Overpopulation has become an enormous crisis facing society today. Overpopulation is distinguished by the number of people in an area relative to its resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities; that is, to the area's carrying capacity. When is an area overpopulated? When its population can't be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources, or converting renewable resources into nonrenewable ones, and without degrading the capacity of the environment to support the population. In short, if its current human occupants are clearly degrading the long-term carrying capacity of an area, that area is overpopulated.
             By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation are already vastly overpopulated. Africa is overpopulated now because, among other indications, its soils and forests are rapidly being depleted-and that implies that its carrying capacity for human beings will be lower in the future than it is now. The United States is overpopulated because it is depleting its soil and water resources and contributing to the destruction of global environmental systems. Europe, Japan, the Soviet Union, and other rich nations are overpopulated because of their massive contributions to the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere, among many other reasons (Elrich 27).
             Almost all the rich nations are overpopulated because they are rapidly drawing down stocks of resources around the world. They don't live solely on the land in their own nations.
             Critics are warning that at almost six and a half billion people currently inhabiting the world, we are coming dangerously close to the sustainable capacity of planet Earth. Most scientists feel that a world population of between one and two billion can live on the Earth in a sustainable manner and with a reasonable standard of living. After taking nearly 3 million years to reach our first 1 billion, it has taken us only 11 years to raise our po...