What is the impact of overpopulation?

Question

What is the impact of overpopulation in health care, education, housing services, environment, agricultural productivity, and management of the country's natural resources?

Answer 1

Debunking overpopulation myths

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Abortionists, zero-population-growth advocates and antigrowth zealots want us to believe that there are too many people in the world. They say that we can't feed and support our 6,000,000,000 fellow humans. They want governments to correct this "mistake" by aggressively pushing abortion, "voluntary" sterilization and limits on family size. They say that if we "allow" more people to come into this world, widespread famine and devastation will consume our world.

They are dead wrong.

Now don't get me wrong. Six billion people is not a small number. Far too many of our fellow humans live a desperate struggle for survival. However, the problem is not that there are too many of us. We can produce enough food to feed 6 billion or 16 billion. The problem is that governments in far too many countries care more about maintaining political power than the well being of their people.

I have worked in 25 countries since 1982. What I have seen has sickened me. Government corruption and callousness has turned many natural resource "rich" countries into poor countries. Simultaneously, countries that have little or no natural resource wealth have invested in the minds of their people. Japan, Taiwan and Switzerland are prime examples of natural resource poor countries whose investment in their citizens has paid off handsomely. Brazil, India, Russia and the Congo are examples of natural resource rich countries whose corrupt, anticapitalist policies have consigned most of their citizens to lives of grinding poverty. But it doesn't have to stay that way.

Chile shows what can happen when the government unshackles the private sector, invests in its people and declares war on corruption. Chile is twice the size of Montana. It's 15 million people have just completed two decades of unprecedented economic growth. Chile's growth started when its military overthrew the Marxist government of Salvador Allende. What most Americans don't know, however, is that Chile has had a civilian government since 1990.

Chile's growth is even more impressive when you compare it to Mexico. Mexico shares a 2,200-mile long border with the U.S. NAFTA has pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into Mexico's economy. In spite of Mexico's advantages, it is Chile that has become the most advanced Hispanic country in our hemisphere. And the gap is growing.

Chile's per capita purchasing power is $12,500. It is only $8,300 in Mexico. Only 20.5 percent of Chile's citizens live below the poverty line compared to 27 percent of Mexico's citizens. Ninety-five percent of Chileans are literate, while only 89.6 percent of Mexicans can make that claim. Chile's life expectancy is 75.46 years at birth while Mexico's is 72 years. Most striking, Chile's infant mortality rate is 10.02 per 1,000 live births; Mexico's is 24.62.

Chile's natural resource base can't compare to that of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico or even Venezuela. However, Chile's political will to change has made all the difference. Chile's war on corruption, investment in its people and downsizing of its government have made all the difference. If every country adopted the Chilean model, poverty as we know it would be eliminated by the end of the next century.

But John, you ask, how about all of the starving people around the world? Well, unfortunately, far too many of our brothers and sisters are starving. They are real, but their suffering is totally unnecessary.

At the turn of the last century, most Americans worked on farms. Today, less than 2 percent of our people are farmers. We have become so efficient at farming that our government is still paying farmers not to farm. And we aren't the only ones. Japan and Western Europe also pay farmers not to produce food.

One of my former MBA students is from Spain. His father is a farmer. Whenever his father wants to make more money, he threatens to plat crops ... and the Spanish government pays him more to not do so. In fact, one of the biggest fights during the recent WTO meetings was about the Europeans obscene subsidies of inefficient farms and farmers who don't farm.

If American, Canadian, Latin American and Western European farmers were encouraged to plant as much as possible and process as much as possible, the world would drown in food. So the problem is not that we can't produce enough food to feed our people. Until the governments of developing countries put the well being of their citizens ahead of their own corrupt grab for wealth and political power, however, far too many of our brothers and sisters will not be able to buy the food that the West can produce.

Finally, let's look at the too many people argument. The anti growth advocates want you to believe that the earth is getting too crowded. They say that we are running out of space. Once again, they are wrong.

If you gave each of us 6,000,000,000 people an acre, we could all fit into the United States, Brazil and Australia ... and still have room for 235,359,362 more people. Put another way, after each of us got our acre of land, Europe, Asia, Africa and half of Latin America and North America would be empty. No people. Not a soul. So even the most basic antigrowth argument that we are running out of land doesn't hold water.

If all of the alarmist stories are false, what's really going on? It's simple. The pro-abortion and antigrowth people claim to care about "the people," but what they really want is raw political power. They want the ability to tax us to death to support their causes.

Their bogus claims should last about as long as dew on a hot sidewalk, but our press has become fat and lazy. The "traditional" press doesn't even do the math that would disprove these wild claims. They just take the left's press releases and run them as though they were fact.

God has not made a mistake by putting us on this earth. There are not too many people. We are not running out of space. Instead of worrying about a crisis that isn't real, let's go after governmental corruption. Only then will the people of the world be freed to create the wealth that will give them the full and decent lives that they so richly deserve.

Answer 2

hi, i do believe that human overpopulation has a major impact on wildlife. due to overpopulation pressure on land increases, this makes it necessary for the people to encroach upon forest areas and clear the forest takin away the shelter and home of wildlife. in the process of clearing the forests wildlife is left shelter less and they start moving towards human inhabitations. this can have two effects a) loss of life os both man and beast b)sum animals start relyin on humans feeding the animals and thus lose their survival instincts which are very important for them . as for the plants that have been cleared these are nourishment for the wild life , also there cud be new species of plants and medicinal herbs that get destroyed due to clearin of forests. by human overpopulation there is a direct impact on the ecosystem the whole ecosystem is affected

Answer 3

Look at parts of Africa and Asia. What happens is a life is not worth as much or is reduced to the basic levels of existence. It is crucial that the population has enough good paying jobs to create a tax system that can provide the basic needs, education, hospitals and law enforcement. If you choose to raise ten children and only four of them are going to be able to get jobs why do it? People view the US as a rich nation but most of our structure is created from our population control. We can't simply allow unlimited immigration to swallow up the job market and lower the standard of living. The perfect society would balance job growth and population accordingly. Education and health care could be integrated into the system by using our tax base to control all of the negative impacts on our economy. In other words instead of outsourcing jobs without regulation[our current standard] we could balance job growth and education so that they would have a positive impact on the system by creating a taxable workforce instead of a welfare state. In some poverty stricken nations corruption harms their chances for improvement. The people on the top have to really want a system of equality and they may have to do more than preach birth control.

Answer 4

When you talk of over-population, it must be with respect to a specific country, as I do not believe the whole world can be said to be overpopulated. Currently, China and India are the two countries whose populations have passed the one-billion mark and can therefore be said to be over populated, highly populated etc., depending on the way one looks at it. This can be both a blessing and a curse, as these two countries have demonstrated. In terms of economic growth, GDP, human resource etc., they may be leading the world, but in terms of quality of life and per capita income they will remain at the bottom of the development scale for a while. Personally, I would prefer to be a citizen of a country with a small population (like Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Canada etc) with high per capita income and quality of life than to a country considered to be a world power(China, India, Russia) but with low per capita income and poor quality of life. It is for this reason that developing countries should march their population growths to those of their economies or else suffer massive deprivations.

Answer 5

dont know about all that but i will give you Environmental effects

people useand need land,so more and more is being changed to accomodate human growth and devellopment

the necessary biomass ,which permits life as we know it, is disappearing.

We must learn to live with the trees without them, we are vulnerable to the forces from space,

leaving us to burn during the day or freeze in the nights. Without water , food and air.

Eco-systems are being exchanged for desserts , concrete or roads.

An environmentally destructive wave is in motion, caused by expanding populations.

World population has doubled in the last 50 years exceeding the growth of 4 million years (since we became homo sapiens).
To satisfy the growing demand farmers are cultivating unstable lands , too steep or dry to be sustainable.


Mono cultures ,aided by chemicals Exhaust and pollutes the soil .
Adding to this the effects of overgrazing has resulted in large scale desertification.

Each year billions of tons of topsoil are blown or washed away by storms.

Arable lands and their farms are lost all over the globe. Many farmers sons abandon farming and head for the cities.

Northern China is drying up, what once were millions of food producing people,

are now hungry refugees ,running for their lives from the all consuming dust storms.

This will have a great effect on world food prices when they start buying at what ever cost, to feed their people.

Africa and Asia are loosing millions of people to AIDS , many of whom were food producers.

The farmers that are left have to feed some 70 million more people than the year before but with less topsoil.

Over the last half century,
Population growth & rising incomes have tripled world grain demand from 640 million tons to 1,855 million

In the near future the global farming community will not be able to feed every body ,food prices will continue to rise. . Source(s) Lester E Brown is the director and founder of the global institute of Environment in the United states .he has compiled a report based on all the satalite information available from NASA,and all the information that has
come from Universities and American embassies WORLD WIDE ,
his little book--a planet under stress , Plan B has been trans lated into 50 languages and won the best book award in 2003.

Answer 6

With over 6 billion and growing it looks bad. I have Sean some graphs that predict the break point could be about 10 billion. We may start a war that could kill 3 billion people. It is like a train wreck that there is no way to stop it.

Answer 7

Too many people competing for too few resources means disaster for our species. If there were fewer of us and we were living in balance with our natural surroundings we would not have the environmental problems that we have. There is a natural balance I think were all species could thrive, the art is keeping within it that zone. When it becomes unbalanced we don't thrive.

Answer 8

deforestation is the main aspect...........for the purpose of building houses trees r cut indiscriminately.............this results in soil erosion,lack of rainfall n global warming
besides lack of sufficient resources leads to poverty...only a few r cpable of surviving.....unemployment is another predominant factor............well the list is endless....the only conclusion is dat overpopulation leads to destruction of humans

Answer 9

Lack of resources such as food, trees, and oil. Living space, pollution, construction, employment...............the list goes on and on.

Answer 10

are we doing your homework? come on thats too simple, DISASTER,- in a nut shell NO more planet too many toxins