Overpopulation is having disastrous effects on the environment. The forests are being cut down. The atmosphere is becoming contaminated with increasing amounts of carbon dioxide. The oceans and seas are being polluted and over fished. There are simply too many people on earth.
             The UNFPA (United Nations Fund for Population Activities) said in it's 1990 report that population growth may have been responsible for as much as eighty percent of the forest land cleared between 1971 and 1986 to make room for agriculture, cattle ranching, houses, roads and industries (Ramphal, 1992, p.55).
             Quite often, areas of forest were cleared in such a way (slash and burn) that they will never grow back. After a forest area has been converted to grazing lands or intensive farming, the soil will only sustain it for a few years. The increasing demand for fuel wood as populations expand is another important factor leading to deforestation.
             The reduction of forestland possesses two main environmental dangers. Forests are great natural repositories of carbon. Trees breathe in carbon dioxide and store it, acting as carbon reservoirs. As such, they are invaluable agents in keeping the level of carbon in the atmosphere stable. As forests are destroyed worldwide, especially by burning, carbon dioxide is released into the air, adding to the stock of greenhouse gases that are now warming our planet and changing its climate. Forestland is also the world's main storehouse of living species, the plants, animals, birds, and insects with which earth has been blessed. Tropical forests expand roughly between ten degrees north and south of the equator. Nearly half of the earth's biological species live in a small portion of the earth, many endemic. The rapid rate of deforestation is erasing our bio-diversity.
             Our population growth has begun to out pace that of the aquatic life. A global seafood harvest of twenty two million tons in 1950 increased...