SUMMARY OF ISSUE
Last week, a high-profile study using the latest United Nations data revisited predictions of global population size. The news wasn’t good: Updated estimates using new statistical analyses suggest the world’s population will hit nearly 11 billion by 2100. There’s some uncertainty in this measure because birth and death rates may be changed by political and social dynamics. Still, the study’s authors wrote that there’s a four in five chance the world’s population will be between 9.6 and 12.3 billion by the end of the century.It’s no wonder we shy away from open discussion of this issue. First, “overpopulation” is hard to quantify. It’s obvious that the present-day human population is too large to sustainably support on the planet. For example, modern agriculture relies on the chemical fixation of nitrogen for fertilizers, which experts believe allowed Earth’s population to grow beyond 4 billion. Yet this fertilizer production requires energy from fossil fuels, a non-renewable resource. In other words, more than 3 billion people on the planet survive because of an unsustainable energy subsidy.
WHY THIS ISSUE IS IMPORTANT
This issue is important because as our global population continues to swell, so do our environmental impacts. Each individual requires sustaining resources including food, housing, and energy. No matter how small the average person’s resource demands are, each additional person adds to the human burden on the Earth. In the past 40 years, the human population has increased by 40 percent, while, as a consequence, the world’s wildlife population has been cut in half.
Last week, a high-profile study using the latest United Nations data revisited predictions of global population size. The news wasn’t good: Updated estimates using new statistical analyses suggest the world’s population will hit nearly 11 billion by 2100. There’s some uncertainty in this measure because birth and death rates may be changed by political and social dynamics. Still, the study’s authors wrote that there’s a four in five chance the world’s population will be between 9.6 and 12.3 billion by the end of the century.It’s no wonder we shy away from open discussion of this issue. First, “overpopulation” is hard to quantify. It’s obvious that the present-day human population is too large to sustainably support on the planet. For example, modern agriculture relies on the chemical fixation of nitrogen for fertilizers, which experts believe allowed Earth’s population to grow beyond 4 billion. Yet this fertilizer production requires energy from fossil fuels, a non-renewable resource. In other words, more than 3 billion people on the planet survive because of an unsustainable energy subsidy.
WHY THIS ISSUE IS IMPORTANT
This issue is important because as our global population continues to swell, so do our environmental impacts. Each individual requires sustaining resources including food, housing, and energy. No matter how small the average person’s resource demands are, each additional person adds to the human burden on the Earth. In the past 40 years, the human population has increased by 40 percent, while, as a consequence, the world’s wildlife population has been cut in half.