How Do We Know if the World is Overpopulated

Agreeing on if the world is overpopulated or not is based on more than if we produce enough food for all the people on the planet. Indeed deciding if there are are too many humans is not just about the humans, but is about all other species as well as the earth itself.

For thousands of years the human population stayed pretty steady around 1 to 2 billion people, shooting up only recently with improvements to health care and industrialization. When the human population was lower we were still causing some impact on the planet but in no way as great as we are doing now that our human population numbers over 7 billion.

If you talk to somebody who is in their 50's or older they will probably tell you how they can remember farms in areas that are now built up and urbanized. Indeed the human population has more than doubled in the last 50 years and we have lost a lot of farm land as well as natural forests due to the growth rate. Farms have become more “efficient” at producing more food on less land, and typically this results in food that has less nutrition, but again food is not the focus...

The oceans all have gyres of human garbage, large pits and quarries destroy the landscapes in many areas. Deforestation has lead to landslides on many mountains. Toxic ponds of industrial waste pollute many areas. Giant mounds of human garbage occupy many acres of land worldwide. Thousands of species of animals have gone extinct in the past 200 years and yet some people still claim that the human population is not too high.

Studies done on rats and mice years ago by John B. Calhoun suggested that many social problems are the result of overpopulation. In his experiments the animals were cared for medically and were well fed but their population was allowed to grow. At a certain point the formerly social animals became anti-social, random acts of violence became common, and parenting skills declined drastically to the point that eventually the young animals did not survive.

Humans have long been known to be violent towards one and other but the acts of violence were rarely random as they are today. People walk down busy streets without making eye contact, they walk past those who are suffering (homeless) as though they did not exist. Compassion to our fellow man is being lost as we become more and more overpopulated.

This development (in Edmonton) used to be farm land, and prior to being farm land it was a forest.  How is this "better" than a forest?   How is this being in harmony with the planet?

Although some people have suggested a sustainable human population is 5 billion (and others have suggested 500 million) there is probably no definite number of what the maximum sustainable population is. In part it relates to how sustainable we chose to live our lives. Five billion people who live lives of excess are not nearly as sustainable as 5 billion people who live modestly (small homes, consuming only what they need, few luxuries).

Sadly it is impossible, therefore, to give an exact number at which the human population is considered to be overpopulated. Most certainly, due to our impact on the environment, and other species, we have surpassed that number. As long as we rely on non-renewable resources, and consume renewable ones up faster than they can be renewed, and as long as we displace, or destroy, other species, we are overpopulated.

The Ignorance of Humans Makes More Humans Seem Like a Good Idea

Over 7 billion people.  By most accounts that is too many.  But yet when talking to people about over population a good number of people talk as though a decline in population is a bad thing.  I guess their ignorance is bliss but for the rest of us it is horror.

Nobody seems to understand that unless you drop dead the day you become a parent every birth is adding to the population.  They always seem to go back to saying that some people die, but let us be honest, in modern times, and with modern medicine the percentage of people dying has dropped in developed nations.  People are living longer than ever before, there are fewer infant deaths, and as such the population is sky rocketing.

I asked a question on WebAnswers a while ago - you may want to click here to see all the answers http://www.webanswers.com/relationships/parenting-kids/for-maintained-population-how-many-kids-per-couple-729bb1 - I was quite amazed to see how ignorant people were and how many of them remarked that a drop in population was a "bad thing".  Feel free to click here to join WebAnswers and post your own answer to the question if you want to do so.

Here is the problem people are having, I ask how many kids can a couple have to maintain the population.

Suppose they have two kids.  That is doubling the population because two parents is now four people.  Okay, suppose this is a very closed society and forget the rules of inbreeding and incest, let us imagine the two kids get together and have two kids.  The parents are likely still alive, so two people is now six.  Since people are living longer than ever before it is likely that the two kids will reproduce and have two more kids while the original couple is still alive, bringing the total people to eight.  By then with any luck somebody will die, but the population was not maintained it will never go back to being just two!  The population has risen and will remain high in a cycle as long as people do not have more than two, but the initial birth of two kids was growth and should not be denied as such.

I had one kid, then had my tubes tied.  Two parents plus one kid is growth and I am not too stupid to deny that.  However my husband died early when my daughter was 5 so I guess the population did balance itself then.  But let us not kid ourselves into saying that two kids is maintaining the population.