How will we deal with overpopulation?

This is the real question that should be addressed by mankind, instead of global climate change. I can understand why politicians and environmental scientists are reluctant to discuss this issue, but it must be addressed or we will face the apocalypse that so many soothsayers have predicted.

Why is that? The reason is simple; the Earth can only support a given population before chaos begins. I don’t think we’re there yet because the Earth could support more than the present population of seven billion. Here is where there is lots of disagreement about the so-called carrying capacity of the planet. Some estimate this number as no more than six billion while others claim sixteen billion. Which estimate is right? Someone had better determine the correct number because Earth’s population is expected to reach eight to ten billion by 2040 or 2050, assuming no global catastrophe. That’s not that long from now.

There are several ways that the overpopulation problem could be mitigated. One is to figure out how to accommodate more people, and in this case one has two problems: food and water. There is plenty of water, but not necessarily in the right places. The oceans have lots of water but it’s salty, about 30 parts per thousand. There are ways to desalinate ocean water but it requires the expenditure of power and that equates to money. What is needed is an economical method of desalination.

Food is a big problem, and the only solution is to make agriculture more efficient. Unfortunately, this is being thwarted by climate change and the increase in the world’s population is putting more stress on that problem. What we need is a more controlled population growth, not the explosive kind we see.

I might add that the population of industrialized countries is not increasing that way. The United States’ population growth is mostly from immigration, not births. In fact, the birth rate in the United States has fallen below replacement level, but the population is still increasing because of immigrants. This same thing is happening to other heavily industrialized countries.

The same cannot be said for so-called third world countries, but even there the population growth is slowing, but since there are so many people living in these areas, population is still increasing albeit at a slower rate.

Some countries like China have attempted to control its population growth by imposing a two-child limit, but what has actually happened is that boy babies are preferred over girl babies to the point that young Chinese men are having trouble finding brides.

What will happen if population growth isn’t controlled? We’re already seeing this in increased levels of pollution, deforestation, depletion of natural resources, poverty, low life expectancy, conflict (wars) over resources and overcrowding, starvation, disease, loss of arable land and so on and so forth. This sounds like the apocalypse, but if it is it’s of our own making.

My thought on this is that the global population will adjust to the available resources one way or the other. Politicians are inept at dealing with these big issues and experts only whine about it and can’t come up with a unified solution.

Another solution is to go out to other planets to live. That would solve the overpopulation and guarantee that the human species will survive for a long time, but that’s going to take a lot of money and resources, things that we don’t really have. However, you never know.

Thanks for reading.