Earth: Overpopulated
Humans are perhaps the most successful species in the history of life on Earth. From a few thousand individuals some 200,000 years ago, we passed 1 billion around 1800 and 6 billion in 1999. Our levels of consumption and the scope of our technologies have grown in parallel with, and in some ways outpaced, our numbers. But our success is showing signs of overreaching itself, of threatening the key resources on which we depend. Today our impact on the planet has reached a truly massive scale. In many fields our ecological “footprint” outweighs the impact of all other living species combined. We have transformed approximately half the land on Earth for our own uses - around 11 percent each for farming and forestry, and 26 percent for pasture, with at least another 2 to 3 percent for housing, industry, services and transport. The area used for growing crops has increased by almost six times since 1700, mainly at the expense of forest and woodland. The oceans make up seven tenths of the planet’s surface, and we use only an estimated 8 percent of their total primary productivity. Yet we have fished up to the limits or beyond of two thirds of marine fisheries and altered the ecology of a vast range of marine species. During this cent . . .
There are factors such as religion that keep some countries' birth rate from dropping. The mentality and thought processes of women inevitably change as a society develops. Refrigeration technology shifted very rapidly away from the use of chlorofluorocarbons, with an average reduction in CFC production of at least 23 percent a year between 1986 and 1995Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Malthus printed a second edition of his Principles of Population in 1803 and produced several additional editions until a sixth edition in 1826. Therefore, for Malthus, available productive farmland was a limiting factor in population growth. For this reason, along with advances in birth control, the CBR was reduced through the 20th century in developed countries. He's often known today as the "patron saint of demography" and while some argue that his contributions to population studies were unremarkable, he did indeed cause population and demographics to become a topic of serious academic study. Through mining and processing we are releasing toxic metals into the biosphere that would otherwise have remained safely locked in stone. At local level there have been many successful integrated programs which encouraged communities to pursue sustainable approaches across the board from environment to population. ury we have destroyed perhaps half of all coastal mangrove forests and irrevocably degraded 10 percent of coral reefs. Population-environment links Because the population, consumption and technology equation is a multiplication sum, actions that reduce any one component in isolation are necessary. We have boosted methane content by 145 percent over natural levels.
Common topics in this essay:
, Climate Change, Ages West, Factor Ten, Asia Provision, Population Division, Poor Laws, Stage III, Environment Programme, Thomas Malthus, population growth, developed countries, birth rate, death rates, stage iii, death rate, hyperlink reference valid, demographic transition, birth control, population consumption, consumption technology, birth death rates, demographic transition model, population consumption technology, increase agricultural production, |
Acceptance Essays
