We’ve all seen media hysteria and general public members attempt to blame the world’s current issues as an issue of overpopulation. But this is just not true in any shape or form. Overpopulation is not the issue, capitalism is.
Firstly most people have seemed to confuse overpopulation with overcrowding. The two are not the same. Overpopulation is in which a population has began to exhaust all its resources in a closed environment due to the number of individuals in the population being over that of the carrying capacity.
The key word here being CLOSED. The world is not a closed environment. Humans are not locked in a closed environment. Is there an issue of overcrowding in specific areas or cities? Yes, but this is not overpopulation and is not something that should be fixed by controlling birth rates.
Overpopulation is defined also as lack of resources caused by number not by behaviours. Which behaviours are very clearly the issue here not numbers.
The Human Population is Not Growing Too Fast
While the human population is growing, it is not at an exponential rate and growth rates are actually declining. We are currently only growing at 0.77 percent within the next 50 years.
And most of this increase in growth rate is expected to come from developing countries as their life expediencies increase.
We Are Not Running Out of Food
People who claim we are running out of food to feed everyone is wrong, as the world produces enough food to feed 10 billion, and as of right now there are only 7.6 billion people as from 2018.
So is there still people going hungry? This is because of behaviour not numbers.
We’re Not Running Out of Fresh Water
We’re also not running out of water. You cannot destroy water, but you can change it’s state. Freshwater withdrawals have also grown 7 times the amount since 1900′s while the human population has only grown 3 times. Again 1% of humans hoarding access to water is a behavioural issues not a numbers issue.
Further reading
Holt-Giménez, Eric, et al. “We Already Grow Enough Food for 10 Billion People… and Still Can’t End Hunger.” Journal of Sustainable Agriculture 36.6 (2012): 595-598.
Gleick, Peter H. “A look at twenty-first century water resources development.” Water International 25.1 (2000): 127-138.
I have a question. Doesn’t fracking take water out of the water cycle by pushing it under the bedrock where we can’t get it back?
where was fracking ever mentioned in this post? What’s the point of bringing it up at all, I see zero relevance between me talking about overpopulation myths and fracking
Fewer people would probably be helpful, but most of the problem is the really shitty humans, not all the random ones.
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