. Isn’t this a clarion call that we need to lower our human population so that we can again enjoy the abundance of nature? [article on Florida seafood, 2010]
June 2011, The Second Annual European Fish Week, organized by Ocean2012, a coalition hoping to change the Common Fisheries Policy of the European Union.

·         Even the earth’s topsoil itself has limits: most people don’t realize that in many regions good growing soil is limited to the top 6 inches of topsoil and that heavy crop growing is depleting this.

As you read this very important and pertinent website, www.howmany.org , take advantage of the knowledge and share with friends.  We’re all in this together.

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