Greetings everyone,
Yesterday was my birthday, and I decided to talk about this controversial topic today.
You see when I was born 26 years ago, the population of this planet was in the 5 Billion range and only 26 years later, we witnessed a big rise in the human population. A rise of up to 2+Billion more people since my birth to be exact. That makes the human population as of today approximately 7.5 Billion humans.
So before jumping to any conclusions, I will try to dig deeper in to the data as well as the reality of human population, and see If everything is under control and sustainable, or we should really worry about the human population getting out of control.
Let us begin with the facts that shows us why the human population is increasing a lot, for the past 2 at least centuries.
No world wars for 7 Decades
72 Years exactly have passed since the last world war. World wars of course affect the world population greatly. In a world war a lot of humans are losing their lives and the human population as a result is not getting raised by a big margin.
In fact, after the second world war the human population with the help of the economic growth and capitalism met the fast and huge incline that we have today.
Advances in science and medicine
With the help of modern medicine and science in general, people live longer and have a better quality of life. Thus, a lot more people have the opportunity to have kids and even a lot more kids then they could afford before medicine and science was as advanced as nowadays. These advances gave the green light to humans to be more positive about having more kids and incresing the population.
Human rights and importance of individual human life
No longer do only the Kings and Queen's lifes matter. The lifes of every single human matters, especially after the establishment of the most basic human right, which is the right to live.
All countries on the planet have laws that prohibit an individual of claiming the life of another individual. Doing so, will give you criminal status and very hard punishments in the country you live in. In other words the lifes of EVERY human on this planet is "protected" even by law. That is making humans more encourouged to have kids of their own, knowing that their kids will be protected and their lifes will matter.
Economic opportunities
That is not certain for everyone, but every first world country that is advanced socially and economically, can offer life changing job opportunities to people who may be born very poor but through finding a proper job, their lifes changed and are now able to raise their own kids and start a family.
These were some of the major facts that happened and enabled the human population to meet the growth that it has today.
I want to talk now about the negatives of an increased world population or some people could call it overpopulation especially if the negatives outweigh the positives.
Limited planetary resources
With the exception of the power of Sun(Solar Energy), the wind and any other natural resource that is nearly unlimited with the correct managment, not all important resources are unlimited.
That is something that most people already know, but the consequences of humans losing their resources are very devastating.
The economic blow is the least concern, while the growth of science and every other advancement will be decreased significantly.
Also there are some resources like wood for instance, that is making us destroy local ecosystems such as the Amazon forests to claim them. The more humans on this planet needing wood, the more we will harvest wood and destroy ecosystems(animal species, rivers, plants that cannot regrow anywhere else than their natural enviroments etc.)
Pollution and the extinction of other species
Unfortunately what I am about to inform you about has already happened. We have polluted a lot of ecosystems and destroyed them as a direct result of the rise of more population needs.
Thus, a lot of animals have either claimed the threatened status(which means they are pretty close to be forever extinct) or they already have became extinct.
The human population being increased is directly causing all of this and unfortunately it cannot be disputed at this point.
Maybe a more natural gathering of resources could potentially ease the consequenses that the ecosystems suffer.
Can all people even afford a job? Machine replacement
I am going to be very brief here. The human population is rising and with that, we have a rise in machines that replace human workload with much less cost and problems. So, is it easy for all 7 Billion+ people to find a job and be employed all at the same time? I do not think so. Even without the machines replacing humans this vast number of humans finding a suitable job seems to me very impossible. Therefore the economy of an increasing population would most likely be in very poor condition.
Goverment interference
What if the goverments themselves decide to interfere with human reproduction and decide not only who gets to reproduce, but how much they reproduce?
It is already rumoured that some scientists have came up with reproduction tests that will be introduced in the future and test the future parent's right to reproduce.
These tests will measure the "ability" of someone being a good parent and having the right to reproduction.
So these are some of the facts that come along with the increasing human population. I will close this with my personal opinion, which I think that will be interesting sharing it with you!
Personal opinion on the matter
Although we already faced a lot of negatives as a direct result of the human population increasing a lot, I believe we have a little bit more room and for now we can sustain this large human population that we have reached.
However, there is a fine line in the sand and I am very afraid that If we do not take the consequenses and the data more seriously, we will reach at a non sustainable point.
In conclusion I think that the very best and first step is for all people to be informed of the above data and always be responsible and understanding that at the same time that we can achieve good things, we can also achieve the bad ones as well! :)
That is it for now, thank you for reading my post and I will soon go back to less controversial posts. I just wanted to get it out of my chest.
What do you think about the human population?
Best regards
Zach
P.S. This is a very cool site to check some population statistics and data http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/