Many believe that there are way more serious problems than overpopulation, but have any stopped and realized that overpopulation is the reason for these problems. Maybe if we stopped trying to fix the initial problem and thought about how to stop what was causing the problem, we wouldn't be in some terrible situations. The purpose of this literature review is to discuss the problems of overpopulation through climate change, depletion of natural resources, and the major increase in population.
In the first discussion of how overpopulation affects climate change, there are two studies done by Mehta and Farrell. Both talk about how the human race is oblivious to the fact that if we can control the human population we can then control the climate. But there are so many who believe that climate is not affected by population and since they refuse to do anything about it, eventually there will be a situation where many will die for unfair reasons. In the article, Mehta acknowledges the quickly increasing population in countries around the world and also how with increasing population there will need to be an increase in everything else like food, homes, and cars. 'The more people we have, the more electricity we will need to heat and light
our homes, to cool our food in refrigerators. We will need more coal-burning or thermonuclear power plants. And as cities grow, more people will commute longer distances in cars or buses. We will need more housing, more furniture, more gadgets' (Mehta, 2009). In the article by Farrell, he introduces a question to grab our attention and explains how humans have caused a terrible problem and the blame is put on no one but ourselves. 'We just keep buying gas guzzlers, keep investing retirement money in Exxon Mobil, keep making more and more babies, forever in denial of the widening gap between perpetual economic growth and more babies living on a planet of rapidly diminishing resources' (Farrell, 2013).
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Overpopulation has also caused a huge depletion of natural resources. The more we grow as a population, the fewer natural resources we have is what it seems to be coming to which is a summary of the two studies done by Mason and Overpopulation: Environmental and Social Problems. In the article by Christopher Mason, there is mostly information about the medical part of their country but he does make a point that with the growing population, the cost of hospitals is becoming too much. 'The accessibility problem high-lighted by the health minister is not going to go away, with a growing demographic challenge similar to that emerging in many Western countries. Besides a senior citizen population that has grown by more than 10 000 since 2000 (to more than 300 000 total), the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions expects the country's overall population to grow by 870 000 before 2030, only 75 000 of whom predict will be active in the workforce (Mason, 2008). In the article titled Overpopulation: Environmental and Social Problems the author constantly just gives information about how our natural resources are vastly deteriorating. 'one billion people, one out of every seven people alive, go to bed hungry. Every day, 25,000 people die of malnutrition and hunger-related diseases. Almost 18,000 of them are children under 5 years old. Food production and distribution could catch up if our population stopped growing and dropped to a sustainable level.' (Overpopulation: Environmental and Social Problems, 2009-2010).
Lastly, the population is increasing at a rate never before seen, and countries are multiplying fast to a point where action must be taken. The articles chosen all explain vastly populating areas and how something must be done before nothing is left. The articles chosen were written by Tal, Smil, Ayres, and Malthus. All authors give numerous statistics on how much the world is populating how fast it is and how even with some policies already in effect, the population is still rising too fast. 'The Chinese one-child policy has been tough medicine, and its implementation was flawed. But it also prevented the next round of famines that would have taken far more lives had China continued to race forward and become a nation of two billion. Even so, China today still needs to bolster local food supply by attaining lands overseas.' (Tal, 2013) In the article by Vaclav Smil even though it was written a while ago he brings to attention the population then and it is evident that we are increasing at an abnormal rate. 'And so the world population may, after all, undergo one more doubling to 12 billion. Even so, we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the growth of our species. Children born today may be thinking about their retirement at a time when the global population count will have stabilized - or even begun to decline.' In the blog written by Ayres, it is just a part of showing how in little places we are also increasing and it's not just the bigger countries who are contributing to the overpopulation. ' Sooke was second with a growth of nearly 18% from 9699 to 11435. The census says that between 2006 and 2011 (known as the intercensal period - isn't that a great word?), 864 private dwellings were built' (Ayres, 2012). In the article by Malthus, he not only describes the negatives of overpopulation but also states the positives that overpopulation has caused. 'Today our population tops seven billion. While better health care and medicine along with advances in food production and access to fresh and sanitation have allowed us to feed ourselves and stave off many health ills, some so-called Neo-Malthusians believe we may still be heading for some kind of population crash, perhaps triggered or exacerbated by environmental factors related to climate change (Malthus, 2013).
Many believe that there are way more serious problems than overpopulation, but have any stopped and realized that overpopulation is the reason for these problems. In conclusion with evidence to back up the assumption of how overpopulation is becoming one of the biggest problems yet there is only so little time until something occurs that causes terrible things. Through the study of how overpopulation affects natural resources and how it is constantly rising, the conclusion is that there is an overpopulation problem in our society.
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