Population Crisis?

The world is facing rapid growing populations. Since the industrial revolution, populations have swelled, but is rapid population growth a problem for the environment? Populations require food, energy, water, and other natural resources to sustain.  Nature can be seen as opposing a check on population sizes (Malthus, 1789), where populations can grow till they reach a carrying capacity of the environment. This is seen in nature with many living organisms, but this principle has not seemed to hold with people.  Surely people do negatively impact the environment, but the decline of the human race is always predicted, but populations keep growing.  Is it because we have not reached the carrying capacity of Earth? It is not that simple.  The human being is different then other living creatures on the planet in that it has the ability to modify the environment and adapt techniques to the situation they are in, not relying on instinct but on ingenuity.  As populations have grown people have found ways to extract more resources and increased efficiencies in their use (Boserup, 1965), allowing for a modification of the theoretical carrying capacity of Earth with increase populations (Ellis, 2013).  Limitless growth does seem implausibly and true a limit of resources is a concern to us all. People may have the ability to extend the capacity of Earth but a limit does exist.  So technical solutions to extend the carrying capacity of the planet cannot always be the solution (Hardin, 1968), sooner or latter population will have to be controlled, but is it necessary to control it by force? When examining populations in terms of growth rate as opposed to raw number, population looks more manageable with relatively small growth rates (World Bank, 1989).  These small rates translate to a sensitive process that can easily be changed.  Additionally, when comparing developed regions to developing ones, fertility rates have dropped drastically with emergence of stronger economies (Lewis, 2013).  While technology has lead to more effective extracting or resources, it is now impacting our social system.  People do not want to have large families and social changes that result from an advance economy maybe the solution to the population problem. The next problem is how to make the modern lifestyle less impactful on the environment, so as more people can live it without the environment going to ruin.

Works Cited

Boserup, E (1965). The .conditions of agricultural growth (pp. 41-42). Chicago: Aldine.

Ellis, E.C. (2013, 13 September). Overpopulation is not the problem. The New York Times.

Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. New York.

Lewis, M.W. (2013, 7 May). India’s plummeting birthrate: A television-induced transformation? Geocurrents

Malthus, T. P. (1998). An Essay on the Principle of Population. 1798. Reprint. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

World Bank. (1989). World development report 1989. New York: Published for the World Bank, Oxford University Press. Box 4.6 "Three Views of Population Change," P. 76Top of Form