Humans are the most adaptable creatures in the world. It is our nature and main goal in life to reproduce and start a family like most species. Our goal is to live a full life and live happily ever after. Our life expectancies are prolonging every year. Some may believe this is a good thing, but I agree to an extent. We need to think about this subject in a global scale. Our resources are not going to last. This leads to two considerations that come to mind; including, the amount of people that is too many and the effect of overpopulation on our environment. We as humans are consumers. We continuously use the resources around us in order to survive. Whether it’s the wood from our trees, or the water from our rivers, lakes, and ponds, we are the biggest consumer species in the universe. An article from the guardian.com states that we as a species are growing by 10,000 people per hour. That number is astonishing. Ideally every human being needs clothes, shelter, food, and water, thus contributing to the waste and pollution. I believe it is time to think about this subject and take it seriously. People need to see that this is a global problem and we are not helpless. We can change little things to help prolong our home, which we call Earth. The population can recycle, and try to reduce the amount of waste their household makes. Also, they could simply reduce the amount of water they use in their home. Water is an essential part of our daily lives. Our bodies contain up to 95% of water which helps us live our daily lives. Not only is water essential in our daily lives, but we use it as a resource to clean our bodies, wash dishes, and do laundry. If we multiply that by 365 days a year, we are using about 9,400 gallons of water a year. That number is equivalent to the amount of water needed to wash 300 loads of laundry. Because of the amount of people on this earth these resources are being more and more limited by the minute. It is time to think of ways in which the human race can lend a helping hand to our planet.
“Whether we accept it or not, this will likely be the century that determines what the optimal human population is for our planet. It will come about in one of two ways:
Either we decide to manage our own numbers, to avoid a collision of every line on civilization’s graph – or nature will do it for us, in the form of famines, thirst, climate chaos, crashing ecosystems, opportunistic disease, and wars over dwindling resources that finally cut us down to size.”
― Alan Weisman
Our population is rising way too rapidly. There is proof that as the environment perishes, the population increases. But why is that? The reason is that people in the poorest parts of the world are known to produce more to the population rather than the more privileged side of the population spectrum. Most people don’t have the necessary foundation to survive on their own, so they create more people to contribute to the overall wealth of the family as a whole. Because of this, they are contributing to the overpopulated areas. Think of it as there are more odds against your child being successful if you only had one child. If you had more than one than the likelihood to survive as a tribe is very positive as opposed to one helping hand. This is just one theory in which population becomes overcrowded.
With about 7.3billion people on the earth it is “going to take a village” to spread awareness about this subject matter. This is an issue that affects us all and we need to come together and change as a whole. We don’t have to disrupt our normal everyday happy lives of consumption, but to come together as a community, and our governments have to be on board to coordinate a better, safer, and healthier life for our future people.
I will leave you with a quote from Martin Luther King himself:
“Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victim.”
Visit the links for more information:
https://www.epa.gov/watersense/statistics-and-facts
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/oct/23/why-population-growth-costs-the-earth-roger
https://www.science.org.au/curious/earth-environment/population-environment
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/24035802-countdown-our-last-best-hope-for-a-future-on-earth