Overpopulation:

Environmental and Social problems

Human population is growing like never before. 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.
How about our resources?
Many basic resources are strained by our current population:
Food: one billion people, one out of every seven people alive, go to bed hungry. Food
production and distribution could catch up if our population stopped growing and
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?
Air quality: In many regions of the country, childhood asthma rates have risen
dramatically in the past 20 years. The problems are not limited to the
industrialized countries with their automobiles and factories. Children in
underdeveloped countries, where people depend on burning wood and dung(gunoi) for
their heat and cooking, are also at risk.
Oil and gas .There is a finite amount of these fossil fuels in the Earth, and we have
already extracted the easy-pickings in much of the world. The concept "Peak Oil"
means that after some year, perhaps between 2005 and 2020, world oil production will
max out and then start to decline.
The Ozone Layer. 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 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 can again enjoy the abundance of nature? [article on Florida seafood, 2010]


Social Problems
Overcrowding It's a common observation that people in small towns are friendlier than
people in cities. However, that's just a hunch for most of us. One recent study from U.C.Irvine
found that less densely packed people are friendlier towards their neighbors. One specific
finding was, "For every 10 percent decrease in population density, the likelihood of residents
talking to their neighbors at least once a week jumps by 10 percent. And involvement in
hobby-oriented clubs increases even more significantly -- by 15 percent for every 10 percent
decline in density."
Conflicts and Wars: Some of the most brutal and persistent conflicts and full-out wars of the
past decades include the stresses of overpopulation and conflict over resources.
- One of these was the genocide in Rwanda. As John M. Swomley wrote in War and the
Population Explosion: Some Ethical Implications, Michael Renner noted that "The Hutu
leaders that planned and carried out the genocide against the Tutsis in 1994 relied strongly on
heavily armed militias who were recruited primarily from the unemployed. These were the
people who had insufficient land to establish and support a family of their own and little
prospect of finding jobs outside agriculture. Their lack of hope for the future and low self
esteem were channeled by the extremists into an orgy of violence against those who
supposedly were to blame for these misfortunes."

- The confilict between Pakistan and India are especially sensitive since both highly-
populated, fast growing countries have nuclear weapons. Pakistan's major water source
is the glacial waters of the Indus river, which originates in Indian territory.
Democracy and Optimum Population Size: 2500 years ago, Aristotle considered the best
size for a city and concluded that a large increase in population would bring, "certain
poverty on the citizenry, and poverty is the cause of sedition and evil." He considered
that a city of over 100,000 people would exclude most citizens from a voice in
government.
Health and Population density: Sometimes viruses spread faster in denser populations,
which enables deadly mutations to continue. Doctor Nathan Wolfe, of the Global Viral
Forecasting Initiative, studies virus mutations which jump from animal to human populations.
The AIDS virus is one of the deadliest of these. On a recent episode of CNN's Planet in Peril,
Dr. Wolfe said "Individuals have been infected with these viruses forever. "What's
changed, though, is in the past you had smaller human populations; viruses would infect
them and go extinct. Viruses actually need population density as fuel." [read article]
Bringing it back home -- Overcrowding
If you live in a growing metropolitan area, you notice:
The cost of housing is rising significantly. Usually, the denser the city, the higher the
cost of housing and taxes.

The length of your commute: the average American
spends over 100 hours per year commuting to and
from work. Not only does this needlessly waste
energy (gas or electricity) but especially it wastes
our time. Certainly most of us have better uses for
our time than inching through stop-and-go traffic.
Yet they keep on building housing, without paying
for our wasted time and energy.
The never-ending new buildings block our views,
our light and our air. Twenty years ago, my town
had a sense of space, with views of hills and water from most streets even downtown
and nearby. But thanks to a few developers' and planners' emphasis on "growth",
many entire blocks are now walled in with 5 and 6 story behemoths.
Many of us bemoan these losses and have felt helpless in the face of the financial
powers backing these developments. However, if these developers had to fully pay the
rest of us for the loss of our amenities, they might slow down. There is a way to put a
monetary value on the losses the community has suffered. In an appraisal, a residence
with a view and a spacious surrounding is more valuable than one that is boxed in
between high-rise buildings. In my region that might add $100,000-$200,000 (or
more) to the value of a house. If 2 people spend perhaps 10 waking hours a day there
and own the house for 5 years, that works out to about 36,500 waking hours. That's
$2.74 - $5.48 per hour. Let's call it $3.00 per hour for the sake of this very rough
estimate.
Personal Freedom
As the problems of higher population density become worse, there are more and more
restrictions placed on our freedoms. You may think some of these are good ideas. Some
of them are, given the circumstances. But they are necessary only in order to
accommodate the larger population that our policies are encouraging.
Putting limits on water consumption. California is mandating that residential users
cut back 20% on water consumption. At the same time they mandate that Cities build
more and more housing. That is severely mistaken priorities on the part of our non-
representatives.
Cities put limits on driving London charges people to drive into downtown.
Annually, politicians in New York repeatedly propose doing the same thing.
Limits on travel: Traffic and congestion themselves put limits on our freedom to
travel when and where we please. Cities that are overly crowded are not good places
to go shopping, for meals or entertainments, because it is overly difficult to get there
and park.
One seemingly small loss of freedom that comes with increased housing density is
limits on burning fires in fireplaces. Laws are passed, neighbors snitch on neighbors,
and one more of life's little pleasures is lost to increasing housing density.
Restricting what people can do on their land: In rural areas, people are freer to
build what they want and do what they want on their own land. When people are
packed in close together, our actions impinge much more directly on our neighbors
and more restrictions must be enacted
How about other species?
Species Extinction: We are in the midst of one of the greatest extinctions of other species in
the history of the planet. The last one of this magnitude was over 60 million years ago, when
the dinosaurs became extinct. Yep, we're the cause of this one, as we either kill them off
outright, or cover over their living space with houses, roads and development. Did God give
us dominion over this beautiful garden that we might destroy it, or that we might take care of
the glory of creation? It's our choice.
Habitat destruction: Our exploding population in the U.S. is converting about 1.2 million
acres of rural land per year to subdivisions, malls, workplaces, roads, parking lots, resorts and
the like. The rural area lost to development between 1982 and 1997 is about equal to the
entire land mass of Maine and New Hampshire combined. (Approximately 39,000 square
miles or 25 million acres)

Does a growing population really help any of us?
These are some of the ways our growing population is impinging on our quality of life, and in
many regions of the Globe, life itself.
It's a long list, and more could be added. As some point out, these problems are not entirely
the result of overpopulation. We could consume less, we could use resources more efficiently,
and we could distribute them in ways that would not deprive so many of access to the basics.
But there is no doubt that these these problems could be solved more easily if we don't add
3 billion or 5 billion, or many many more people to our lovely planet.
And coverage of the link is almost nonexistent in most media outlets, even those covering the
environmental and social problems that ensue. This is the most basic question that an
intelligent species could ask: What is the right number of us to be living on our fair
planet?
Instead of saying there is nothing we can do about it, just accommodating to the imagined
inevitability of it, shouldn't we be asking "Does a growing population really help any of us?"
It's hard to think of a current problem which will be solved more easily by adding another 2.3
billion people to our population.