Global Population Levels: The Myth Of Overpopulation

An environment is a system of living beings. Earth is our environment and humans thrive on only 17% of the earth and grow crops on only 4%. We rely on limited resources for survival but our population grows infinitely. Population is defined as the number of organisms from the same groups or species, which live in a particular geographical area. Never before in history, have there been so many people on earth till now. Population numbers have changed dramatically over time, influenced by births, deaths and migration. Global population levels, which have grown slowly in the past, are now rising.

About every second, 5 people are born and 2 people die. And nearly everywhere we are living longer, in 1960 the average person lived till 53 years

The myth of overpopulation originated from England and started in the hands of Thomas Malthus in 1798, who eventually thought the earth would be overpopulated. He thought that the population is increasing too fast and the limited food resources were not, so after some calculation he said in 1890 the earth will run out of food. The solution that Thomas came up with is to kill those who are not worthy of living, like the sick,elderly and disabled so the population will be stabilized. This problem was taken up in 1968 by Paul Elrich (USA). But clearly, Thomas Malthus and Paul Elrich were wrong as we are in the 21st Century and still

1.2% is the annual population increase per year. With this percentage continued the population would double every 60 years. However, the UN do not think this will happen, and that the population will level off at 9 billion by the end of this century, as countries are developing, and as this happens birth rates decrease. In places like Japan, right now the birth rate is below replacement rate. The replacement rate is 2.1 children per women. The population growth in the last 2 thousand years are 1 billion- 1800’s, 2 billion - 1927, 3 billion - 1960, 4 billion - 1974, 5 billion - 1987, 6 billion- 1999. Our population reached 7 billion on October 31, 2011. But the question is, why did the population grow so slow till the 1800’s and then speed up?. Till the 1800’s the replacement birth rate and death rate were even, so the population was increasing slowly. This is known as “Early Demographic Equilibrium”. However, around 2 centuries ago this began to change. The change was called “Demographic Transition”. The birth rate started increasing after the 1800’s and deaths decreased. As health care and countries developed, people gave birth to less children, but deaths were decreasing faster than birth rates, which was why the population increased so rapidly. By the 20th Centaury the birth and death rate equaled out once more, the Demographic transition was complete. Between the 1800’s and