The End of The World Part 3: Overpopulation
by How will the Earth meet its fate? This twelve-part series endeavors to look at a number of methods that might finish it – and everything still living on it.
The series begins with Natural Disasters at http://socyberty.com/future/the-end-of-the-world-part-1-natural-disasters/
Many of us lead privileged lives where overpopulation usually translates to traffic jams on our way home, but another potentially very real doomsday scenario is by overpopulation itself. In some parts of the world, overpopulation and crowding is already reaching epidemic levels. China has 1.3 billion people and another 6.7 million more Chinese people are born every year according to The World Bank, but even this staggering number pales in comparison to the #2 slot of India, which is averaging a terrifying 15 million new citizens every year.
Map of the top 400 urban areas with over 1 million population via Wikipedia.
According to Wikipedia, the world’s population has been growing continuously since the end of the Black Death near 1400. It is estimated that the world population reached 1 billion in the beginning of the 19th century. It had tripled to over 3 billion by 1960, and doubled again in only 40 years to 6 billion by 2010. Current estimates call for world populations to reach 7.8 billion by 2030 – nearly twenty years sooner than the world’s scientific consensus predicted in only 1994.
With world populations nearing 7 billion people, the resources of the planet are eventually going to be harvested beyond capacity just to feed the open mouths. Technology runs side by side with capacity of course, but at some point along the line, this will undoubtedly result in a requirement that cannot be met. The only question is when this will happen, and experts say it is nearly impossible to predict where the breaking point lies – if it hasn’t already been reached.
Too many mouths to feed
2009’s Ecological Footprint Atlas by the Global Footprint Network estimates that the world’s population in 2006 was using 40% more than what the entire Earth can regenerate, and anyone familiar with balancing their checkbook can figure out that that sort of imbalance cannot go on forever.
Sadly, birth rates are predicted to be highest in the third world countries where resources are scarcest, and malnutrition and disease are commonplace, and the cities of these countries already straining beyond capacity to feed and house these citizens, much less see to basic medical needs.
We all have a carbon footprint
With every new face comes a certain amount of pollution, and the more developed the country, the bigger that footprint tends to be. As China and other continue to expand industrially to meet cheap world commercial product demands, world pollution levels rise to eerie proportions alongside it, and if unabated, the end is a blackened husk that cannot support human life.
Is this how we’ll go?
The problem with predicting anything involving overpopulation is that it is all based on predictions of world-scale levels of production, consumption, and prevalent tendencies. Will there be a population boom in North America in the 2010’s if President Obama succeeds in bringing home many of the troops overseas? Will a sudden new crop disease wipe out large portions of a necessary staple such as rice or grain?
Done too simply, the numbers tell us too little, and even adding minimal depth, the numbers quickly become overwhelming – which is much the problem at hand with overpopulation itself, because we simply don’t know where the tipping point actually is.
Sadly, there are few solutions to the problems of overpopulation, and nobody wants to accept the responsibility. Curbing births is political suicide in any government short of tyranny. Conventional warfare would have to struggle on for decades before it could even begin to put a dent in the current population growth the world has today.
We just have to hope that we don’t crowd ourselves in too soon.
Don’t stop here! Journey on with me as I continue through the myriad ways the world might end:
The End of the World Part 1: By Natural Disaster
The End of the World Part 2: Global Warming
The End of the World Part 3: Overpopulation
The End of the World Part 4: Pestilence
The End of the World Part 5: Meteor Strike
The End of the World Part 6: Solar Flare
The End of the World Part 7: Nuclear War
The End of the World Part 8: Black Hole
The End of the World Part 9: [The Wrath of] God
The End of the World Part 10: Mad Scientists
The End of the World Part 11: By Prediction
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