Hey everyone, it is good to be back here. I have been dealing with health issues in the last 2 weeks and this is why I have not been able to create a post but I glad that I am doing better and back to my activities in full. So let's get to the business of science and today I will be looking at the overpopulation bomb in our world.
When you go the General Hospital, you will see a lot of people giving birth daily and if you do not believe that we have a lot of birth rate compared to death rate then look at our population about 1 decade ago and compare it to today. In fact, we have about 385,000 new birth daily according to the United nations which means that in a single day, there would be about 385,000 birthdays if the any of the children do not die which is actually not possible. Growing up, the world was home to about 5 billion people but now, it is home to about 7.9 billion people which is almost 8 billion people.
We have been complaining about overpopulation even though I am not sitting on someone's head right now neither are you colliding with another currently but if we were densely packed in a place, then it could become a problem but then, our current climate and ecological situations is enough proof that increasing population on this planet might not be sustainable in the long run.
Before 1804 we were less than 1 billion people on earth and we did not worry about over population until after 1804 when we reached the 1 billion milestone and in 2024 we are about 7.9 billion people. Our specie has been on earth for thousands of years, and we only hit 1 billion after thousands of years but in just 123 years, in the year 1927, we hit 2 billion people which was alarming but then the year it took us to double reduced again as it took us 47 years which was the year 1974 to reach 4 billion people and since then we have had about 12 year interval to multiply by 1 billion people. But when did overpopulation become a problem for us?
We started looking into over population even before the world reached 1 billion people and this was brought up by people like Thomas Malthus in 1798 when he mentioned that if population growth wasn't checked, it could come with negative effects like starvation as the population will outpace the total supply of food and also lead to global conflict. Asides from Thomas Malthus, a lot of environmentalist also gave their thoughts and arguments that overpopulation was going to come bearing bad gifts like environmental destruction around the world, shockwaves of diseases, and increased poverty.
Although these arguments looked valid at the point, but it hasn't completely been the case because humans have been able to feed themselves and even in 2022, we were estimated to waste about 1 billion meals daily although there are still places in the world where people aren't eating comfortably so I wonder why these food go to waste because the United Nation went on to say that about 783 million people suffer hunger even though I believe the numbers should be more than that but they continued by saying that about 1/3 of the worlds population face food insecurity.
https://thewildcattribune.com
Looking at why some people have these food in excess and why some don't have can be because we have allowed imaginary lines and maps determine how these food go round but something is certain and that is the fact that the amount of food needed to feed the 7.9 billion people in the world today is not the same amount of food that will be needed if we reach 10 billion or 12 billion people but then, are we even growing the majorly for ourselves?
One third of crops that we plant go to feeding livestock and not for human consumption. Before you ask how possible, you should know that animals occupy 80% of our agricultural land but there is an irony and this comes in the calorie being provided because even when it occupies such vast land, it only produces about 20% of our calories.
Before the 1700s more death balanced the birth rate and this was one reason why the population growth wasn't high but with improvement on agricultural practices and transportation, the death rate reduced. The industrial revolution and good public health even made the death rate reduce more thereby increasing the population since we were still giving birth in high numbers. Although in some countries, birth rate has reduced but in some underdeveloped and developing countries, it will take a very long time before birthrate will half. Are we going to increase our population by 2050 to 12 billion?
This is unlikely because a lot of thing are done to reduce birth rate and one of this is educating and empowering women thereby letting them understand the importance of family planning and the effect of an overpopulated world. So for now, we could still keep our fingers crossed on expecting a world where we will have extreme over population.
Reference
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/world-squanders-over-1-billion-meals-day-un-report
https://www.science.org/toc/science/333/6042
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1257469
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-malthus-predicted-1798-food-shortages/
https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/solutions-overpopulation-can/
