overpopulation quotes for essay

Overpopulation Essay

500 words essay on overpopulation.

Overpopulation refers to an undesirable condition in which the number of existing human being exceeds the actual carrying capacity of the earth. It has many causes which range from a decline in the death rate to early marriages and more. The overpopulation essay will throw light on this issue.

Ill-Effects of Overpopulation

The ill-effects of overpopulation are quite severe. The first one is that natural resources deplete at a faster level. Our planet can produce only a limited amount of water and food . Thus, overpopulation causes environmental damage including deforestation, pollution, etc.

Similarly, there is the degradation of the environment which happens because of the overuse of resources like coal, oil, natural gases and more. As a result, the quality of air also gets affected in this manner.

In developing countries, overpopulation puts a strain on resources. Thus, it gives rise to conflicts and tension. It also causes more diseases that become harder to control. Next up, we have the issue of unemployment.

Moreover, it rises due to overpopulation. There is more number of people than job opportunities. As a result, unemployment gives rise to crimes like theft and more. We also have pandemics and epidemics which happen due to overpopulation.

It is because overcrowded and unhygienic living gives rise to infectious diseases . Another ill-effect is malnutrition and starvation. When there are scarce resources, these diseases will likely to be on the rise.

Most importantly, we have a shortage of water which makes it tougher for people to get access to clean water. Similarly, lower life expectancy also happens because of the boom in population, especially in less-developed nations.

We also witness faster climate change as nations continue to develop their industrial capacities. Thus, they emit industrial waste which gives rise to global temperatures . It will keep getting worse if things are not checked immediately.

Solutions of Overpopulation

There are many solutions which we may take up to prevent overpopulation. The best measure is family planning to keep the overpopulation check. In order to do that, one can ensure proper spacing between the births of the children.

Further, limiting the number of children as per income and resources must also be important. Similarly, it is essential to increase resources. The government must make the horrors of overpopulation reach the public through the use of media.

Moreover, better education can help implement social change which can curb overpopulation. Next up, knowledge of sex education must be made mandatory in schools so students learn young about everything they need to know.

Most importantly, it is essential to empower women so they can break out of poverty. This way, they can learn about reproductive health and make better decisions. Another solution can be government incentives.

Many governments of countries already have various policies which relate to tax exemptions for curbing overpopulation. For instance, some waive a certain part of income tax for married couples with one or two children.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of Overpopulation Essay

All in all, overpopulation is no less than a curse that poses a permanent threat to the development of any country. It is essential to stop the flood of population. In order to do that, one must indulge in proper family planning and creating balance in society for a better world.

FAQ of Overpopulation Essay

Question 1: What is the main cause of overpopulation?

Answer 1: It is believed that the main cause of overpopulation is poverty. When there is a lack of education resource which coupled with high death rates, it results in impoverished areas witnessing large booms in population.

Question 2: How is overpopulation affecting the world?

Answer 2: Overpopulation is affecting the world as it is outpacing the ability of the planet earth to support it. It also has environmental and economic outcomes which range from the impacts of over-farming on global warming.

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Many prominent individuals have expressed concern about population.

Sir David Attenborough, naturalist and broadcaster, Population Matters Patron (born 1926)

“All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder — and ultimately impossible — to solve with ever more people.”

“I support Population Matters because I think if we keep on growing, we’re not only going to damage nature, but we’re likely to see more and more inequality and human suffering.” 

“One thing you can say is that in places where women are in charge of their bodies, where they have the vote, where they are allowed to dictate what they do and what they want, whether it’s proper medical facilities for birth control, the birth rate falls.”

“The human population can no longer be allowed to grow in the same old uncontrolled way. If we do not take charge of our population size, then nature will do it for us.”

“As I see it, humanity needs to reduce its impact on the Earth urgently and there are three ways to achieve this: we can stop consuming so many resources, we can change our technology and we can reduce the growth of our population.”

“Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it’s time we controlled the population to allow the survival of the environment.”

Dame Jane Goodall, primatologist and conservationist, Population Matters Patron (born 1934)

“Educating and empowering women and girls and providing family planning information enables more people to choose the size of their families. These are the kind of positive actions governments can take, and must take if we’re to address the biodiversity loss we’re facing.”

“It’s our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we’ve inflicted on the planet. If there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn’t really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it — but there are so many of us.”

“This organisation, Population Matters, is so very important, because this is one of the most important issues that we face today. We can’t go on like this, we can’t push human population growth under the carpet. It’s been shown all around the world that as women’s education improves, family size tends to drop. I would encourage every single conservation organisation, every single government organisation, to consider the absurdity of unlimited economic development on a planet with finite natural resources.”

“The climate crisis that now threatens life on Earth as we know it results from a combination of different human activities, including the pollution of land, air and water, our reckless burning of fossil fuels, the destruction of forests, extreme poverty, and the unsustainable life styles of so many of us.  And all of this is impacted by the relentless growth of human populations and their livestock. Educating and empowering women and girls and providing family planning information enables more people to choose the size of their families.  And choosing to have fewer children is one of the most important choices we can make.”

Chris Packham, naturalist and broadcaster, Population Matters Patron (born 1961)

“There’s no point bleating about the future of pandas, polar bears and tigers when we’re not addressing the one single factor that’s putting more pressure on the ecosystem than any other — namely the ever-increasing size of the world’s population.”

“I support Population Matters because they’re the only people pointing out the obvious link between ever more people and ever less wildlife.”

E.O. Wilson, entomologist and conservationist (1929-2021)

“We are in a bottleneck of overpopulation and wasteful consumption that could push half of Earth’s species to extinction in this century.”

“The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical concept.”

Wendo Aszed, Founder, Dandelion Africa

“Kenya is becoming a desert. There’s pressure on the environment because we use charcoal and firewood. The larger the family, the more it consumes. There’s no provision to plant trees because trees cost money. If nothing is done soon there won’t be any resources left. Communities are beginning to realise that it’s better for the eco-system around them if they have smaller families.”  

Carl Sagan, astrophysicist and science communicator (1934-1996)

“Our job is to bring about a worldwide demographic transition and flatten out that exponential curve—by eliminating grinding poverty, making safe and effective birth control methods widely available, and extending real political power (executive, legislative, judicial, military, and in institutions influencing public opinion) to women. If we fail, some other process, less under out control, will do it for us.”

Jacques Cousteau, ocean explorer and conservationist (1910-1997)

“We must alert and organise the world’s people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises — exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.”

Ashley Judd, actor and UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador (born 1968)

“If we invest in girls and women, the world and all of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals will advance forward rapidly as a result.”

“I figured it was selfish for us to pour our resources into making our ‘own’ babies when those very resources and energy could not only help children already here, but through advocacy and service transform the world into a place where no child ever needs to be born into poverty and abuse again.”

Paul Hawken, Founder, Project Drawdown

“Educating girls lays a foundation for vibrant lives for girls and women, their families, and their communities. It is also one of the most powerful levers available for avoiding emissions by curbing population growth.”

Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (born 1997)

“When girls are educated and when they stay in schools, they get married later in their lives, then they have less children and that helps us to reduce the impacts of climate change that the population increase brings.”

Vanessa Nakate, Ugandan climate activist (born 1996)

“Girls who have been to school grow up to be empowered women. They are not forced into early marriage, and they tend to have healthier, smaller families, reducing emissions well into the future.”

Bella Lack, youth ambassador for Born Free Foundation and Jane Goodall Institute (born 2002)

“We keep being fed the idea that somehow population and consumption can keep expanding without any consequences. They can’t. As population grows, the pressure on our planet is heightened. One of the many changes needed to give my generation a chance of a healthy future is for people to recognise that choosing to have fewer children helps relieve that pressure. We should and must be talking about population and family size.”

Adrian Hayes, polar explorer and adventurer, Population Matters Patron (born 1957) “I’ve seen melting ice caps with my own eyes and got very wet in the process, but it is pointless campaigning against climate change or to ‘save the Arctic’ without addressing the root cause behind it and virtually every other environmental issue we face: our unsustainable numbers on this planet. That is the real ‘inconvenient truth’.”

Norman Borlaug, scientist and “father” of the Green Revolution (1914-2009)

“The green revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only…Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the ‘Population Monster’.”

“There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort.”

Albert Einstein, physicist (1879-1955)

“Overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the well-being of many people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organize peace on this planet of ours.”

Martin Luther King Jr, clergyman and activist (1929-1968)

“Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet 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 victims.”

Aisha Khan, Chief Executive, Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change

“Reducing the population growth rate should be our first priority as no other programme, policy or initiative will produce results without managing the numbers.” 

Michael Palin, English actor, comedian, writer, and television presenter

“In all the global-warming figures I’ve seen since COP26, one stands out. In 1943, when I was born, the Earth’s population was 2.3 billion. Now it is nudging eight billion. That’s all you need to know about the causes of global warming. To satisfy this massive, unprecedented growth, we’re taking the place apart.”

Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General (1938-2018)

“The idea that population growth guarantees a better life — financially or otherwise — is a myth that only those who sell nappies, prams and the like have any right to believe.”

“Population stabilisation should become a priority for sustainable development, including a strong focus on the empowerment of women and girls.”

“The principle of contraction and convergence with a population base year should provide the basic framework for global greenhouse gas emission reductions.”

“…reproductive health (is) one of the key tools in the wider battle against poverty.”

Paul Ehrlich, biologist and author, Population Matters Patron (born 1932)

“Saying “it’s only consumption, it’s not the number of people that counts” is like saying “the area of a rectangle is determined only by its width, not by its length”. Certainly, consumption is a big problem. So is population size. The two multiply together to give you your impact on your life support systems.”

“A lot of people think the population problem is too many Indians or too many people in Africa, and so on. Actually, it’s too many people in the United States to start out with. You and I consume much more than the average person in Africa or the average person in India.”

“Overdrafts on aquifers are one reason some of our geologist colleagues are convinced that water shortages will bring the human population explosion to a halt. There are substitutes for oil; there is no substitute for fresh water.”

“Solving the population problem is not going to solve the problems of racism… of sexism… of religious intolerance… of war… of gross economic inequality. But if you don’t solve the population problem, you’re not going to solve any of those problems. Whatever problem you’re interested in, you’re not going to solve it unless you also solve the population problem.”

“Basically, then, there are only two kinds of solutions to the population problem. One is a ‘birth rate solution,’ in which we find ways to lower the birth rate. The other is a ‘death rate solution,’ in which ways to raise the death rate — war, famine, pestilence — find us.”

“Each person we add now disproportionately impacts on the environment and life-support systems of the planet.”

Gordon Buchanan, wildlife filmmaker, Population Matters Patron (born 1972)

“I’ve travelled the globe documenting the most magnificent natural spectacles the world has to offer. But my decades-long career has shown me first-hand how the pressures on the natural world have changed. These pressures are driven by humankind’s growing population.”

Jane Fonda, actor and activist (born 1937)

“There’s lots to worry about these days but you know what worries me most: the news I read day before yesterday that by something like 2045 there will be 10 billion people on the planet — or more! I’m scared. I’ll be gone but I am scared for my grandchildren and for the wild animals and for the whole human race.”

Stephen Hawking, physicist (1942-2018)

“In the last 200 years the population of our planet has grown exponentially, at a rate of 1.9 per cent per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years, by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder.”

“Six years ago, I was warning about pollution and overcrowding; they have gotten worse since then. The population has grown by half a billion since our last interview, with no end in sight. At this rate, it will be eleven billion by 2100. Air pollution has increased by eight per cent over the past five years.”

“Our planet and the human race face multiple challenges. These challenges are global and serious — climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans.”

Emma Woods, UK Royal Society, Head of Policy, Wellbeing

“When it comes to tackling climate change and extreme weather, we ignore population at our peril.”

Professor Norman Myers, environmentalist (1934-2019)

“Many children face a prospect of a world which has been devastated of its forest cover and lost many of its species. Would it not be worthwhile to reinforce that enormous investment in the future, that grand gesture of hope in the future by chipping in just a little bit more, that one penny per day for family planning facilities? To insure that our children inherit a world worth living in. A world where population growth has been slowed to zero, with equity and fairness for all citizens on this planet, and where our environments are safeguarded and restored.”

James Lovelock, scientist and environmentalist (1919-2022)

“Those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational.”

Morgan Freeman, actor (born 1937)

“We have seven billion people on this planet. It’s not that there’s not enough room on this planet for seven billion people, it’s that the energy needs for seven billion people are seven billion people’s worth of energy needs, as opposed to, say, two billion. Imagine how much pollution would be in the air and the oceans if there were only two billion people putting it in? So yeah, we’re already overpopulated.”

Sir Peter Scott, Founder, WWF (1909-1989)

“If the human population of the world continues to increase at its current rate, there will soon be no room for either wild life or wild places…But I believe that sooner or later man will learn to limit his overpopulation. Then he will be much more concerned with optimum rather than maximum, quality rather than quantity, and will recover the need within himself for contact with wilderness and wild nature.”

“You know, I have often thought that at the end of the day, we would have saved more wildlife if we had spent all WWF’s money on buying condoms.”

Sir Crispin Tickell, environmentalist, former Population Matters Patron (1930-2022)

“Population was a big issue about 30 years ago, now it’s not, but I suspect it will come back because it has to be discussed as one of the big environmental problems of our time, it’s one animal species out of control, and the awful thing is that if we don’t control it then Mother Nature will do it for us.”

Professor Aubrey Manning, zoologist (1930-2019)

“Looking across the world at the present time it is obvious to anybody at all who has even the slightest bit of biological knowledge that human numbers are already out of balance.”

Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, economist, Population Matters Patron (born 1942)

“Population growth, poverty and degradation of local resources often fuel one another.”

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama (born 1935)

“One of the great challenges today is the population explosion. Unless we are able to tackle this issue effectively we will be confronted with the problem of the natural resources being inadequate for all the human beings on this Earth.”

“The growth in population is very much bound up with poverty, and in turn poverty plunders the Earth. When human groups are dying of hunger, they eat everything: grass, insects, everything. They cut down the trees, they leave the land dry and bare. All other concerns vanish. That’s why in the next 30 years the problems we call ‘environmental’ will be the hardest that humanity has to face.”

Malcolm Potts, human reproductive scientist, Population Matters Patron (born 1935)

“Rapid population growth is at the center of many of the world’s pressing environmental, economic and security problems.”

“Without a significant slowing of population growth we face irreversible degradation of the natural environment and continued poverty for much of the world.”

Margaret Atwood, author (born 1939)

“The world is finite. For everybody in the world to have the same lifestyle that we [in the West] have now, at only six billion people, would take four additional Earths [in resources].”

Susan Hampshire, actor, Population Matters Patron (born 1937)

“It’s been so obvious to me for so long that cramming ever more people onto our little planet does it ever more damage — I can not understand why so many people find this so hard to grasp, and why so many Governments ignore it.”

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, former UN Under-Secretary-General (born 1946)

“We cannot confront the massive challenges of poverty, hunger, disease and environmental destruction unless we address issues of population and reproductive health.”

Al Gore, former US Vice President (born 1948)

“Population growth is straining the Earth’s resources to the breaking point, and educating girls is the single most important factor in stabilizing that. That, plus helping women gain political and economic power and safeguarding their reproductive rights.”

“One of the things we could do about it is to change the technologies, to put out less of this pollution, to stabilize the population, and one of the principal ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women. You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children to have, the spacing of the children… You have to educate girls and empower women. And that’s the most powerful leveraging factor, and when that happens, then the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.”

Cameron Diaz, actor (born 1972)

“I think women are afraid to say that they don’t want children because they’re going to get shunned. But I think that’s changing too now. I have more girlfriends who don’t have kids than those that do. And, honestly? We don’t need any more kids. We have plenty of people on this planet.”

Lily Cole, model and actor (born 1987)

“It is not feasible to expect a finite planet to support infinite growth. I am most inspired by efforts to improve sex education and contraceptive availability so women have more choice. I believe women have the right to have more children if they wish but that shouldn’t stop us from trying to better understand this issue.”

Blur, band (formed 1988)

“There are too many of us. That’s plain to see.”

Sara Parkin, activist and politician, Population Matters Patron (born 1946)

“…as the soaring demand for food, water and energy is exacerbated by climate change, it is no longer legitimate to leave policies for lowering birth rates off the policy agenda.”

Rex Weyler, Greenpeace Co-Founder (born 1947)

“The wealthy nations and wealthy consumers have, of course, the greatest impact, but sheer numbers do count. There are ways that we can stabilize human population without unpleasantly imposed restrictions, namely with universal women’s rights, education and available contraception.”

Jeremy Irons, actor (born 1948)

“One always returns to the fact that there are just too many of us, the population continues to rise and it’s unsustainable.”

Dr Muhtari Aminu-Kano, Director-General, Nigerian Conservation Foundation

“We should be talking about population and we should be talking about consumption that goes with population. It is true, the average Nigerian, as a single person, does less damage than the average American, British, European or Russian, or any of the others, but then a lot of us do a lot of damage as well. I think it is not ‘either or’, it’s ‘and with’. It’s not a binary issue, really.”

Stasinos, poet (776-580 BC)

“There was a time when the countless tribes of men, though wide-dispersed, oppressed the surface of the deep-bosomed Earth, and Zeus saw it and had pity and in his wise heart resolved to relieve the all-nurturing Earth of men by causing the great struggle of the Ilian war, that the load of death might empty the world. And so the heroes were slain in Troy, and the plan of Zeus came to pass.”

Confucius, philosopher (551-479)

“Excessive (population) growth may reduce output per worker, repress levels of living for the masses and engender strife.”

Aristotle, philosopher (384-322)

“One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property…The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of both revolution and crime.”

Tertullian, writer and theologian (160-220)

“The strongest witness is the vast population of the Earth to which we are a burden and she scarcely can provide for our needs.”

Nicolas Machiavelli, political theorist and philosopher (1469-1527)

“When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere… the world will purge itself in one or another of these three ways (floods, plague and famine).”

Richard Hakluyt, writer (1527-1616)

“Through our long peace and seldom sickness…we are grown more populous than ever heretofore…many thousands of idle persons are within this realm, which, having no way to be sett on work, be either mutinous and seek alteration in the state, or at least very burdensome to the commonwealth.”

Otto Diederich Lutken, clergyman and economist (1719-1790)

“Since the circumference of the globe is given and does not expand with the increased number of its inhabitants, and as travel to other planets thought to be inhabitable has not yet been invented; since the Earth’s fertility cannot be extended beyond a given point, and since human nature will presumably remain unchanged, so that a given number will hereafter require the same quantity of the fruits of the Earth for their support now, and as their rations cannot be arbitrarily reduced, it follows that the proposition “that the world’s inhabitants will be happier, the greater the number” cannot be maintained, for as soon as the number exceeds that which our planet with all its wealth of land and water can support, they must needs starve one another out, not to mention other necessarily attendant inconveniences, to wit, a lack of the other comforts of life, wool, flax, timber, fuel, and so on. But the wise Creator who commanded men in the beginning to be fruitful and multiply, did not intend, since He set limits to their habitants and sustenance, that multiplication should continue without limit.”

Hong Liangji, philosopher (1746-1809)

“Speaking of households, the number of which … there are 20 times more than a hundred years ago … Some people may propose that there would be wild land to cultivate and spare space for housing. But they can only be doubled or tripled, or at most increased five times, whereas the population at the same time could be ten to twenty times larger. Therefore housing and crop fields tend to be in scarcity, while the population tends to be excessive at all time. Given the fact that some households become monopolists, there is no wonder that so many have suffered cold and hunger and even died here and there … How does Heaven deal with the tension? Flood, drought, and pestilence are the means of Heaven to temper the problem.”

James Madison US President 1801-1809 (1751-1836)

“What becomes of the surplus of human life? It is either, first, destroyed by infanticide, as among the Chinese and Lacedaemonians; or, second, it is stifled or starved, as among other nations whose population is commensurate to its food; or, third, it is consumed by wars and endemic diseases; or fourth, it overflows, by emigration, to places where a surplus of food is attainable.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer (1803-1882)

“If government knew how, I should like to see it check — not multiply — the population.”

John Stuart Mill, philosopher (1806-1873)

“There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for a great increase in population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But even if innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of cooperation and of social intercourse, has, in all the most populous countries, been attained. A population, may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated, is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character, and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of land brought into cultivation, which is capable of growing food for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man’s use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the Earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it.”

John D. Rockefeller, business magnate (1839-1937)

“The population problem must be recognized by government as a principal element in long-range planning.”

Bertrand Russell, philosopher (l1872-1970)

“The one real remedy is birth control — that is getting the people of the world to limit themselves to those numbers which they can keep upon their own soil.”

Max Born, physicist (1882-1970)

“Science and technology will then follow their tendency to rapid expansion in an exponential fashion, until saturation sets in. But that does not necessarily imply an increase of wealth, still less of happiness, as long as the number of people increases at the same rate, and with it their need for food and energy. At this point, the technological problems of the atom touch social problems, such as birth control and the just distribution of goods. There will be hard fighting about these problems…”

Helen Keller, author, activist and lecturer (1880-1968)

“Once it was necessary that the people should multiply and be fruitful if the race was to survive. But now to preserve the race it is necessary that people hold back the power of propagation.”

Jawaharlal Nehru, former Indian Prime Minister (1889-1964)

“Some of these (Asian) countries, like India, far from needing a bigger population, would be better off with fewer people.”

Frederick Osborn, philanthropist (1889-1981)

“The process of industrialization should of itself reduce the birth rate if we are to judge by Western experience. But Asia cannot afford the time this transition took in the West.”

Aldous Huxley, writer (1894-1963)

“This is the force which in general terms can be called overpopulation, the mounting pressure of population pressing upon existing resources. This, of course, is an extraordinary thing; something is happening which has never happened in the world’s history before. I mean, let’s just take a simple fact that between the time of birth of Christ and the landing of the Mayflower, the population of the Earth doubled. It rose from 250 million to probably 500 million. Today, the population of the Earth is rising at such a rate that it will double in half a century.”

Pope Paul VI (1897-1978)

“There is no denying that the accelerated rate of population growth brings many added difficulties to the problems of development where the size of the population grows more rapidly than the quantity of available resources to such a degree that things seem to have reached an impasse. In such circumstances people are inclined to apply drastic remedies to reduce the birth rate. There is no doubt that public authorities can intervene in this matter, within the bounds of their competence. They can instruct citizens on this subject and adopt appropriate measures, so long as these are in conformity with the dictates of the moral law and the rightful freedom of married couples is preserved completely intact. When the inalienable right of marriage and of procreation is taken away, so is human dignity. Finally, it is for parents to take a thorough look at the matter and decide upon the number of their children. This is an obligation they take upon themselves, before their children already born, and before the community to which they belong — following the dictates of their own consciences informed by God’s law authentically interpreted, and bolstered by their trust in Him.”

Lyndon B. Johnson, former US President (1908-1973)

  “The hungry world cannot be fed until and unless growth of its resources and the growth of its population come into balance. Each man and woman and each nation must make decisions of conscience and policy in the face of this great problem.”

U Thant, former UN Secretary-General (1909-1974)

“The problem of the growing food shortage cannot be solved without in many cases a simultaneous effort to moderate population growth.”

Kenneth Boulding, economist and President Kennedy’s Environmental Advisor (1910-1993)

“Anyone who believes in indefinite growth of anything physical on a physically finite planet is either a madman or an economist.”

Arne Ness, philosopher (1912-2009)

“The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.”

Richard M. Nixon, former US President (1913-1994)

“One of the most serious challenges to human destiny in the last third of this century will be the growth of the population.”

Robert McNamara, former President of World Bank (1916-2009)

“Short of nuclear war itself, population growth is the gravest issue we face. If we do not act, the problem will be solved by famine, riots, insurrection and war.”

Christian de Duve, biologist (1917-2013)

“We’ve come to use all the resources that are available for our use on the planet…we have to do something about population control, if possible, by birth control.”

Spike Milligan, comedian (1918-2002)

“Overpopulation is a serious issue. The human race will soon have to get used to 12 in a room.”

Pete Seeger, musician (1919-2014)

“The world’s only so big. If that’s true, doesn’t it follow that the human race is far bigger than it should be? Some things are so big, like this population problem, that the best way to tackle them is in small ways. I can sing a song about overpopulation and maybe touch one or two people at a time with it.”

Digby McLaren, geologist (1919-2004)

“If an unseen intelligent being from somewhere else in our galaxy were to visit the Earth, perhaps the most incomprehensible phenomenon it could observe would be that the planet’s apparently wise and competent dominant beings are totally ignorant of the life-support system they are destined to live within. They are, furthermore, unaware that their uncontrolled reproductive capacity has grown to the extent that it is rapidly destroying this system, while they fight among themselves to preserve their freedom to do so.”

Isaac Asimov, author (1920-1992)

“…democracy can not survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn’t matter if someone dies. The more people there are, the less one individual matters.”

“Which is the greater danger — nuclear warfare or the population explosion? The latter absolutely! To bring about nuclear war, someone has to do something; someone has to press a button. To bring about destruction by overcrowding, mass starvation, anarchy, the destruction of our most cherished values-there is no need to do anything. We need only do nothing except what comes naturally — and breed. And how easy it is to do nothing.”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021)

“The more people there are, the more food we need, the more space we occupy, the more resources and consumer goods we wish to have and the more development has to take place in order to employ the extra population. (…) Who is going to be the first to face up to the need for self-restraint in the number of children brought into the world?”

James P. Grant, former UNICEF Executive Director (1922-1995)

“Family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology now available to the human race.”

Professor Albert Bartlett, physicist (1923-2013)

“Can you think of any problem on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted or advanced by having larger populations at the local level, the state level, the national level, or globally?”

Gore Vidal, writer (1925-2012)

“Think of the Earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every 40 years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.”

Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022)

“One must remember that (St. Vincent’s) resources are finite and cannot accommodate indefinite population growth. Families must plan their families just as the Government has to plan the Nation’s development. There can be no long-term stability when the rate of population growth exceeds the rate of job creation.”

Henry Way Kendall, physicist (1926-1999)

“If we do not voluntarily bring population growth under control in the next one or two decades, then nature will do it for us in the most brutal way, whether we like it or not.”

“The destruction of our environment and resources cannot be stemmed unless the growth of the world’s population is stemmed and ultimately reduced.”

“We must…guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions.”

Gunther Grass, author (1927-2015)

“We already have all of the statistics we need for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification and so on. The future is already in place.”

Maurice Strong, former UN Under-Secretary-General (1929-2015)

“Either we reduce the world’s population voluntarily or nature will do this for us, but brutally.”

Karan Singh, politician (born 1931)

“In 1974, I led the Indian delegation to the World Population Conference in Bucharest, where my statement that ‘development is the best contraceptive’ became widely known and oft quoted. I must admit that 20 years later I am inclined to reverse this, and my position now is that ‘contraception is the best development’.”

Baroness Shreela Flather, politician (born 1934)

“With the global population reaching the milestone of seven billion, population size is starting to get the attention it deserves. One of the most effective contributions to solving these problems would be to enable women worldwide to decide their own family size and timing through funding universal access to family planning and through enabling them to exercise their social and economic rights.”

Lester R. Brown, environmentalist (born 1934)

“Our numbers expand, but Earth’s natural systems do not.”

Gloria Steinem, feminist, journalist and activist (born 1934)

“Everybody with a womb doesn’t have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal chords has to be an opera singer.”

George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury (born 1935)

“The overpopulation of this small island nation, already stricken with a mountain of debt that could blight generations, is the gravest crisis we face.”

Pope Francis (born 1936)

“Some people think that — excuse my expression here — that in order to be good Catholics we have to be like rabbits. No. Parenthood is about being responsible. This is clear.”

Marvin Gaye, musician (1939-1984)

“What about this overcrowded land? How much more abuse from man can she stand?”

Sir David King, UK Special Representative for Climate Change (born 1939)

“The prospect of nine billion people is a very big challenge. Basically today we are using the natural resources of the planet at a rate faster than they’re being replenished.”

“The massive growth of the human population through the 20th century has had more impact on biodiversity than any other single factor.”

Michael Palin, comedian (born 1943)

“The greatest politically charged challenge facing our planet? Unchecked population growth.”

Dame Mary Archer, scientist (born 1944)

“The first thing I’d do would be to try to curtail population growth because that puts a strain on so many resources as well as energy — food, land, housing.”

John Holdren, scientist (born 1944)

“If population control measures are not initiated immediately and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come.”

Dame Helen Mirren, actor (born 1945)

“…I think still it is very fine not to want children. There are far too many people in the world. It is my contribution to ecology.”

Joanna Lumley, actor (born 1946)

“I don’t think there’s any denying the fact that there are too many people in the world. I know that’s an awful thing to say, and people say you’re Hitler if you say it, but the human population is growing now so fast, and they need so much more to keep themselves alive — and indeed in developing nations, to reach a standard they would like to reach, i.e. with more cars, more TV sets. Which is completely understandable. But if a hundred people want a new car, that’s one thing — but if a million people want a new car… So I think the green issues — which is the cutting down of forests to make more room to graze more cows to make into more beef burgers — that comes from the quantity of people. And we’ve never addressed that.”

John Gray, philosopher (born 1948)

“…the root cause of mass extinction is too many people.”

“A world of fewer people would be far better placed to deal with climate change than the heavily overpopulated one we are heading for now.”

Babatunde Osotimehin, former Executive Director of UNFPA (born 1949)

“Population growth patterns are linked to nearly every challenge confronting humanity — including poverty reduction, urban pollution, energy production, food and water scarcity and health….Evidence now shows that the voluntary reduction of unwanted fertility also helps to reduce poverty rates…Efforts…to protect women’s rights to education and reproductive health…will create a world in which a stable population with a balanced approach to resource use and consumption will benefit families, communities, and nations.”

Richard Branson, entrepreneur (born 1950)

“The truth is this: the Earth cannot provide enough food and fresh water for 10 billion people, never mind homes, never mind roads, hospitals and schools.”

John Guillebaud, medical doctor and academic, Population Matters Patron (born 1950)

“Should we now explain to UK couples who plan a family that stopping at two children, or at least having one less than first intended, is the simplest and biggest contribution anyone can make to leaving a habitable planet for our grandchildren?”

Barbara Stocking, former Chief Executive of Oxfam (born 1951)

“…it is dangerously misleading to focus solely on population growth or solely on consumption, as we struggle to work out how we can sustain a population of nine billion people on the planet….”

Sir Bob Geldof, musician (born 1951)

“I think the tipping point has been reached. There can’t be more people on the Earth than we can feed.”

Fred Pearce, environmental writer (born 1951)

“Clearly, other things being equal, fewer people will do less damage to the planet.”

Baroness Valerie Amos, former UN Under-Secretary-General (born 1954)

“Population growth puts increased pressure on everything else…Girls and women must be educated. Even a few years’ basic education leads to smaller families.”

Bill Gates, business leader (born 1955)

“The problem is that the population is growing the fastest where people are less able to deal with it. So it’s in the very poorest places that you’re going to have a tripling in population by 2050. (…) And we’ve got to make sure that we help out with the tools now so that they don’t have an impossible situation later.”

Bill Nye, scientist, television host and educator (born 1955)

“In 1750, there were about a billion humans in the world. Now, there are well over seven billion people in the world. It more than doubled in my lifetime. So all these people trying to live the way we live in the developed world is filling the atmosphere with a great deal more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than existed a couple of centuries ago. It’s the speed at which it is changing that is going to be troublesome for so many large populations of humans around the world.”

Lionel Shriver, author (born 1957)

“We need to recognise that slowing population growth is one of the most cost-effective and reliable ways of easing pressure on our environment and securing a sustainable future for us all.”

Kate Humble, television presenter (born 1958)

“There are far too many people in the world…I think one of the most environmentally friendly things you can do is not to have children.”

Jeanette Winterson, author (born 1959)

“Climate change, environmental degradation, overpopulation and war each threaten the future of our life on Earth. They are our own man-made Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

Rupert Everett, actor (born 1959)

“…we’ve got too many children on the planet, so it’s good not to have more.”

James Gasana, former Rwandan agriculture minister (born 1960)

“Rapid population growth is the major driving force behind the vicious circle of environmental scarcities and rural poverty. In Rwanda it induced the use of marginal lands on steep hillsides, shortening of fallow, deforestation, and soil degradation — and resulted in severe shortages of food.”

George Monbiot, writer (born 1963)

“(Population is) an important issue…most greens will not discuss. Is this sensitivity or is it cowardice? Perhaps a bit of both.”

“…if we accept the UN’s projection that global population will grow by roughly 50 per cent and then stop. This means it will become 50 per cent harder to stop runaway climate change, 50 per cent harder to feed the world, 50 per cent harder to prevent the overuse of resources.”

“Even if there were no environmental pressures caused by population growth, we should still support the measures required to tackle it: universal sex education, universal access to contraceptives, better schooling and opportunities for poor women. Stabilising or even reducing the human population would ameliorate almost all environmental impacts.”

Dan Brown, author (born 1964)

“Overpopulation is an issue so profound that all of us need to ask what should be done.”

Julia Bradbury, presenter (born 1970)

“I’m passionate about the world we live in and the enormous burden of the population. We can’t keep using the Earth as a bottomless pit.”

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A crowded street in Calcutta, India, reflects the looming threat of overpopulation, which will further strain resources already in limited supply.

As World’s Population Booms, Will Its Resources Be Enough for Us?

New projections of escalating growth increase the tension between humanity’s expanding needs and what the planet can provide.

There are more than 7 billion people on Earth now, and roughly one in eight of us doesn't have enough to eat. The question of how many people the Earth can support is a long-standing one that becomes more intense as the world's population—and our use of natural resources—keeps booming.

This week, two conflicting projections of the world's future population were released. As   National Geographic's   Rob Kunzig   writes here , a new United Nations and University of Washington   study in the journal Science says it's highly likely we'll see 9.6 billion Earthlings by 2050, and up to 11 billion or more by 2100. These researchers used a new "probabalistic" statistical method that establishes a specific range of uncertainty around their results. Another study in the journal   Global Environmental Change projects that   the global   population will peak at 9.4 billion later this century and fall below 9 billion by 2100, based on a survey of population experts. Who is right? We'll know in a hundred years.

Population debates like this are why, in 2011, National Geographic published a series called "7 Billion" on   world population , its trends, implications, and future. After years of examining global environmental issues such as   climate change ,   energy ,   food supply , and   freshwater , we thought the time was ripe for a deep discussion of people and how we are connected to all these other issues—issues that are getting increased attention today, amid the new population projections.

After all, how many of us   there are,   how many children we have, how long we live, and where and how we live affect virtually every aspect of   the planet upon which   we rely to survive: the land, oceans, fisheries, forests, wildlife, grasslands, rivers and lakes, groundwater, air quality, atmosphere, weather, and climate.

World population passed 7 billion on October 31, 2011,   according to the United Nations . Just who the 7 billionth person was and where he or she was born   remain a mystery ; there is no actual cadre of   census takers who go house to house in every country, counting people.Instead,   population estimates are made by most national governments and international organizations such as the UN. These estimates are based on assumptions about existing population size and expectations of fertility, mortality, and migration in a geographic area.

We've been on a big growth spurt during the past century or so. In 1900, demographers had the world's population at 1.6 billion, in 1950 it was about 2.5 billion, by 2000 it was more than 6 billion. Now, there are about 7.2 billion of us.

For Hungry Minds

In recent years we've been adding about a billion people every 12 or 13 years or so. Precisely how many of us are here right now is also a matter of debate, depending on whom you consult: The United Nations offers a range of current population figures and trends, the   U.S. Census Bureau has its own estimate, and the   Population Reference Bureau also tracks us.

The new UN study out this week projects that the world's population growth may not stop any time soon. That is a reversal from estimates done five years ago, when   demographers—people who study population trends—were projecting that   by 2045, world population likely would reach about 9 billion and begin to level off soon after.

But now, the UN researchers who published these new projections in the journal   Science say that a flattening of population growth is not going to happen soon without rapid fertility declines—or a reduction in the number of children per mother—in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa that are still experiencing rapid population growth. As Rob Kunzig wrote for National Geographic, the new study estimates that "there's an 80 percent chance . . . that the actual number of people in 2100 will be somewhere between 9.6 and 12.3 billion."

A History of Debates Over Population

In a famous 1798 essay,   the Reverend Thomas Malthus proposed that human population would grow more rapidly than our ability to grow food, and that eventually we would starve.

He asserted that the population would grow geometrically—1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32—and that food production would increase only arithmetically—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So food production would not keep up with our expanding appetites. You might imagine Malthus' scenario on geometric population growth as being   like compound interest :   A couple have two children and those children each produce two children. Those four children produce two children each tomake   eight, and those eight children each have their own two kids, leaving 16 kids in that generation. But worldwide, the current median fertility rate is about 2.5, (or five children between two couples) so, like compound interest, the population numbers can rise even faster.

Even though   more than 800 million people worldwide don’t have enough to eat now , the mass starvation Mathus envisioned hasn't happened. This is primarily because advances in agriculture—including   improved plant breeding and the use of   chemical fertilizers —have kept global harvests increasing fast enough to mostly keep up with demand. Still,   researchers such as   Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Ehrlich continue to worry that Malthus eventually might be right.

Ehrlich, a   Stanford University population biologist, wrote a 1968 bestseller called   The Population Bomb , which warned of mass starvation in the 1970s and 1980s because of overpopulation. Even though he drastically missing that forecast, he continues to argue that   humanity is heading for calamity .   Ehrlich says the key issue now is not just the number of people on Earth, but a dramatic rise in our recent consumption of natural resources, which Elizabeth Kolbert explored in 2011 in an article called   "The Anthropocene — The Age of Man."

As part of this   human-dominated era, the past half century also has been referred to as a period of   "Great Acceleration" by   Will Steffen at   International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. Besides a nearly tripling of human population since the end of World War II, our presence has been marked by a dramatic increase in human activity—the damming of rivers, soaring water use, expansion of cropland, increased use of irrigation and fertilizers, a loss of forests, and more motor vehicles. There also has been a sharp rise in the use of coal, oil, and gas, and a rapid increase in the atmosphere of methane and carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases that result from changes in land use and the burning of such fuels.

Measuring Our Rising Impact

As a result of this massive expansion of our presence on Earth, scientists Ehrlich, John Holdren, and Barry Commoner in the early 1970s devised   a formula to measure our rising impact, called IPAT, in which (I)mpact equals (P)opulation multiplied by (A)ffluence multiplied by (T)echnology.

The IPAT formula, they said, can help us realize that our cumulative impact on the planet is not just in population numbers, but also in the increasing amount of natural resources each person uses.   The graphic   above, which visualizes IPAT, shows that the rise in our cumulative impact since 1950—rising population combined with our expanding demand for resources—has been profound.

IPAT is a useful reminder that population, consumption, and technology all help shape our environmental impact, but it shouldn’t be taken too literally. University of California   ecologist John Harte has said that IPAT ". . . conveys the notion that population is a linear multiplier. . . . In reality, population plays a much more dynamic and complex role in shaping environmental quality."

One of our biggest impacts is agriculture. Whether we can grow enough food sustainably for an expanding world population also presents an urgent challenge, and this becomes only more so in light of these new population projections. Where will food for an additional 2 to 3 billion people come from when we are already barely keeping up with 7 billion? Such questions underpin a 2014   National Geographic series on   the future of food .

As climate change damages crop yields and   extreme weather disrupts harvests , growing enough food for our expanding population has become what The 2014 World Food Prize Symposium calls " the greatest challenge in human history ."

Population's Structure: Fertility, Mortality and Migration

Immigrant women at a Sikh festival in Spain. Research suggests that the more education a woman receives, the fewer children she is likely to have.

Population is not just about numbers of people. Demographers typically focus on three dimensions— fertility, mortality, and migration —when examining population trends. Fertility examines how many children a woman bears in her lifetime, mortality looks at how long we live, and migration focuses on where we live and move. Each of these population qualities influences the nature of our presence and impact across the planet.

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The newly reported higher world population projections result from   continuing high fertility in sub-Saharan Africa .   The median number of children per woman in the region remains at 4.6, well above both the global mean of 2.5 and the replacement level of 2.1. Since 1970, a global decline in fertility— from about 5 children per woman to about 2.5 —has occurred across most of the world: Fewer babies have been born, family size has shrunk, and population growth has slowed. In the United States,   fertility is now slightly below replacement level .

Reducing fertility is essential if future population growth is to be reined in.   Cynthia Gorney wrote about the dramatic story of declining Brazilian fertility as part of   National Geographic's 7 Billion series. Average family size dropped   from 6.3 children to 1.9 children per woman over two generations in Brazil, the   result of improving education for girls, more career opportunities, and the increased availability of contraception.

Mortality —or birth rates versus death rates—and   migration (where we live and move) also affect the structure of population. Living longer can cause a region’s population to increase even if birth rates remain constant. Youthful nations in the Middle East and Africa, where there are more young people than old, struggle to provide sufficient   land, food, water, housing, education, and employment for young people. Besides the search for a life with more opportunity elsewhere,   migration also is driven by the need to escape political disruption or declining environmental conditions such as chronic drought and food shortages.

A paradox of lower fertility and reduced population growth rates is that as education and affluence improves,   consumption of natural resources increases per person . In other words, (as illustrated in the IPAT graphic here) as we get richer, each of us consumes more natural resources and energy, typically carbon-based fuels such as coal, oil, and gas. This can be seen in consumption patterns that include higher protein foods such as meat and dairy, more consumer goods, bigger houses, more vehicles, and more air travel.

When it comes to natural resources, studies indicate we are living beyond our means. An ongoing   Global Footprint Network study says we now use the equivalent of 1.5 planets to provide the resources we use, and to absorb our waste. A study by the Stockholm Resilience Institute has identified a set of   "nine planetary boundaries" for conditions in which we could live and thrive for generations, but it shows that we already have exceeded the institute's boundaries for   biodiversity loss, nitrogen pollution, and climate change .

Those of us reading this article are among an elite crowd of Earthlings. We have reliable electricity, access to Internet-connected computers and phones, and time available to contemplate these issues.

About   one-fifth of those on Earth still don't have have access to reliable electricity . So as we debate population, things we take for granted—reliable lighting and cooking facilities, for example—remain beyond the reach of about 1.3 billion or more people. Lifting people from the darkness of   energy poverty could help improve lives.

Children read the Koran using flashlights in Wantugu, Ghana. Eliminating energy poverty could help education rates, which by extension could help rein in overpopulation.

As World Bank Vice President   Rachel Kyte told Marianne Lavelle of National Geographic last year, "It is energy that lights the lamp that lets you do your homework, that keeps the heat on in a hospital, that lights the small businesses where most people work. Without energy, there is no economic growth, there is no dynamism, and there is no opportunity."

Improved education, especially for girls ,   is cited as a key driver of declining family size. Having light at night can become a gateway to better education for millions of young people and the realization that opportunities and choices besides bearing many children can await.

So when we debate population, it's important to also discuss the impact—the how we live—of the population equation. While new projections of even higher world population in the decades ahead are cause for concern, we should be equally concerned about—and be willing to address—the increasing effects of resource consumption and its waste.

Dennis Dimick led creation of the 2011 National Geographic series "7 Billion," and is National Geographic's executive editor for the Environment. You can follow him on Twitter, Instagram , and flickr.

Related Reading and Resources

National Geographic 7 Billion Series 2011

United Nations World Population Trends

2014 Population Data Sheet from Population Reference Bureau

Population Reference Bureau Interactive World Population Map

Grist: Hungry, Hungry Humans Series

Global Post: Half the World’s Population Lives in these six countries

Pew Fact Tank 10 projections for world population in 2050

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How to stop overpopulation before we reach 10 billion people on Earth

• global issues

Overpopulation: Causes, Effects, and Solutions Essay

Introduction, causes of overpopulation, effects of overpopulation, solutions to overpopulation, works cited.

The concept of overpopulation of the planet is not new. There is a finite amount of space and resources that the planet can offer, and technological advances can only mitigate the situation so much. The first scholar to consider the idea of overpopulation was Thomas Malthusian, who brought it up in a work called “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” He managed to outline the reasons for population growth such as the improvement of standards of living, an abundance of food, and advanced medicine (Barbier 4).

When Malthusian made his predictions, however, he did not consider technological progress. The apocalypse he predicted was averted through innovations in technology and agriculture. Today, in 2016, humanity faces the problem of overpopulation once more. Despite many who dismiss the threat of overpopulation, it is much more real now than it was in 1796, as natural resources are now much fewer than they used to be and the population – much larger.

Although different scholars point to different factors that influence population growth, the core ones remain the same. These factors include the following:

• Advances in food production and agriculture;
• Advances in industry and production;
• Advances in medicine; and
• Poor family planning (Barbier 92).

It is obvious that these four factors are the ones that affect population growth the most. Advances in food production and agriculture create a surplus of food, which allows for population growth without famine as a natural barrier to curb it. Advances in industry and production provide clothes and items for the growing population to use, thus creating and maintaining a higher standard of living. Modern medicine curbs child mortality and effectively prolongs peoples’ lives.

Lastly, poor family planning means families become large and produce many children, with no regard for how it affects the environment. Together, these factors have contributed greatly to the incredible population growth rates today.

Many scholars have identified the disastrous effects overpopulation has on the environment. There are main three points of concern to which overpopulation will inevitably lead:

• Depletion of natural resources;
• Degradation of the environment; and
• Resource wars (Barbier 75).

With consumer culture on the rise, the population requires increasingly more materials to maintain their high standards of living. Everybody wants to have an iPhone, and everybody feels the need to have a personal vehicle. While certain resources, such as wood and energy, are renewable, the rest are not. Eventually, Earth will face a resource crisis, which is only sped up by the ever-increasing population (Toth and Szigeti 284).

More people mean a quicker degradation of the environment. Humanity, in general, has a negative influence on nature. Therefore, the more humans there are, the worse the impact is. This fact is especially true for developing countries, where advances in medicine and agriculture promote population growth, but eco-technologies and recycling are not yet implemented (Cafaro and Crist 75).

As natural resources become more and more depleted, resource wars will follow. Covert resource wars are already being waged, as major powers confront one another over the oil basins located in the Middle East. This competition will become even fiercer in the future as non-renewable resources become less and less common.

There are two popular paths to take when trying to solve the overpopulation problem. The first deals with the roots of overpopulation itself and are aimed at lowering the number of births through state programs, family planning, sex education, and other such initiatives. Such a strategy is already implemented in China, where the government imposes severe financial penalties for having more than one child. The country was forced to face the overpopulation problem earlier than most due to the unprecedented population growth it experienced in the decades prior.

The second route is not aimed at lowering the population but rather at providing for them. This approach involves recycling, using renewable energy, developing eco-clean technologies, and implementing other ideas that slow down and reduce the damage caused by the excess population. Looking for materials and resources outside the planet is futuristic, but it represents a viable strategy nonetheless. Eventually, humanity will have to look for resources in space, as it is impossible to create a completely self-sustaining resource model – some resources will inevitably be lost in the recycling process.

Combining both of these paths into one all-consuming strategy seems like the most reasonable and effective approach to mitigating the problem of overpopulation. Introducing statewide policies on birth control – in addition to popularizing recycling, using renewable energy, and minimizing the damage to the environment – would severely reduce the dangers presented by overpopulation and would buy humanity more time to find a permanent solution (Barbier 184).

As it stands, the effort to combat overpopulation is in its infancy. Outside of a couple of concerned governments who have to deal with overpopulation at home, nobody seems to give the issue the proper attention it deserves. If humanity is to overcome this problem, a united stance and a complex approach are required. This effort would require cooperation between different nations on all levels, as well as a vast informative campaign to make sure the general populace understands the need for such initiatives. Without such a joint effort, any local attempt to deal with the situation at home would have a limited effect.

Barbier, Edward. Economics, Natural-Resource Scarcity and Development, New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.

Cafaro, Phillip, and Eileen Crist. Life on the Brink, Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation, London: The University of Georgia Press, 2012. Print.

Toth, Gergery, and Cecilia Szigeti. “The Historical Ecological Footprint: From Over-Population to Over-Consumption.” Ecological Indicators 60 (2016): 283-291. Print.

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IvyPanda . 2020. "Overpopulation: Causes, Effects, and Solutions." October 3, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/overpopulation-combating-analysis/.

1. IvyPanda . "Overpopulation: Causes, Effects, and Solutions." October 3, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/overpopulation-combating-analysis/.

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IvyPanda . "Overpopulation: Causes, Effects, and Solutions." October 3, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/overpopulation-combating-analysis/.

• The Impact of Overpopulation on the Global Environment
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• Capitalism and Democracy - Social System Analysis
• China and India Population: Causes, Impact and Management
• Urban Climacteric in Davis' "The Planet of Slums"
• Population Dynamics and Increase Reasons
• Malthus’s Demographic Disaster and Its Prevention
• Population Growth Control and Malthus’ View on It

• Ideas for Action
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• Why Join the MAHB?
• Current Associates
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• What is the MAHB?
• Who is the MAHB?
• Acknowledgments

A Brief on Overpopulation – Why it Matters and What You Can Do About It

Erin Brown | April 4, 2023 | Leave a Comment

Photo by Candace McDaniel on StockSnap

As humanity has surpassed the 8 billion people milestone, it is more important now than ever to talk about population. What will we do if we continue to grow at exponential rates? What are ethical, viable strategies to decrease population?

“First off, let me get this straight, discussing addressing overpopulation does not mean discussing killing people. The goal is actually to prevent it.” – Dr. Jane O’Sullivan

Current world population in January 2023: 8 billion

The current rate of population growth is around 80 million people per year. There are over 8 billion people on the planet, the last billion added in less than the last 12 years. 

The Earth’s first billion people milestone took from the beginning of human history until the 1800s to be achieved. Then, due to the industrial revolution, humanity reached the second billion mark by 1930 (taking only 130 years), reached the third billion in 1960 (only took 30 years), then reached the fourth billion by 1974 (only took 14 years), and the fifth billion by 1987 (only took 13 years). We hit 6 billion in 1999 (which took 12 years) and hit 7 billion in 2011 (which took about 12 years). At the current growth rate, the world population will reach 9 billion by 2037 and 10 billion by 2057.

The growth rate is declining, but not at a fast enough rate to combat the exponential compound growth. The growth rate was 2% in the 1970s. Now it is 1.05%. Any growth rate above 1% means we are still adding more people to the planet every year. 

What is overpopulation? 

Overpopulation is a human population in numbers high enough to cause environmental deterioration, impaired quality of life, or population crash. 

Why is overpopulation an issue? 

Overrun natural resources can only lead to death by starvation, conflict, and disease, and the only viable alternative is voluntary restraint on human births.

What is carrying capacity?

Carrying capacity is defined as the maximum population of a species that an area will support without undergoing deterioration. 

Paul R. Ehrlich and other scientists estimate the world’s optimum population for carrying capacity (at a comfortable standard of living – editor’s note) to be less than two billion people – 6 billion fewer than on the planet today. “But the longer humanity pursues business as usual, the smaller the sustainable society is likely to prove to be. We’re continuously harvesting the low-hanging fruit, for example by driving fisheries stocks to extinction” – Paul Ehrlich says.

How do we revert population overshoot to a sustainable population level? 

Geologist Art Berman explains population overshoot this way: “Overshoot means that humans are using natural resources and polluting at rates beyond the planet’s capacity to recover. The main cause of overshoot is the extraordinary growth of the human population made possible by fossil energy. Concerns about overshoot and population raised more than 40 years ago were dismissed. Climate change has captured public awareness more recently although many doubt that it is an emergency. Overshoot is more difficult to dispute; it destroys rainforests, leads to the extinction of other species, the pollution of land, rivers, and seas, the acidification of the oceans, and the loss of fisheries and coral reefs. People understandably want to know the solutions. Overshoot is the problem we must address. Any plan that includes continued growth is doomed to fail.”

What can we do?  Jane O’Sullivan outlines the two options for addressing population overshoot – i ncrease the Earth’s carrying capacity or decrease population.

Increasing Earth’s carrying capacity

We are already doing this by (a) using fewer natural resources per person, or (b) increasing productivity by finding more ways to use resources. This only defers the problem and creates collateral damage. 

Decreasing population numbers

If we talk about this now, the hope is to increase our options for solutions. One of the biggest challenges to facing overpopulation head-on and discussing a decreasing population are the stigmas and myths associated with reducing human population numbers. An elaborate set of myths has emerged in opposition to reducing population levels. These myths may prevent even environmentalists from viewing overpopulation as an issue.  Jane O’Sullivan elucidates on the following six myths that make inaction a virtue.

Myth 1 – The human population is stabilizing, and birth rates are decreasing

Truth – Birth rates started declining in the 1970s-90s due to family planning, but not low enough. The number of mothers is still increasing faster than family planning is decreasing the birth rate .  We are still having more births per year than ever before. The total fertility rate has decreased, but as fertility decline has slowed to a trickle, the number of total births has continued to increase. 

Myth 2  – China is the only one with the problem and they used cruel methods (one-child policy)

Truth – Family planning programs have helped many countries successfully reduce births through voluntary means, including China, before the one-child policy.

Myth 3 – Poverty causes population growth, therefore development is the best contraceptive

I.e., family planning is unnecessary and inefficient as long as there is development.

Truth – If this was true, we would see the population decline as development increases. However, it is the decrease in fertility rates that drove economic development, not the other way around. This myth is therefore “correlation implying causation” in the wrong direction. The poorest countries could lower their population by family planning just as quickly as rich countries if they choose to prioritize it.

Countries of families with four or more children, on average, have the lowest level of development; in families with 3 children or fewer the level goes up by some degree, and with two or fewer children development soars. The current focus should be on expanding provisions for teachers, doctors, equality, etc. instead of just giving people what they need. 

Myth 4 – Educating girls is the key to ending population growth

Truth – Another indirect approach that excludes a discussion on the benefit of small families and ending population growth. Educating girls helps but not much unless it is also flanked by family planning efforts. Family planning has a stronger effect on women regulating their fertility, decreasing the fertility gap between the educated and uneducated, and with family planning, girls are more likely to stay in school.

Myth 5 – Population growth is good for the economy

Truth – This makes people poorer as shown under Myth #3. 

Myth 6 – Population growth in poor nations does not matter because of their “tiny carbon footprint”

Truth –  Population growth is a greater threat than climate change. The best way for anyone to decrease their carbon footprint is to have one less kid.

Therefore, family planning is the most economical way to a sustainable future.

What action can each of us take?

1. Discuss smaller family sizes with your partner, family, and friends – how do we aim for birth rates lower than two children per couple?

2. Share information about the environmental impacts of population growth with friends and family. Advocate for action to reduce and reverse population growth.

3. Reassess concerns about aging   – how can we shift away from worshipping eternal youth, to accepting and valuing the entire life cycle? 

4. Celebrate population decline – what are possible depopulation dividends? 

5. Support organizations and efforts that support family planning and women’s education.

Damien Carrington, an environmental editor at The Guardian, interviewed Prof. Paul Ehrlich about the solutions:

“The solutions are tough,” Ehrlich says. “To start, make modern contraception and backup abortion available to all and give women full equal rights, pay, and opportunities with men. Focus on overconsumption and equity issues. Specifically women’s rights and the explicit countering of racism.”

Ehrlich also says that an unprecedented redistribution of wealth is needed to end the over-consumption of resources, but “the rich who now run the global system – that hold the annual ‘world destroyer’ meetings in Davos – are unlikely to let it happen…Too many rich people in the world is a major threat to the human future, and cultural and genetic diversity are great human resources… It is a near certainty in the next few decades, and the risk is increasing continually as long as the perpetual growth of the human enterprise remains the goal of economic and political systems. As I’ve said many times, ‘perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell’.”

If cultural and genetic diversity are great human resources, how can the rich and the poor come together across the world to solve this issue?

Anne and Paul Ehrlich expand on their “vision for a cure” :

“Rich white people love to hold meetings to discuss the ‘population problem’ which always ends up focusing on the very real demographic difficulties of those with darker skin tones, especially people who live in Africa and Latin America. But isn’t it really time for the poor people of the world, especially those not in need of tanning beds, to extend a helping hand to the major villains of the destruction of humanity’s life-support systems? Could they not hold an educational conference in Washington, D.C. to explain why civilization is going down the drain, to the per-capita most environmentally destructive giant nation on the planet? Leaders from the “South” could both organize the event and supply experts to educate the wealthy and middle class on their ethical responsibilities and ways to meet them. We envision learning sessions on topics such as:

• Avoiding the second child.
• The population problem beyond numbers: inequality and waste of talent. 
• Are borders ethical?
• Population shrinkage for politicians.
• GDP shrinkage for economists.
• Do Trump and his colleagues prove that the lighter your skin, the lighter your brain?
• Citizens United: It’s time for euthanasia for corporations.
• Redistribution and survival.
• Disbanding “Murder Incorporated”: gun manufacturers and big pharma.
• How to end plastic production.
• The historical contributions of the global South to the food enjoyed by the North.
• How biodiversity loss is accompanied by the loss of human cultural diversity.
• We know our populations are growing too fast; how to help us help ourselves?
• Why anti-abortion laws kill poor women.

You can doubtless think of others. The possibilities are endless”.

References: 

Berman, Art. The Climate-Change Trip to Abilene. July 13, 2022.  https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/the-climate-change-trip-to-abilene/

Carrington, Damien. Interview with Paul Ehrlich: Collapse of civilization is a near certainty within decades. July 9, 2020.  https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/22/collapse-civilisation-near-certain-decades-population-bomb-paul-ehrlich

Ehrlich, Anne H.; Ehrlich, Paul R. Overpopulation In America -And Its Cures. November 14, 2019.  https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/overpopulation-america-cures/

O’Sullivan, Jane. The tenth presentation at the Delivering the Human Future Conference. Titled: The Future of the Human Population. March 21, 2021.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shUNJPLpXpQ

Population Statistics.  https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

The MAHB Blog is a venture of the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere. Questions should be directed to [email protected]

Can We Talk About Overpopulation?

As numbers soar, scholars revisit a thorny debate.

Twenty years ago, farmers looked out at the tropical woodlands and savannahs of Uganda and saw endless virgin territory. A young man, upon starting a family, would clear a patch of wilderness near where he was raised and plant his own fields of sorghum, millet, groundnut, plantains, or cassava.

Now, after decades of unprecedented population growth, the land is running out. In southern Uganda, as in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, farm communities are bumping up against one another and against dry lands, mountains, and rain forests. Pockets of arable land can still be found, but only in malaria-ridden hinterlands where nobody wants to live. Many farmers, rather than relocating long distances, are clearing rain forests near their homes, despite the fact that a tropical forest’s acidic soil is poorly suited to growing grains, fruits, and vegetables. Other farmers are subdividing their parents’ land, reducing the typical-sized farm plot in some parts of Africa to half an acre.

“That’s too small to feed a family,” says economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, who directs Columbia’s Earth Institute.

Africans will never be able to grow enough food for themselves, Sachs argues in his latest book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet , unless they start having fewer babies. Subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa today raise an average of six children, which is causing the populations of some nations to double every 20 years. Few of these farmers are able to feed their children properly, let alone afford their education. Children thus grow up desperately poor and have huge families of their own. Shrinking farm plots add yet another burden: Food production on a per-capita basis is declining and malnutrition is worsening, which means that children are likely to grow up even less healthy and less productive.

“The poorest places in the world right now are stuck in a demographic trap,” says Sachs. “A family of subsistence farmers with six or seven kids doesn’t stand a chance.”

The only way to break this cycle of overpopulation and misery, Sachs writes in Common Wealth , is for wealthy nations to provide birth control to the world’s poor. Sachs recommends that rich countries quadruple foreign assistance for reproductive health programs to roughly $25 billion annually. That’s enough money, he estimates, to provide birth control, as well as maternal health care and STD treatment, to some 200 million women who lack it; most of them live in rural Africa.

The prospect of giving poor people contraceptives so they can lift themselves out of poverty might not seem particularly controversial, aside from the opposition that might be expected from some religious conservatives. Yet Sachs is the first mainstream economist in decades to formally propose this idea. Since the 1980s, family planning programs have been promoted strictly as a human right, not as a way to kick-start economic development. That’s because Western family planners in the 1960s and 1970s, in their zeal to slow population growth and to spur development in Asia, supported forced sterilizations, slum demolitions, and other abuses. Women’s rights advocates subsequently wrested control of international family-planning programs and made sure they never again aimed explicitly to lower birthrates.

The days of promoting birth control purely as a way to empower women, however, may be ending. There is a growing sense among scholars that the topic of overpopulation — which has faded from public consciousness as the world’s population growth rate has declined from its mid-1960s peak of 2 percent annually down to about 1.2 percent — is going to reemerge as a hot topic. Recently, the Sierra Club, the Worldwatch Institute, and other environmental groups have offered recommendations similar to those in Common Wealth , in which Sachs urges that we halt world population at 8 billion by 2050, rather than allowing it to grow to 9 billion from today’s 6.7 billion, as the UN projects.

Still, many population experts wonder: Is the marriage bed really the place to address economic and environmental problems? Is it even possible to manage people as numbers while respecting them as human beings?

Don’t blame the victim

Joel E. Cohen, a Columbia demographer, is an expert on population growth and environmental sustainability. He cringes at the term overpopulation .

“I have no idea what that word means, and you’ll never hear me use it,” he says. “It suggests that the size of a population can become so big that it starts causing problems in itself. That’s not the way it works. I’d put the situation this way: Rapid population growth makes it trickier for a poor country to deal with every problem that it faces, from distributing food and water during a drought to providing education and health care in rural areas. But it doesn’t cause these problems.”

There’s wide agreement among economists and demographers today that rapid population growth is troublesome. A report published in April by the UN Population Division concludes that high birthrates are hampering economic development across sub-Saharan Africa, mainly by limiting per-capita investments in education and health care. (Columbia economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin has shown that high birthrates typically stunt economic development.) The UN report also states that population pressure is worsening food and water shortages in the region. Environmental concerns also are real: rain forests in sub-Saharan Africa and in South America are being destroyed primarily by subsistence farming, according to NASA data, and deforestation is reducing local rainfall and exacerbating global climate change.

Cohen’s concern is that people often imagine a direct causal link between population growth and problems like hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation. It’s easy to think this way when visceral images of teeming third-world slums and starving masses invite human-scale explanations: Why do these people have so many babies? Cohen says we then may ignore political factors that contribute to these problems. For instance, agriculture subsidies in rich nations contribute to hunger by driving down farm incomes in the developing world; and African governments are famous for mismanaging food and water supplies. “During the Ethiopian famines of the 1980s, cash croppers in that country were allowed to export alfalfa to Japan as cattle feed,” he says. “Is that a population problem? I don’t think so.”

Cohen agrees with Sachs that international family-planning programs are underfunded. But he says that family planning should continue to be promoted — both to Western donors and to government officials in developing countries — strictly as a human right. To advance birth control as a means to slow population growth, Cohen says, implies that poor people need to solve their societies’ problems through private choices of childbearing. Might this cause the West to back away from other aid obligations, or inspire poor countries to implement coercive methods of population control?

Cohen hesitates. “It’s not as if a developing country’s problems are going to vanish if it manages to lower birthrates,” he says. “I would say that until the West has done its utmost to give poor people access to education, health care, job training, and family planning for the purpose of giving them more control over their lives, it’s premature to talk about trying to convince them to have fewer babies.”

Dirt to dust

Sachs insists that we speak clearly about population pressures. The problem of dwindling farmland in sub-Saharan Africa, he says, is insurmountable without a major effort to slow population growth.

As arable land in Africa has vanished, Sachs explains in Common Wealth , farmers have abandoned land-management techniques they used previously to sustain the long-term fertility of their fields, such as allowing one of the fields to lie fallow each season. Three-quarters of all arable land in sub-Saharan Africa today is severely depleted of nutrients because it has been overused, according to a recent study by the International Center for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development.

A doubling of the region’s population since the early 1980s helps explain why almost all of sub-Saharan African countries now depend on foreign food aid. Until a few years ago, most were food exporters . “There’s a tyranny of the present at work,” Sachs writes, “and the poor, in their desperation to survive, are often contributing to massive local environmental degradation.”

Population control isn’t the only way to address food shortages, of course. Sachs points out that farmers in sub-Saharan Africa can’t afford chemical fertilizers, high-yield seed varieties, or modern irrigation. He and colleagues at the Earth Institute, as part of the United Nations Millennium Villages project, which Sachs initiated, are helping the governments of a dozen nations in Africa introduce modern farm technologies. They’ve had some remarkable success: The tiny, famine-prone nation of Malawi has tripled its grain yields in the past two years by subsidizing chemical fertilizer for all farmers.

“The problem is that these kinds of agricultural improvements never will produce gains to keep pace with a doubling of population every generation,” Sachs says.

Other types of foreign aid, such as for education or health care, also will bring diminishing returns if population growth rates don’t decline, says Sachs, who is academia’s most influential proponent of aid to Africa. He says that countries in sub-Saharan Africa now must spend huge portions of their budgets providing basic services, which leaves little money for the type of agricultural investment that Malawi is making in its fertilizer program. Economists thus say that countries experiencing explosive population growth must expend their budgets on “service widening,” to deliver basic services to more and more people, rather than on “service deepening,” to improve average services per person.

“If people continue having huge numbers of kids, and if farm sizes continue to shrink,” Sachs says, “I can’t imagine how the next generation is going to make it.”

Sordid history

Back in the 1960s, the populations of many poor countries in Asia, Latin America, and North Africa were growing as rapidly as the populations in sub-Saharan African countries are today. International health programs had gone into former colonies in these areas following World War II with antibiotic drugs, vaccines, and pesticides, which lowered mortality rates dramatically. Farmers in poor countries had always had lots of babies: They needed to, in order to ensure that at least one son grew up to work their fields and to take care of them in their old age. The problem was that while more of their children were surviving, rural people retained a cultural proclivity for huge families. Furthermore, they had little or no access to modern birth control, so they ended up with even more kids than they would have otherwise chosen.

Population growth soon was outpacing food production, especially in Asia, causing Western officials to fear that widespread famine would destabilize the continent, Columbia history professor Matthew Connelly explains in his latest book, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population . President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers viewed the situation through a lens of Cold War–inspired paranoia: Johnson, speaking to U.S. troops stationed in South Korea in 1966, warned that hordes of starving Asians might one day “sweep over the United States and take what we have.” His fear didn’t seem so irrational: 19 Nobel laureate scientists in 1960 had issued a public letter decrying how overpopulation could push the world into “a Dark Age of human misery, famine, and under-education, which could generate growing panic, exploding into wars.”

So in the late 1960s, the U.S. government began pouring tens of millions of dollars annually into international family-planning programs. The programs were administered primarily by Planned Parenthood, under the auspices of the newly formed United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which was financed largely by U.S. dollars and which claimed that its programs provided contraceptives, sterilization procedures, and abortions on a voluntary basis. In reality, American and British economists and demographers had designed these programs to slow population growth by nearly any means necessary, according to Connelly.

South Asian countries with caste systems were willing to push family planning most aggressively, Connelly writes, because many ruling-class Hindus feared social unrest among the hungry lower castes. So Indian officials, under the guidance of Western family planners, agreed to pay famished people small sums of money to be sterilized; they also agreed to fire doctors who didn’t meet sterilization quotas. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka implanted in women a type of intrauterine contraceptive device that was proven to cause infections and the rupturing of the uterine wall. Couples in all of these countries lost medical, housing, and education benefits for having more than a designated number of children. When local health officials balked at implementing aggressive programs, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the UN threatened to shut off Western food aid.

The endgame for this chapter of family planning started to unfold in 1975, when Indira Gandhi’s government bulldozed entire blocks of Delhi slums where large numbers of residents refused to be sterilized. Around the same time, police rounded up at gunpoint all of the men in the Indian village of Uttawar and forced them to get vasectomies. These atrocities drew international outrage and led to Gandhi’s being voted out of power the following year. They also prompted a backlash from feminists and women’s rights advocates who were assuming leadership roles within the NGO community in the 1970s.

International family-planning programs, which by this time had spread throughout Latin America and North Africa, gradually abandoned coercive methods over the next few years. The population control movement would have one last gasp, though, when UNFPA and Planned Parenthood helped China launch its draconian one-child policy in 1979.

Women’s choice

By the late 1980s, the UNFPA and Planned Parenthood had cleaned up their programs so that medical workers on the ground no longer were expected to lower birthrates. Clinicians now concentrated on helping women make informed choices about their sex lives and childbearing. If family planning executives discussed the prospect of slowing population growth in public, Connelly says, it was only as an ancillary benefit of giving women more control over their bodies.

“The term population control has since had a negative connotation, as well it should,” Connelly tells Columbia .

The economic benefits of slowing population growth, though, were apparent: as birthrates plummeted in most of the developing world, prosperity and modernization typically arrived. The governments of many countries in Asia and Latin America, now that they had proportionately fewer poor people to care for, could afford to invest in industry and modern agricultural methods, which boosted grain production 300 percent in some nations between the 1960s and the 1980s. (Connelly, in Fatal Misconception , makes the controversial argument that family planning programs have received too much credit for declining birthrates, and hence for development; see sidebar to the left.)

The good news for women’s rights advocates was that voluntary family-planning programs seemed to have lowered birthrates just as much as had coercive programs. For instance, a UN-sponsored program that had offered birth control pills to all poor women in Thailand in the 1960s, on the advice of a young field-worker named Allan Rosenfield, who later became dean of Columbia’s public health school, helped to halve the number of children born per woman in that country, from six to three, in less than 20 years. Across the developing world, birthrates declined where family planners provided a range of safe contraceptives and taught people the benefits of limiting their family size — not only where they bribed people to be sterilized or threatened tax penalties.

Yet, just as family planning programs were beginning to define a new humanitarian mission, funding stagnated. The trouble started during Ronald Reagan’s first term as president, Connelly writes, when the emerging pro-life movement in the U.S. launched a major lobbying effort against international family-planning programs. Abortion opponents called attention to the fact that Planned Parenthood and UNFPA were providing technical assistance to China for its country’s one-child policy, which in the mid-1980s was in its most coercive phase, allegedly requiring some women to have abortions and to be implanted with intrauterine devices. “It was not much,” writes Connelly, “but it was enough of a perch to permit pro-lifers to pile calumny upon calumny on China’s program and all who could be associated with it.” Since then, every Republican president has refused to contribute to UNFPA, which is the primary source of funding for international family-planning services. Partly as a result, financial support for international family planning has remained flat, which means that the funding hasn’t kept pace with increasing demand as populations in poor countries continue to climb.

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to most women who lack access to birth control today in part because family planning programs arrived to the region late, in the 1980s, when the money had already begun to dry up, say family planning executives. Family planning came to Africa late, they say, because international health programs, with their ensuing population boom, had arrived late, too.

A lack of money isn’t the only thing that has kept family planning from many Africans, though: “There is mistrust in some nations about family planning programs because of their checkered past,” Connelly says. “In African countries where there are ethnic tensions, for instance, it can be politically difficult for leaders to implement family planning programs because many people fear that they’ll be used to reduce the populations of some groups, and not others.”

Counting backward

Today, UN-backed family-planning programs operate in nearly all developing countries. If the UNFPA were better funded, say its proponents, birth control would be more available in rural Africa as well as in many Muslim and Catholic countries, where Western family planners must work hard to educate local leaders about the benefits of reproductive health services.

How to raise the money? Advocates for family planning are doing a lot of soul-searching these days. Many leaders in the NGO community believe that family planning organizations would be better financed if they once again promoted their work as a way to slow population growth, says Suzanne Petroni, a researcher who monitors funding for reproductive health programs at the Summit Foundation, a Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit that promotes environmental sustainability.

“The sense among many family planners is that they’re getting less money than they used to from Western donors, in part because their programs are no longer connected to a practical purpose,” says Petroni. “They believe that the human rights pitch hasn’t worked.”

Particularly tempting to some family planners, Petroni says, is the prospect of exploiting public concerns about global warming. The sales pitch would go something like this: if we limit the number of people on earth, we limit the number of carbon footprints. (Sachs validates this logic in Common Wealth , warning that decades from now, when the crowded nations of sub-Saharan Africa modernize — and Sachs is optimistic that they will modernize eventually — energy consumption on the continent will skyrocket.)

Many women’s rights advocates fear that if family planning programs are positioned once again as a means to combat overpopulation, the door will open for more human rights abuses, Petroni says. This debate within the aid community is contentious because there remains distrust between feminists and some older environmentalists who backed the original population-control movement.

Matthew Connelly sides with the women’s rights advocates. He was convinced in writing Fatal Misconception , he says, that family planning programs that aim to lower birthrates are bound to commit abuses. He found, for instance, that crimes occurred in the 1960s and 1970s even when Western family planners tried to operate their programs ethically: medical workers in several South Asian countries strong-armed patients into accepting sterilizations because they thought that lowering birthrates was good for their own careers, and family planning programs inevitably devoted more resources to sterilization procedures and to abortions than to follow-up care.

Connelly worries that Western nations, if their aid programs once again were promoted as a means to slow population growth, would be tempted to withhold other forms of development aid from countries if they don’t lower birthrates to specified levels.

Lynn Freedman, a Columbia public health professor and an attorney who is an expert on population issues, concurs. “The idea that foreign aid could be linked to a country’s success at lowering birthrates is not wildly unlikely,” she says. “Aid agencies today are in the habit of designing all sorts of performance targets in order to account for the efficiency of their programs, and these targets can easily be misused in a way that violates people’s rights. The ’60s weren’t that long ago.”

Sachs doesn’t see that happening. “The worst I could imagine is that an agency might attempt to link a country’s family- planning money to birthrate reductions,” he says, “but I don’t think that other kinds of foreign aid would be linked in this way.” He also dismisses as unrealistic the possibility that international family-planning programs could once again employ coercive methods. Family planning programs must, and will, remain voluntary, he believes.

The greater moral danger today, Sachs argues, is that large numbers of women will continue to want for birth control, and populations will continue to grow rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa and in places like Haiti, Bolivia, Venezuela, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Myanmar, in part because Western scholars and aid workers insist on tiptoeing around the subject of overpopulation for fear of being seen as insensitive to the abuses of the past. In Common Wealth , Sachs even advances the term population control, which has long been considered impolitic among scholars, because he says he wants to break the taboo.

“For years people have been telling me, ‘Don’t talk about population, talk instead about access to reproductive health services,’” Sachs says. “And I’ve said, ‘No, I want to talk about population, because it’s a serious problem.’ I think it’s time we take this subject out of the whispers.”

Birth control, under audit

Columbia professor Matthew Connelly’s Fatal Misconception, a history of the population-control movement of the 1960s and 1970s, is shocking for its parade of morally compromised scholars and diplomats who spread birth control around the world. There’s Planned Parenthood head and ecologist William Vogt, who thought that starving people in the developing world should be left to die and therefore opposed food aid; there’s Robert McNamara, who, as head of the World Bank, resisted funding healthcare programs in poor countries because they saved lives and contributed to overpopulation; there are the Planned Parenthood doctors who at a 1963 UN conference decided that a female contraceptive’s tendency to pierce the uterus, causing sterilization, was to be considered a side benefit.

Fatal Misconception was among the most controversial scholarly monographs of 2008, not just because Connelly calls out early family planners as xenophobic and racist, however. His most startling critique is that these programs didn’t even lower birthrates as designed: he says that between 1950 and 2000, the dozen or so developing nations that employed the most aggressive family- planning tactics reduced birthrates little more than did other countries. Relying on UN data, Connelly notes that China, for instance, reduced the number of children per woman from 6.2 to 1.7 during that 50-year period. In Brazil, where little effort was made to encourage family planning, the numbers fell from 6.2 to 2.3 children during the same period. Connelly lists half a dozen such examples to make his point. He then argues that girls’ education, women’s employment, and other social factors affected birthrates more so than did family planning programs.

“In many poor countries where birthrates declined dramatically,” Connelly tells Columbia, “the declines actually started before family planning programs even showed up.”

How could people have managed to have fewer babies without contraception? The same way they did in early-19th-century Europe, where birthrates plummeted a full century before modern birth control became available, Connelly says: They used traditional forms of birth control like the rhythm method.

Connelly charges that UN and Planned Parenthood officials who administered most family-planning programs in the 1960s and 1970s knew that data on the ground weren’t validating their efforts. They soldiered on, he says, because of institutional inertia. “These programs gave jobs to millions of people, and administrators weren’t interested in scrutinizing the numbers,” he says. “They were interested in making payroll.”

Many contemporary family planners are apoplectic over Connelly’s assertion that birth control programs don’t lower birthrates. Steven Sinding, a professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and past director-general of Planned Parenthood International, has blasted Connelly over his book’s conclusions. Sinding claims that about 50 percent of birthrate declines in poor countries are attributable to family planning programs.

Columbia called T. Paul Schultz, a Yale economics professor who has spent his career studying birthrate dynamics. This subject invites confusion, he says, because no long-term controlled studies have ever been conducted. That’s partly because there are a multitude of factors that influence birthrates, so aid agencies whose programs target any one of these areas are reluctant to fund expensive, long-term studies to showcase the relatively small impact that their work likely has on fertility. The dearth of data, Schultz says, allows both advocates and opponents of family planning to cherry-pick statistics.

But the most sophisticated data available, collected over two decades in Bangladesh, Schultz says, suggest that the availability of free contraception accounted for about 20 percent of the region’s birthrate decline. That’s a strong relationship, considering how many variables were tested, he says. “The intuition of development experts has always been that family planning must slow population growth,” Schultz says, “and I’ve never seen any good data that suggest otherwise.”

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Introduction: Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot

The following essay was written by William Ryerson, President of Population Media Center, as the Introduction to Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot. 

MOST CONVERSATIONS ABOUT POPULATION begin with statistics—demographic data, fertility rates in this or that region, the latest reports on malnutrition, deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change, and so on. Such data, while useful, fails to generate mass concern about the fundamental issue affecting the future of the Earth. In reality, every discussion about population involves people, the world that our children and grandchildren will live to see and the health of the planet that supports all life. In my roles as president of Population Media Center and CEO of the Population Institute, I spend most of my time in developing countries, where many of my friends and acquaintances are educated and prospering. But I also know individuals who are homeless, unemployed, or hungry. The vast majority of people in these societies, regardless of their current status, do not enjoy a safety net. They live from day to day in hopes that their economic circumstances will improve. Abstract statistics on poverty are irrelevant to families struggling to secure the food, water, and resources needed to sustain a decent life. Those who blithely dismiss the challenges posed by population growth like to say that we could physically squeeze 7 billion people into an area the size of Texas. They don’t stop to consider the suffering already caused by overpopulation. The population debate is not about the maximum number of people that could be packed onto the planet. The crucial question is: How many people can the Earth sustain, at a reasonable standard of living, while leaving room for the diversity of life to flourish? There is no precise answer to this question, but the facts overwhelmingly support one conclusion: We cannot go on the way we are going. We are already doing severe and irreparable harm to the planet. Something has to give. If we cannot live sustainably with 7.2 billion people, how are we going to support billions more by the end of this century? The United Nations’ latest “medium-variant” projection indicates that we could have 10.9 billion people by 2100, but that may be an underestimation. Fertility rates in many parts of the world are not falling as fast as previously anticipated. In some countries, both developed and developing, fertility rates are actually on the rise again. In 2014 the global total fertility rate—the average number of children born to each woman during her lifetime—was 2.5. If this rate were to remain unchanged, demographers suggest that we could have 27 billion people on the planet by the end of the century. Given our limited inheritance of soil, water, and arable land, sustaining a global population of that size is not even remotely possible. As vividly illustrated by this book, human numbers and activity are already destroying the planet’s ecological integrity—running roughshod over myriad other species. But it’s not just the environmental damage we’re inflicting that should concern us. Equally appalling is how our actions threaten humanity’s future prospects. We have passed a crucial tipping point. Our quest for greater and greater material prosperity is now impoverishing future generations. The Global Footprint Network estimates that humans already use 150 percent of the Earth’s renewable capacity annually, and it estimates further that by 2030 we will need “two planets” to sustain us. Further growth simply deepens the crisis of ecological “overshoot” as we draw down Earth’s carrying capacity, and it comes at the direct expense of our own children and grandchildren. Is that any kind of way to behave? If you care about people, you must care about what we are doing to the planet. If you care about what we are doing to the planet, you must also care about human numbers. Given a planet with infinite space and resources, population growth could, arguably, be a blessing. We do not live on such a planet. However, there was a time when the Earth and its resources appeared boundless. Some people still adhere to that anachronistic belief. If nothing else, the photographs in this book should shatter that illusion. Many of us today do recognize that the Earth and its resources are limited, yet too many people still cling to the notion that modern science and technology will enable us to defy physical limits. In the Middle Ages, alchemists sought in vain for a “philosopher’s stone” that would convert base metals into gold. They never succeeded. Why? Because what they were looking for did not, and could not, exist, because its existence would have violated the physical laws governing the universe. Modern-day alchemists are trying to find ways of sustaining perpetual growth in a finite and increasingly resource-constrained world, searching for a scientific or technological breakthrough that will enable us to keep growing indefinitely. Like the philosopher’s stone, it does not exist. Our faith in breakthroughs is misplaced, as amply demonstrated by the past three hundred years of scientific and technological advances that have accelerated, not slowed, the degradation of the natural world. Even if scientists were to develop a relatively cheap, abundant, and clean form of energy that powered continuous economic and population growth, it would only accelerate the rate at which humanity is destroying the ecological systems that make the planet habitable. In the meantime, while we are waiting for magical breakthroughs, we are in a headlong race to extract and consume fossil fuels at whatever the cost to the Earth. Scientists warn that we will fry the planet if we burn all the world’s known reserves of coal, gas, and oil, but that concern has not slowed the relentless exploration for more fossil fuels. An ever-expanding human population and rising demand for products and services makes humanity’s hunger for fossil fuels utterly insatiable. Some cling to the notion that we can achieve sustainability by reducing consumption in the overdeveloped world. As meritorious as that idea may be, it has no critical mass of support. A growing number of political leaders are supporting the idea of “greener” or “smarter” growth, but there is not a single politician of significant stature in the world calling for slower economic growth, no growth (a steady-state economy), or de-growth. Yes, there are individuals who are trying to reduce their carbon and ecological “footprints,” but their numbers, for the moment, are dwarfed by the growing numbers of people who want to expand their ecological footprint through additional consumption. Much of humanity, of course, desperately needs a larger share of Earth’s resources. More than 2 billion people in the world live on less than $2 per day. Nearly a billion people go to bed hungry every night. About half the people in the world do not have access to toilets or other means of modern sanitation. I do not know of anyone who would deny these people a better quality of life, but if world population continues to grow as currently projected, many, if not most, of these people will never have their most basic needs realized, let alone fulfill their aspirations. The world is not that bountiful. I wish it were, but it is not. If we have any hope of bringing about a genuine balance between what humans demand of nature and what nature can reasonably provide for humanity, we must take crucial steps. Starting with the first step, we must devote more resources to preventing unplanned pregnancies through expanded access to contraceptives. Women everywhere should have the means to time, limit, or space their pregnancies. But greater access to contraceptives alone will not suffice. In those countries where population growth is most rapid today, girls and women lack reproductive choice; they live in traditionally male-dominated societies where large families are still the norm. Large-family norms, misinformation, and cultural barriers account for most decisions to not use contraception. If we do not enable girls to remain in school and delay marriage until adulthood, provide accurate information, and empower women in the developing world, then we will have failed countless individuals. Moreover, in the face of this humanitarian failure, fertility rate declines may continue only very slowly, or not at all—but certainly not fast enough to avoid the kind of human suffering that results when countries are overpopulated. In many parts of the world, child marriage is still prevalent. It is estimated that some 14,000 girls become child brides each day. In some areas, particularly poor rural communities, parents require their daughters—who have not yet reached puberty—to wed men who are twice or three times their age. Child brides do not enjoy reproductive choice in any meaningful sense. Most are condemned, if they survive childbirth, to having many children, and their families are condemned, in turn, to a life of continued poverty and deprivation. As important as it is to reduce unplanned pregnancies in the developing world, it is just as important to do so in the overdeveloped world, where the per capita consumption of resources is so much greater. Nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned, and while America’s teenage pregnancy rate is declining, it remains the highest among industrialized nations. Shockingly, several state legislatures in recent years have slashed support for family planning, resulting in dozens of clinics having to either close their doors or limit services. These individual and community-level actions, in aggregate, have global consequences. The leading scientists of the world are concerned that we are approaching as many as nine planetary tipping points, which, if surpassed, would cause irreparable harm to the environment and the well-being of future generations. We have already crossed one boundary in terms of greenhouse gas emissions; the climate is changing, and we have already inflicted incalculable harm on posterity as a result. Because of population growth and changing diets, the world’s demand for food is projected to rise by 70–100 percent over the next forty years. No one knows how we will meet that demand. Cultivated farmlands already occupy a land mass the size of South America, and ranchlands used for livestock grazing occupy a land mass the size of Africa. There’s very little arable land left; most of it is in the form of tropical forests, which if cut down to expand agriculture would accelerate biodiversity loss and further complicate efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. Water scarcity in many parts of the world has already reached crisis proportions. Demand for water is expected to outstrip supply by 40 percent within the next twenty years. As one research organization put it, we will need the equivalent of 20 Nile Rivers—which we do not have—to meet demand. By 2030, an estimated 3.9 billion people, nearly half the world’s population, will be living in areas of high water stress. We live today in a “Catch 22” world, where addressing one urgent problem often exacerbates another. If we double food production to feed a growing world, we expand greenhouse gas emissions. If we discover and exploit more fossil fuels, we fry the planet. If we reduce our water consumption, we curtail our food production. If we grow the world’s middle class, we increase the pressure on Earth’s natural ecosystems. There is, however, one exception to our “Catch 22” world, and that concerns population. Viewed from almost any angle, addressing population is a win-win proposition. By empowering girls and women in the developing world and expanding family planning services and information everywhere, we produce a world of good: Fertility rates decline; maternal and child health improve; food security increases; poverty decreases; education and economic opportunities expand; and degradation of the environment is curtailed. In discussions about family planning and its many benefits, the health of nature is often an afterthought. Far too often it is overlooked entirely. We tend to see the well-being of people as somehow distinct from the well-being of the Earth. Some even see the environment as being in “competition” with humans. The obvious truth, although unacknowledged by some, is that we are not separate or distinct from nature. Our hopes and our fate are inextricably linked to the fate of the natural world. We are part of a complex web of interdependent life, and our welfare depends upon the health of the whole. When life took hold on this planet it produced millions of species that have lived and evolved and produced both wondrous beauty and diversity. We modern humans are both products of and beneficiaries of that evolutionary process. We are, however, acting as ungrateful beneficiaries. Scientists tell us that we are exterminating our fellow plant and animal species at a rate that is a hundred or even a thousand times faster than the natural rate of extinction. Leading biologists now warn that human numbers and activity are triggering the “sixth mass extinction,” the largest since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago. As a young man, after earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in biology with a specialization in ecology and evolution, my interest in moths and butterflies was so strong that I seriously considered becoming a lepidopterist. Many of the species that piqued my interest as a college student are now in danger of becoming extinct. Even the common Danaus plexippus, otherwise known as the monarch butterfly, is fast approaching endangered status. Its winter habitat in Mexico has shrunk dramatically. Biologists warn that herbicide use is decreasing availability of the milkweed plants, limiting a primary food source for monarchs and thus diminishing their numbers. But it’s not just the monarch butterfly that is imperiled. Every year there are fresh reports about the senseless slaughter of elephants, rhinos, lions, tigers, and other “megafauna.” Some of their population decline is attributable to poachers seeking to harvest ivory or other body parts, but much of the dramatic decline has been caused by an ever-increasing loss of habitat. Many of these animals live in areas, like sub-Saharan Africa, where human fertility rates equate to a doubling of the human population every thirty or forty years. In my college days, we were taught that, since the end of the last Ice Age about 12,000 years ago, humans have been living in the Holocene Epoch, but our impact upon the planet and its environment has become so great that some geologists today suggest we change the epoch’s name to the “Anthropocene,” or “Age of Man.” To most scientists, that development is a frightening prospect; it means that we are changing the planet—for the worse—on a global scale. Some scientists, though a distinct minority, insist that we can “manage” this change; that we can strike a balance with nature that will allow us to feed, clothe, and meet the economic aspirations of an additional 3 or 4 billion people moving forward. As well illustrated by the photographs in this book, that line of thought reflects the worst kind of wishful thinking. Our 7.2 billion on the planet are already doing grave harm to the biosphere. Several decades ago, a cartoon character named “Pogo” made popular the oft-quoted saying: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” We might say this today in regards to the challenge the world faces, only it’s not a comic matter. If we are to reduce severe poverty, defeat hunger, and bring about a sustainable world, we must achieve change on a global scale, beyond just our consumption habits, and that change must begin with us. This conviction led me to work for the Population Institute more than forty years ago and subsequently spurred me to establish the Population Media Center fifteen years ago. Despite the widespread belief that simply making contraceptives more widely available can stabilize world population, there are other reasons why women in the developing world end up having more children than they might otherwise desire, as revealed through the Demographic and Health Surveys supported by USAID (United States Agency for International Development). In reality, many of these women have no reproductive choice. Child brides often have nothing to say about how many of their own children they will have or when. Some women abstain from using contraceptives because of misinformation or blatant lies about the possible side effects or risks of using modern methods of contraception. Still other women have more children than they want because of fatalism, or religious teachings, or insistent in-laws who want more grandchildren. At the Population Media Center (PMC) we create long-running serial dramas (soap operas) that serve to educate women about their contraceptive choices. Using a methodology based upon the “social learning” theories of the great Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura and the programs developed by Miguel Sabido, the vice president of Televisa in Mexico, we work with in-country teams to develop long-running dramas, generally broadcast via radio, that provide positive role models for men and women in the developing world. Our listening audiences learn from popular “transitional” characters who are torn between good and bad influences. In the process the characters and the listening audience discover the benefits of family planning and small family norms. Our programs also address the deeper social stereotypes that demean women and effectively deny them reproductive choice. When girls are educated, women are empowered, and gender equity is achieved, women tend to have smaller, healthier families. By changing attitudes and behavior toward girls and women we can improve their lives, the well-being of their families, and prospects for the planet and our posterity. At PMC we also use the “Sabido methodology,” as it is now known, to achieve positive social change with respect to environmental conservation. In Rwanda, our radio programs have encouraged farmers to participate in reforestation programs aimed at restoring natural habitats and preserving the land for future generations. Similarly, we can use our programs to alter harmful consumption patterns or promote sustainable agricultural practices. The potential is enormous. WHILE THE OBSTACLES before humanity are real, we should be careful not to overestimate the difficulty of following the path of the United Nations’ lowest population projections, which show a possible global stabilization as soon as the year 2050. Achieving this stabilization is a challenge, but it is far from an insurmountable one. The United Nations estimates that it would cost an additional $3.5 billion per year to provide contraceptive information and services to the more than 220 million women in the developing world who want to avoid a pregnancy but who are not using a modern method of contraception. (That’s less than 4 percent of what Americans spend on beer each year.) That’s a very small price to pay for a more sustainable world. Combine that investment with efforts through entertainment mass media and other means to change attitudes and behavior towards girls and women in the developing world, and we can stabilize world population at 8.3 billion and then begin a gradual reduction in the total number of humans on the planet as soon as 2050. If we can hew to the United Nations’ low variant demographic projection, by 2100 global population would be back down to 6.7 billion—more than 4 billion fewer than can be expected in the business-as-usual, medium variant projection of the human population trajectory. Such numbers may seem incomprehensible but the reality is that these two possible futures—one of 6 billion versus 10 billion humans to feed, clothe, educate, and employ—is the difference between a world of scarcity and nightmarish suffering for much of humanity and a world in which it may be possible to balance the needs of people and nature. Put another way, a population difference of 4 billion—the result of either staying complacent or working hard to share family planning tools and information around the globe—is 46 percent more than the current combined populations of North America, Central America, South America, Oceania, Europe, and Africa (roughly 2.7 billion)! While I am deeply concerned about the future of humanity and the planet, I’m not a pessimist. It’s not too late. There are things that we can do to achieve a harmonious world and many of the steps that are required, like PMC’s radio programs, do not require an enormous investment of resources. Time, however, is beginning to run out. Given the central role that population dynamics will play in determining the welfare of future generations, what the world needs today is a wake-up call. This book is that wake-up call. The photographs to follow are emotionally jarring. The thoughts expressed herein are not reassuring; they are deeply provocative. But that is the nature of wake-up calls. The way that human numbers and behavior are transforming the Earth, undermining its ability to support the human family and the rest of life, is apparent for all to see. The reality of this urgent moment calls us to think, to care, and to act.

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Essays on Overpopulation

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Impact of Overcrowded Living on Mental Health

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Haiti’s Development Issues with Overpopulation and Poverty

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Increasing urbanization and problem of housing the lower class population: affordable housing, affordable housing: the increasing problem of housing in india, causes of animal overpopulation and the importance of addressing them, overpopulation in africa: the importance of education and economics, overpopulation: clear understanding of the problem and human solutions, globalization: why the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer, cultural perspectives on overpopulation challenges, global issue of overpopulation: solutions of one-child policy, education's impact on overpopulation: strategies and perceptions, the causes, effects, and consequences of overpopulation, global challenges of overpopulation: cooperation and conflict, migration: implications of overpopulation pressures, overpopulation's impact on global markets, colonialism's impact on overpopulation and resources, population growth and decline: historical impacts, cultural norms impacting population growth, overpopulation's impact on social inequality, health challenges in overpopulated regions: risks and strategies, managing population growth: legal frameworks analyzed, relevant topics.

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An Essay on the Principle of Population

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“It is an obvious truth, which has been taken notice of by many writers, that population must always be kept down to the level of the means of subsistence; but no writer that the Author recollects has inquired particularly into the means by which this level is effected: and it is a view of these means which forms, to his mind, the strongest obstacles in the way to any very great future improvements of society.” 

This sentence summarizes both Malthus’ philosophy and his motive for writing his Essay on the Principle of Population . He declares other great thinkers have noticed that population only grows as their means of subsistence increases. However, not many have attempted to find the reasoning behind this, and the lack of understanding is keeping society from progressing. By doing so, he justifies the reasoning behind his writing his Essay while imbuing the work with a great degree of social significance.

“It has been said that the great question is now at issue, whether man shall henceforth start forwards with accelerated velocity toward illimitable, and hitherto unconceived improvement, or be condemned to a perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery, and after every effort remain still at an immeasurable distance for the wished-for goal.”

The issue highlighted above, that of the perfectibility of humankind, is discussed throughout Malthus’s entire work. This quote provides an important contextual cue, which indicates that the topic of societal progress was, in Malthus’s time, a widely discussed topic. Although it is not seen in this quote, Malthus later engages the writings of Marquis de Condorcet and William Godwin, who are both proponents of progress.

“The advocate for the present order of things is apt to treat the sect of speculative philosophers either as a set of artful and designing knaves [...] or as wild and mad-headed enthusiasts whose silly speculations and absurd paradoxes are not worthy of attention of any reasonable man.” 

This quote evidences one side of the equation on the topic of societal progress. The conservative faction, who are unimpressed by the methodology and optimistic outlook of the progressives, seek to paint them as unscientific. Malthus demonstrates through this passage his acute observation of the back-and-forth between his contemporaries.

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Essay on Overpopulation for Students and Children | PDF Download

Overpopulation is one of the unfortunate things that expose troubles to the people of the world. At present days the population of the world is running at a high rate and can’t get controllable. The planet Earth is carrying huge people rather than the actual capacity of the people. Overpopulation is the cause of the distraction of environmental pollution and natural disasters. Similarly, the below essay on Overpopulation  has included all the needed information, impacts, and many others. Essay on Overpopulation contains the reasons for the rapid increase, vast people and their needs, and many more.

Short Essay on Overpopulation

Overpopulation refers to an extension in the count of people rather than the limited count of living . As the world contains only 30% of land for the existence of human lives on earth. The enlargement of land is highly impossible on earth and within the available land hills, mountains, rivers, covers some amount of land area. The capacity of people to live freely with all human needs is only limited count. As the population is increasing day by day the needs of people, land, and many others were increasing. Overpopulation is becoming an issue because of the scarcity of needs and lands that arises in the lives of the people. As the count of people increasing water, food, oxygen, etc will also have demand. Besides overpopulation , there is a huge loss for environmental conditions. The hole in the ozone layer, Increase sea level, melting of Antarctica and many other high-level losses are arising with overpopulation.

There are some Causes of Overpopulation are high birth rate , increase in Life span, High level of illiteracy, improper mortality rate, and many others. These causes will have an impact on the lives of the humans that existed on the earth. The problems or the impacts faced by humans due to overpopulation are poverty, Unemployment , improper nutrition, increase in the cost of living, health issues, etc. Overpopulation in the world is due to the overpopulated countries of the world, these countries will have a high birth rate every year due to improper rules and laws . The overpopulated countries will have many problems like the economy, scarcity of natural resources, and many more. Overpopulation was not obtained within the year or months it was happening for a long time, so it will not get into control within the limited time. All the countries should come together to work on controlling the population around the world.

Long Essay on Overpopulation

Overpopulation is one of the undesirable issues in the present day of the world. Overpopulation refers to the over-limit of human beings that exists on earth . The Earth contains every less land space for the existence of living beings on earth. In the limited part of the land on earth, hills, rivers, forests, lakes occupy some areas of land. As with human beings, other living organisms need the land to exist their lives on earth as parallel. With the increase in population the demand for land and water also increasing as similarly.

Why overpopulation had become an issue? . As the population increases the scarcity of natural resources and deforestation increases. With the increase of human beings, the need for transportation and other basic needs also increases. With the increase of Population, development, and technology are also increasing to reduce the physical work of human beings. During the development, some of the activities cause harm to the environment. As the level of green on earth is decreasing which is leading to a decrease in the level of oxygen and tends to global warming. Because of Global warming, there is an increase in temperature level and due to this, the melting of Antarctica increases the sea levels.

However, in all the ways the overpopulation will be the harm for human life to exist on Earth. The causes of Overpopulation are increasing birth rate, enhancement of life spams, high illiteracy, improper rules for family planning, the need for youth in past, and many others. These causes are due to the improvement of technology and also depend on the present population . As medical technology is increasing the span of human beings increasing and now there is transplantation with the failure parts of the body.

Overpopulation has a high level of drawbacks like an increase in unemployment, depletion of the economy of the countries, scarcity of resources, improper nutrition, less education rate, the demand for cultivation, etc. There are many populated countries like China, India, America that don’t look after the increase of population in their countries. India and China contain nearly 35% of the world population in their countries. There are a lot of health issues that occur and diseases will spread easily as the people live in a limited area with high density. The population density of the world per sq km is 15 people but in countries like Bangladesh , it is 1,252 people per sq km. By this, the countries have less hygiene and low immunity, and more health issues.

The conclusion of the Essay on Overpopulation  is the population can get into control by decreasing the birth rates and some strict rules . But to control the population is not a simple task and can’t be done in a limited period. So all the countries come together and work for population control and conserve the natural resources for future generations. Governments of the countries should come together and frame the laws and rules for the controlling of population and save the environment . The reduction of the population is the only answer for many environmental problems and endangered species on earth.

Quotes on Overpopulation

• The strongest witness is the vast population of the Earth to which we are a burden and she scarcely can provide for our needs.
• The hungry world cannot be fed until and unless the growth of its resources and the growth of its population come into balance
• We urgently need to either start increasing the size of our planet or stop increasing the size of our population.
• The problem of the growing food shortage cannot be solved without in many cases a simultaneous effort to moderate population growth.
• Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of that problem. It has to be addressed.
• The point of population stabilization is to reduce or minimize misery.
• Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today
• Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.
• Either we reduce the world’s population voluntarily or nature will do this for us, but brutal
• Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it’s time we controlled the population to allow the survival of the environment.

Conclusion: We believe that the above essay on overpopulation  had provided helpful and useful information for your needs. The above essay on Overpopulation will be helpful for students at exams and competitions, Aspirants of UPSC & SSC .

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Essay on Population Growth with Quotations in English

Here is an example of an Essay on Population Growth with Quotations in English for the students of FSC, 2nd Year. Fast Population Growth is a phenomenon of developing countries like Pakistan. This essay is decorated with appropriate quotations. Essay content has been taken from Sunshine English (Comprehensive-II). This essay is especially being posted here for the students of Class 12. Students can write the same essay under the title, Essay on Population Growth, Overpopulation Essay, Essay on overpopulation, overpopulation problems essay, essay on causes of overpopulation, essay on population, human overpopulation essay, population growth in Pakistan essay. For more, you can visit Essays for FSC Students .

Human Population Growth in Pakistan Essay with Quotations for Students of FSC (Class 12) and Graduation

People are the real force of a country. They are the real asset for a country. But when the population of a country increases without any check, it causes a social and economic mess. Currently, the world has become well aware of the gravity of overpopulation. Though plenty of measures have been taken to control the population, the crisis still persists.

“Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today”. (Jacques Yves Cousteau)

The most obvious cause of overpopulation in Pakistan is ignorance and illiteracy. About 80% of our population lives in villages. They do not have any idea of the problems of overpopulation. Even if some of them may be aware of the gravity of the problem, they usually do not have any knowledge of how to control it. They do not have any idea of contraceptives. Some of them think that they should have a large family. It would enhance their force and influence in their respective social circle.  Moreover, many of them think that having more male children is a cause of pride for them.

“Democracy Cannot Survive Overpopulation”. (Isaac Asimov)

In villages, marriages are held at an early age. There people keep on producing children till old age and they do not get old until they have produced dozens of children. They do not bother to educate them or to give them any professional or technical training. Some people do not have any male issues. Though they do have many daughters, they have an ardent desire to have a male issue. They think that having a male issue would be the continuation of their bloodline. Thus they continue producing children until they get a male issue that they think is the continuation of their breed.

Pakistan is an Islamic state. In Islam polygamy is allowed. People are allowed to have four wives at a time. To have more wives means to have more children. Polygamy is common in rural areas. In these areas, people prefer to have more than one wife. They think it to be show off their masculine power. Thus this inclination of people further aggravates the situation of the population in the country.

“The greatest threat to human existence is our own lack of ability to control our own growth”. (Garrett Hardin)

Lastly, the government has failed to implement population planning policies. Many policies have been introduced up till now but none of them has produced the desired effects. Moreover, the cultural and religious factors have proved to be the hurdle in the real implementation of these policies.

Overpopulation always exerts harmful impacts on the economy of a country. It slows down economic growth and decreases the per capita income. In overpopulated countries, people are more than available jobs. This results in unemployment. The overpopulated countries need more schools, more hospitals, more universities and better infrastructure. Overpopulation also leads to urbanization, which is another social problem of today. The following steps may be helpful to check overpopulation in Pakistan.

“Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage. (Jacques Yves Cousteau)

The government should make laws to prevent early marriages. The maximum number of children should be declared. The reward should be given to couples who produce fewer children. Government jobs should be conditioned with the less production of children. Population Welfare Department should be made more effective and efficient. The awareness of the benefits of family planning should be fostered. Medicine for the prevention of conception should be distributed free among women. Mobile teams should be organized to persuade people to use contraceptives. If the government is sincere to control the rapid growth of the population, it should take solid measures in this regard.

“If the world is to save any part of its Resources for the Future, It must reduce not only consumption the number of Consumers”. (B.F. Skinner)

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Guest Essay

I Don’t Write Like Alice Munro, but I Want to Live Like Her

By Sheila Heti

Ms. Heti is the author of the novels “Pure Colour,” “How Should a Person Be?” and, most recently, “Alphabetical Diaries.”

It is common to say “I was heartbroken to hear” that so-and-so died, but I really do feel heartbroken having learned about Alice Munro, who died on Monday.

As a writer, she modeled, in her life and art, that one must work with emotional sincerity and precision and concentration and depth — not on every kind of writing but on only one kind, the kind closest to one’s heart.

She has long been a North Star for many writers and was someone I have always felt guided by. We are very different writers, but I have kept her in mind, daily and for decades, as an example to follow (but failed to follow to the extent that she demonstrated it): that a fiction writer isn’t someone for hire.

A fiction writer isn’t someone who can write anything — movies, articles, obits! She isn’t a person in service to the magazines, to the newspapers, to the publishers or even to her audience. She doesn’t have to speak on the political issues of the day or on matters of importance to the culture right now but ought first and most to attend seriously to her task, which is her only task, writing the particular thing she was most suited to write.

Ms. Munro only ever wrote short stories — not novels, though she must have been pressured to. She died in a small town not too far from where she was born, choosing to remain close to the sort of people she grew up with, whom she remained ever curious about. Depth is wherever one stands, she showed us, convincingly.

Fiction writers are people, supposedly, who have things to say; they must, because they are so good with words. So people are always asking them: Can you say something about this or about this? But the art of hearing the voice of a fictional person or sensing a fictional world or working for years on some unfathomable creation is, in fact, the opposite of saying something with the opinionated and knowledgeable part of one’s mind. It is rather the humble craft of putting your opinions and ego aside and letting something be said through you.

Ms. Munro held to this division and never let the vanity that can come with being good with words persuade her to put her words just everywhere, in every possible way. Here was the best example in the world — in Canada, my own land — of someone who seemed to abide by classical artistic values in her choices as a person and in her choices on the page. I felt quietly reassured knowing that a hundred kilometers down the road was Alice Munro.

She was also an example of how a writer should be in public: modest, unpretentious, funny, generous and kind. I learned the lesson of generosity from her early. When I was 20 and was just starting to publish short stories, I sent her a fan letter. I don’t remember what my letter said. After a few months, I received a handwritten thank-you note from her in the mail. The fact that she replied at all and did so with such care taught me a lot about grace and consideration and has remained as a warmth within me since that day.

She will always remain for me, and for many others, a model of that grave yet joyous dedication to art — a dedication that inevitably informs the most important choices the artist makes about how to support that life. Probably Ms. Munro would laugh at this; no one knows the compromises another makes, especially when that person is as private as she was and transforms her trials into fiction. Yet whatever the truth of her daily existence, she still shines as a symbol of artistic purity and care.

I am grateful for all she gave to the world and for all the sacrifices she must have made to give it. I’m sorry to be here defying her example, but she was just too loved, and these words just came. Thank you, Alice Munro.

Sheila Heti is the author of the novels “Pure Colour,” “How Should a Person Be?” and, most recently, “Alphabetical Diaries.”

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