The Dangers Of Overpopulation

As J. Anthony Cassils writes, in his chapter ‘Overpopulation, Sustainable development and Security’, “nothing threatens the future of our species as much as overpopulation.” Overpopulation can be argued as the root of most global issues for example; world hunger, habitat destruction, poverty and climate change.

There is a type of algae that grows on ponds. These algae feed on nutrients that get their sustenance from the sun. Eventually the algae breeds beyond the limits of its world, so much so that it completely covers the surface of the lake, which blocks out all sunlight and oxygen. Where there is no sunlight the nutrients that the algae feed on cannot survive and thus they disappear and so does any food source for the algae. The algae has grown so large that it has completely depleted its’ home and subsequently destroyed its source of life.

Like the algae, the human race has began to breed beyond the limits of our world. According to the US department of commerce, it took from the beginning of human existence to around the year eighteen hundred for the population to reach one billion. The second billion came in nineteen twenty-seven, the third in nineteen sixty, the

Bartlett emphasizes brings up an important point he asks, “can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale from microscopic to global where long term solutions are in any demonstrable way aided, assisted or advanced by further increases in population locally, nationally or globally?”(Cassils, 171) The answer of course to this question is no, there are zero long-term benefits to overpopulation in any category. With this understanding it is important to develop an understanding of the strategies that attempt to break down and help solve this problem. However because of the omnipresent problem of overpopulation, “there is no single approach that will ‘solve’ the population problem”, as Henry Kissinger put it, in The National Security Study Memorandum of 1974, (Kissinger,