For our planet to maintain a stable and sustainable population, we need to take precautionary steps of education and planning. First, we must understand our current situation as well as our projected outcome assuming we do not make changes.
At this point the main causes of overpopulation are mostly in terms of having longer, healthier lives, so we have more people to support as they live longer. The factors adding to the overpopulation as life expectancy gets older are: the decline in the death rate, having better medical facilities, more help to overcome poverty, the technological advancement in fertility treatment, and immigration. A bigger problem with overpopulation is caused by the lack of family planning. Having a better quality of life is less of an issue then the quantity of lives. Overpopulation brings up many concerns.
The concerns of overpopulation are depletion of natural resources, degradation of the environment, conflicts and wars, rise in unemployment, and the higher cost of living. The larger the population the more consumption. This is seen by the developing countries that have already started to prepare for climate change according to the UN.
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Already, there have been incredible improvements in the effectivity and availability of birth control. There have also been One-Child Laws (and similarly related policies) implemented in some countries. China, which has a higher population than any other country, just recently ended their policy, which had been in place for over 35 years.
Ways to better this situation are to better educate about the use of natural resources, be aware of family planning and sex education, and learn about the tax benefits and concessions. Policies need to be made that see the long term effect of such things as more environmentally safe resources without regard to only seeing the short term up-front costs. An example of this is fossil fuels being used for cars causing emission problems that pollute and use up resources.
In my personal part of reducing the unfortunate cycle of overpopulation, I plan to continue my education as far as I can, and further on in life I think I would like to adopt children. All human beings are responsible for necessary change. For everyone to be part of the solution by not being part of the problem, we need to be more careful with our limited resources.
References
- United Nations – Issues in Depth: Population
- World Population Balance – Effects of Overpopulation
- NCBI – The Effects of Overpopulation on Environment and Society
- Population Matters – Environment
- Conserve Energy Future – Causes, Effects, and Solutions of Overpopulation
- Negative Population Growth – The Effects of Over-Population
- Geography Fieldwork – The Causes and Effects of Over-Population
