Global Overpopulation: Effects and Solutions

Each week, we add about a million and half people to our current world population, which is at 6.8 billion. We have we reached the point many describe as global overpopulation. The family of humans, known as the hominids, has populated Earth, according to the fossil record, for 5 to 6 million years. The hominids transitioned from one genus to another before our genus, homo, appeared about a million and half to two million years ago. We transitioned through a number of homo species before our species, homo sapiens (“sensible humans”) emerged about 150,000 years ago.

Over time, we’ve accumulated people. Two-thousand years ago, our population was at 250 million. In the year 500 A.D., it remained the same. By 1000 A.D., we climbed to 500 million people. We reached 750 million people around 1500 A.D. We hit our first billion mark in 1800 at which time the Industrial Revolution kicked in. We added people more rapidly and began to move quickly in the direction of human overpopulation. Between 1800 and 1900 we added 600 million people. At 1900, we were at 1.6 billion. By 1960, in 60 short years, we nearly doubled that as we reached 3 billion.

In 1960, we humans had been here about 150,000 years. It took us that long to accumulate 3 billion people. How long did it take for us to double that number? Thirty-nine years!  In 1999, we reached 6 billion people. It is estimated that we will be at 9.2 billion by 2050. 

The effects of global overpopulation are multiple and ominous. As the result of having so many people who do not understand our reality and its behavioral demands, we have created an interrelated web of global environmental problems. We are depleting our natural resources: our forests, fisheries, range lands, croplands, and plant and animal species. We are destroying the biological diversity on which evolution thrives (this is being called the sixth great wave of extinction in the history of life on earth, different from the others in that it is caused not by external events, but by us).

With powerful new electrical and diesel pumping techniques, we are draining our aquifers and lowering our water tables. We are systemically polluting our air, water, and soil, and consequently our food chain. We are depleting the stratospheric ozone that shields us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. And, we are experiencing symptoms of global warming: heat waves, devastating droughts, dying forests, accelerated species extinction, dying coral reefs, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, more frequent and intense storms, and a more rapid spread of diseases.

With so many of us on a very small and fragile planet, and with the addition of so many more every week, we can no longer continue to relate to each other, our environment, ecological systems and biosphere as we have throughout our history. Nature, which could not care less, will eliminate us. To sustain humanity and advance our civilization, humankind must travel on a new and far more enlightened track. The solutions to global overpopulation and other pressing issues can be found at the website below.