By how much is the world overpopulated?

Question

If people stopped having babies from this point on, about how many years would it take to benefit the environment?
If world leaders provided free birth control to everyone, everywhere, would there be a dramatic benefit to the environment?

Answer 1

good luck it is the most sensitive subject
and overpopulation sure has a chain of effects which are all interrelated and heavily tax the system
People use and need land,so more and more is being changed to accommodate human growth and development

The necessary flora ,which permits life as we know it, is disappearing.

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

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.

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.
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NATURES POINT OF VIEW

In Nature exists such a thing as the law of Harmony and Equilibrium

Animals have lots of young when there is plenty of food ,and have little or none when the conditions are bad
when there is a plague of rabbits ,many foxes are born,
when there is no game lions ,and other predators have few cubs.

plants do roughly the same
All follow the LAW OF NATURE OF EQUILIBRIUM
everybody is welcome ,but nobody in excess.
we must co-exist on this planet and limit our numbers to our resources

All of Nature obeys these LAWS,but Humans put themselves above the LAW,and have bred themselves into a plague
It is a miracle that Nature has allowed us to get this far.

Everything else is set upon by plagues ,disease or predators ,when they exceed their allotted quantity,or there are Natural disasters .

There are two moments in the existence of a specie when extinction is likely,
when there are two few
And when there are too many.
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PEOPLE

However population control has always been a very sensitive issue Because people get get very nervous when you go below the belt

Mans sexuality and very often how many kids hes got is proof of his masculinity and insurance for old age
with many possible incomes to assist him when he himself cannot work any more
the second point is HOW do we ethically control populations

poor areas with less education DEMONSTRATE THE HIGHEST NUMBERS OF TEEN AGE PREGNANCIES,

educated women have less children
But uneducated populations are more religious and more resistant to birth control.
to forcibly control populations is frowned upon to say the least
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Some Native peoples have always been aware of the fact that their life style and resources could only support a limited number of people

in the past the Olmecs women ate yams to make them infertile,
Amazonian tribes have strict sexual rites that limit copulation in the conventional way.

And there were central Americans who sacrificed their excess children to the Gods

Today we have several methods but most reach only the educated ,i handed out condoms to an native Mazateca community in Oaxaca ,and the church retrieved them all )

education on birth control(not enough,again the poor regions are excluded )

there are the strong methods such as in China with laws that limit childbirth per family.
Also a horrible concept.

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In the Netherlands after the war families were encouraged
to have few children because it is such a small country
not much bigger than Mexico city,
so it was physically impossible to fit a lot of people into the country ,There people can understand the concept of birth control,
But in larger countries many think of the family ,not the society as a whole

what happens if the country is full
wage war and kill everybody in another place to invade and settle there ,that would be the natural solution

In the past conquering countries encouraged the people to have many kids to be used as cannon fodder

or settling farmers needed many sons to provide labor,
one would have thought that we had progressed from that

But judging by many peoples reactions, many still cling to the old self centered or invasive philosophies

Answer 2

Current estimates - by 4.5 to 6 billion. No telling how long it will take to undo what we've done so far. Of course, population control would be a dramatic benefit to the environment.

It has been calculated that the carrying capacity of the planet was passed at 2 billion around 1980. Every year and every person beyond that racks up more "ecologic debt". According to some, 500 million would be the maximum sustainable population that could live in comfort and ease.

Don't let the anti-environmentalists claim this means the radical tree huggers would like to exterminate billions of people. Birth control is all that is needed. Did you know that the size of a woman’s family that she chooses (when she has a choice) is directly related to her education and economic status? When you are educated and secure a funny thing happens, you choose to have less children. This could be the saving grace of the human family. Here's some more radical food for thought. It's possible that our ancestors, realizing the limits of their local environment, used ritual and taboo to limit procreation.

Edward O. Wilson, the preeminent natural scientist of our time, calculated the theoretical carrying capacity of our planet at 14 billion people. He said we could live on boats, grow hydroponic food in caves using artificial lights, exploiting every habitable square foot of the planet. “…and it will surely be a hellish place to live.”

There are some very smart people who believe we are already past the point of no return. The mass of humanity is rushing towards a narrowing caused by the limit of natural resources and the limit of the biospheres ability to regenerate itself. It’s becomes a matter of how many humans will survive the bottleneck and what will be left of the natural world.

Answer 3

You can adopt a kid , that would be a wonderful thing to do. You would be helping a child out in more ways than you can even begin to understand. You would be providing that child with love and protection something he/she may have never had. Also , don't worry about overpopulation , it is a problem but in all honesty most of it is due to China and India. Parents in China are only allowed to have 1 child. A child is born every second in India. They are humping like rabbits and they don't have space.

Answer 4

When the oil runs out and we have to live off the energy coming from the sun, then the planet can probably support 3bn humans at a reasonable standard of living (a bit below current EU levels) without irreparably damaging the life-support systems such as forest & ocean. Current pop 6bn rising to 9bn by 2050.

source Last Hours of ancient sunlight
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Hours-Ancient-Sunlight-Transformation/dp/0340822430/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/203-3688512-0690365?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193129439&sr=8-1

Answer 5

Here we go with the population control nuts again. Let's sterilize everyone.

Answer 6

It's not. 6 Billion people sounds like a very big number, but still the population density of the Earth is very small.

The Earth could easily handle another 20 billion people.