Invariably the overwhelming answer will be "yes." It the conventional wisdom going back to Malthus and which took on a certain cache during the "ecology"/Earth movement of the 60s and 70s.
However, while it may be true that in any given part of the world at any given point in time there may be a period where local population exceeds local resources, the truth is that over time, demographic patterns are such that there is not really a sustained problem of overpopulation. Indeed, if anything, the main problem is that the population is aging and this will apt to leave increasing burdens on the young.
First, to start, in general, fertility rates soar when populations are predominantly rural and the economy is relatively poor and primitive. Children are needed to work the fields and take care of their parents as they get older and can no longer work. The more children, the more work that gets done and later the more evenly the burden of caring for elderly parents is distributed.
Then, as an economy industrializes, modernizes and gets wealthier, birthrates tend to drop. As an economy industrializes, there is no need to have children who can help out on the farm, so to speak. The cost of raising children goes up proportionately as the need to educate them to work and live in a more complex and technologically sophisticated economy increases. Moreover, such economies tend to produce welfare states that take care of the needs of the elderly, meaning that children no longer need care for their aging parents.
The paradox being that a welfare state, over the long run, actually needs more young workers and taxpayers in order to pay the benefits of the elderly. As yet, it is not clear how modern welfare states will work this out as the tax burden on the young will begin to grow exponentially as the population ages. Hence, the aforementioned point about the burden on the young.
Fun fact: In general, especially in the Western world, the older are the wealthier demographic. The young the poorer. As the young decline in relative numbers and yet continue, through taxes, welfare states and the like, to take care of the elderly, the world will see a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. (This is what makes the call in certain Western countries for "health care for all" so ironic. Whatever its merits, it will exacerbate the gap between rich and poor, not narrow it.)
In terms of natural resources, science and modern technology has actually reduced the consumption of raw materials. Hence why coal miners in the United States are increasingly unemployed. As the world economy transitions from an industrial/extractions base to a service/high tech base, the consumption of raw materials - and as the population ages and dies even of foodstuffs and hence farmland - will decline.
This is not to say that there is not a problem. The world's resources and populations are not evenly distributed and in that narrow sense there will be an overpopulation problem. However, that has been a problem since the dawn of man and it will not likely ever be fully resolved.
If there is any irony it is that the future belongs to Africa. The least industrialized continent and the youngest in demographic terms. Right now, the death rate is above the global average and so is the fertility rate. As the African economy improves and societies stabilize that will level out, but it will peak well after the rest of the world.
After which point, no doubt to the great relief of those who are inclined to fret over such matters, global population overall will begin to decline to stabilization point. Thus, solving overpopulation, such as it is. Though that is still a bit of a ways off in case you were worried.
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A more pressing problem to me is a large percentage of counter-productive people who don't produce efficiently (ex: too many elderly retirees who don't produce with too few younger producers). This is why declining birth rates are a pressing problem in some developed nations, like here in Japan:
If that 2055 forecast is anywhere close to accurate, then there will be too many elderly people to outnumber the younger ones who can produce required goods and services (electricity, sanitation, healthcare, food, affordable housing, fuel, etc) to sustain the lifestyles we have now. There would be too much scarcity of too many vital resources causing prices to skyrocket if the economic output plummets this way.
I don't see the pressing problem as different in third world nations except on a broader scale, since their economic systems often render the bulk of their population counter-productive. In those cases, even their youngest, brightest, most able-bodied people might not produce much in the way of goods and services. For example, there won't be much in the way of agricultural output if people in a nation are relying on obsolete farming techniques:
Of course if the environment is placed at top priority, more humans on the planet broadly translates to more threat to the environment. But I don't see it as a worthwhile battle to fight against very nature of humanity. What I can observe instead is that capable humans who are free and thrive tend to care more about the environment, compete and innovate and optimize to find more efficient ways to exponentially increase the output of goods and services, focus on reforestation and not merely deforestation, preserve rare specifies of wildlife instead of poaching them, and so forth. So I would find it a more practical battle to promote systems, such as economic ones, which allow a populace to thrive.
At the moment it is. But the birth rate is slowing down. When women have the right to control what happens to their bodies, they don't usually have as many children.
In many countries, the death rate has already eclipsed the birth rate, and as women's rights begin to be realized even more, the same thing will soon happen in many others.
So at the moment it is a problem, and if the birth rate were to suddenly stop slowing down in comparison to the death rate, it would become a very serious problem. But social change is happening pretty much everywhere. It won't always be a problem.
No! We are overpopulated in some countries and cities but a lot of the world is untouched and has no people
We all want to be in the same place as everyone else and therefore overpopulate a specific area! Some people live in houses that could house 20 people! We are not the issue... it’s the amount of space we feel we need! There is room for many more people
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Overpopulation? - No, in terms of Space.
Yes , in terms of over-concentration of areas and allocation of resources.
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Its not about the space of living for the population.
If you really wanted to , you could fit all the worlds population in LA albeit highly packed like Sardines with almost no space to breathe.
But Realistically ,
If everyone lived as densely as In Manila , we could fit the entire Worlds population in Tunisia (Size - 2/3 size of UK or the State of Georgia in USA )
If everyone lived as densely as In Manhattan , we could fit the entire Worlds population in New Zealand.
If everyone lived as densely as In Bangladesh , we could fit the entire Worlds population in Australia.
If everyone lived as densely as In Alaska , we would need 108 Earths to fit the entire Worlds population !!
But its everything else -like Food , Fresh water , raw materials etc that is the Issue.
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Overpopulation is not a space problem.
It's a resource problem.
People consume a lot of resources and produce a lot of waste, but the earth can only regenerate these resources and biodegrade that waste at a certain speed.
As the third world develops their consumption increases from plant to meat , Infrastructure & appliances develops like - Smartphones , Houses etc .
This Consumes Resources & generates pollution faster than the earth's natural processes can make it go away.
This is especially a problem in areas such as China/India, which are stressing the local water and food supply, not to mention the soil runoff/nitrogen waste from agriculture & overmining.
Compounding this problem is overpopulation makes CO2 levels worse.
Ever hear the fact that owning a pet is worse than owning a gas guzzling hummer?
That's because a pet requires food, water, medicine etc. All have an equivalent CO2 cost/energy cost from shipping.
For every child that is born, there is an equivalent CO2 cost, which will get worse as developing countries develop. E. g. car ownership in China.
**"Between 2000 and 2050, the US will add 114 million kids to its population. Africa will add 1.2 billion—but their respective CO2 emissions will be the same.
One American child generates as much CO2 as 106 Haitian kids."**
Yes, the rate of overpopulation is declining, but if everyone in the world were to have a Western style lifestyle: cars, ACs, electricity, iphones, laptops, pets, meat eaters etc.
Then the world is already vastly overpopulated in terms of resource consumption.
(Part 2 in Comment.)Not really, we could make more efficient housing if people would give up on the idea if having unnecessary space, specifically lawns, with so many people we need to cut back on the amount of lawns and stick everyone into high density housing like how they do in overpopulated Asian countries (china, india, the metro areas of Japan, etc.)
Beyond that we could start populating other planets relatively quickly, we have most of the required technology, most countries just lack adequate government funding for space programs, that is the issue. Even NASA is heavily underfunded, which is why their continued successes has been a miracle. Regardless Nass has released a plan to head to the moon and use it to refine fuel and use it as a refueling station for space ships since they lose so much fuel leaving out atmosphere (launching from our atmosphere is seriously one of the only things holding us back right now, they have proposed many ideas to work around this problem, including a neat idea called a lunar space elevator.Yes. As there is scarcity of resources, such as land, a larger population may lead to inadequate distribution of resources.
In other words, it could lead to famines and all that stuff. The severity would depend on the difference between the carrying capacity (apparently between 9 to 10 billion) and the actual size of the population, next to technology.
Theoretically, even at maximum efficiency and everyone being a vegetarian, we still have 1.4 billion acres of areable land. That means we can only produce so much food. Even if distribution is nailed to perfection, we will still have famines. There is also a limited supply of freshwater. Apparently, in 2050 about half a billion people would be subjected to water-stress.
Furthermore, there is a limited supply of phosphorus, which is absolutely crucial for agriculture.
Another dimension would be oceans. Larger population results in larger demand for fishing, which could lead to global overfishing. Human presence also leads to acidification of the oceans, which kills of even more fish and changes the ecosystem of oceans.Very good question - The dynamic as I can see it is that there is overpopulation probably even rising population in the poorest countries due to a whole lot of social/religious maybe even household economic reasons then in the wealthier developed world the population is dropping.
Logically it is a problem but you have to break through the societal/religious/ micro economic reasons before you get into logical discourse. It might be politically sensitive but if the wealthier countries helped the poorer countries get on their feet, some of the reasons for overpopulation might decrease but it is such a huge question, I leave it to smarter minds than me to try and work it outHumans are easily the biggest pest species on Earth in terms of harm done to the planet and the other species we share an equal stake in it with. We’ve come up with some impressive ways to hold off death, but it’s unnatural and therefore invalid. So we, especially in the last two hundred years, mostly, have over-survived, and as you can probably see, it’s fucking everything up.
As others have said, it depends on what area of the world you're talking about. In the United States, we have a population growth that is below a viable replacement rate, *but* we're also on the tail end of a historic huge spike in population after WWII ended. As such, even with a declining incidence rate one could make a credible case that we still suffer from overpopulation.
As for whether or not it's a problem, we just have to ask a simple question: do we have enough resources for everybody, in a given geographic area? I expect people who believe in the so-called immigration crisis on the U. S. southern border would answer "no" to this question, despite the decline in population growth we've been experiencing since 1971. Others may say yes, since we're actually doing quite well compared to some other places in the world.yes and no.
yes - due to more people being born then people dying. rate over about 3 to 1 per hours or so.
no- due to the fact you could fit pretty much everyone in the US into the state of Texas with a decent plot of land and 5 bedroom house.
truly what they should do is just stop all the medically assisted births. ED drugs, fertility meds and invitro. because while it is sad that some people can not have a kids naturally and others have 5+ with minimal effort. there are a lot of kids world wide that need homes and families but get over looked and go hungry.There is, but the issue isn't as big as the Leftists are making it seem.
The earth isn't gonna run out resources.
"If everyone lived like you, we would need 6.5 earths to sustain the population."
And that's just it, not EVERYONE lives like me.
Just use your resources efficiently, unlike the Rapa Nui people and we'll be fine.
And the droughts in East Africa were the result of natural climate cycles and poor farming methods, not overpopulation.
And don't worry, the rainforest isn't gonna disappear. There is so much of it, that even if we wanted to cut it all. down we wouldn't be able to.The problem is that millions of retards all want to live in the same city where there's already millions of retards living there.
If people would SPREAD THE FUCK OUT they'd find that we have so much empty fucking land on this planet it's not even funny.It's an enormous problem. Look at what we're doing to this planet, littering, destroying the forests, melting the ice etc.
The fact that we are this many people is catastrophic. And that the population is only growing is terrible!
As it is right now we're using 170% of earths resources every year.Not at all. The problem is that we humans do not use our resources efficiently and effectively. By resources I mean: space, time, mineral resources, money etc. Our cities are inefficient, our transport links suck, we as humans just suck and we cannot seem to find a good way to require less resources while increasing our quality of life. I think as AIs begin to take over the economy and politics, humans will finally be able to stop worrying about overpopulation.
There was a place in Hong Kong where 33K people lived in an area the size of 3 football fields. That would suck. You could put every person on earth in the state of Texas. There are a huge amount of people on earth, but its not the amount of people, its the problems humans create. Pollution, mowing down rain forest that provide oxygen, hunting animal to extinction, and wars. We are not good to each other, and we do not respect mother nature.
Yeah it is, but it's not really a problem in the West. Most people who talk about overpopulation seem to tell Western people not to have children, but we already have low birthrates, below replacement level actually. It's more of a problem in less developed countries in Africa and the Middle East where they have 5-8 kids each.
Yeah, but not because we’ll really run out if food or land. Because there isn’t (currently) enough wealth to go around. This is a problem when poor (er) people are raised to crave the same riches as the better off people have.
The robot revolution (robots replacing human workers) won’t helpNo. Most nations are having negative birth rates i. e. losing population (only gaining in immigration). The only area that is gaining in population is Africa and that is expected to level out in the next few decades (this is how it happened in every other nation, when you hit industrialization people end up surviving more but the past generation is still producing children at the old rate which was required to offset the high death rate. Once they realize that is no longer necessary (and becomes prohibitively expensive) they stop having as many children and the population growth levels off).
Well it sure doesn't help.
-More competition for jobs
-More people below the poverty line on drugs and more homeless people
-More crime
-People don't like sharing spaces in general so race crimes against immigrants from overpopulated countries
-Longer commute times to/from work means tired employees suffering from burnout as they struggle to fit in personal time with their work lives
-Resouces demand increase
Etc, etc, etcOf course it's a problem. Every resource we have is running out at an alarming rate. We're killing the planet according to 97% of scientists. And conservatives are out there going "It's not a problem, there's some standing room left over in Nigeria, we can squeeze 3 or 4 more in! Look, there is a tree over there, if we cut it down we could fit more humans in that space!"
No overpopulation is not a actually a problem. Despite the hype, every overpopulation alarmist has made predictions that have turned out to be completely false. She found her of overpopulation and its related series predicted billions starving by the year 2000. Which obviously did not happen. And in fact, in the past 10 years, capitalism has raised over half the world's population out of extreme poverty. And the less poverty that people have the fewer kids they tend to have. Currently, if the poor of the world continue to get wealthier, the population will stabilize around 10 to 11 billion
No it is not, not i mean it has been predicted MANY times that say the world will be overpopulated, like once it was said to be overpopulated by 2015, and as we all know it wasn't even close to it, then it was said to be overpopulated again in 2018, and once again we know this isn't true, so no this is not a problem at ALL, at least not for right now, and probably won't be for awhile, if anything it would be the resources like food and water and stuff that would be the bigger problem, and if anything, i feel like much later on there will be a fear of under population, so no i do not think that overpopulation is a problem in the slightest,
Yes and no, it is a problem, it is real already and only getting worse, here in our western nations we worry a lot about it, but truth is our birthrate has been negative for some time. The countries were the problem is, neither care, or can do much. But at the same time, overpopulation of habitats exists in nature, and it self corrects on its own. So we should also be able to fix it.
As in nature there is the K line wich defines the maximum capacity for a given place, it's the same with countries, the problem here is that they overshoot the line, and then proceed in sending the excess population to the western countries, endlessly repeating the pattern and never stabilising
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