Overpopulation

Overpopulation is defined as the condition of having more people than can live on planet Earth with comfort, happiness and health and still leave the world a fit place for future generations. http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1998/7/98.07.02.x.html1 Currently approximately 6.6 billion people are living in planet Earth. It is 5.6 billion more than the estimated amount of in 1830. The population reached 2 billion in 1930, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1975, and 5 billion in 1987. The U.S. Census Bureau projects there will be 9 billion people on the planet by 2042. http://www.history.com/topics/overpopulation

"Increasingly, people around the planet are flocking to cities and towns." http://www.history.com/topics/overpopulation The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reports that in 2008 the human population of 3.3 billion people will be living in urban areas, and it is expected to grow to almost 5 billion in 2030. Many of the new urbanites will be poor. "The next few decades will see an unprecedented scale of urban growth in the developing world. This will be particularly notable in Africa and Asia where the urban population will double between 2000 and 2030. That is, the accumulated urban growth of these two regions during the whole span of history will be duplicated in a single generation. By 2030, the towns and cities of the developing world will make up 81 per cent of urban humanity." http://www.history.com/topics/overpopulation According to Geoffrey Gilbert's World Population, the positive side of urbanization enables the residents achieve higher levels of health and education; they also have smaller families. Conversely, "living conditions in many Third World cities are appalling, in part because the rapidity of urban growth has made it impossible for governments to provide an adequate infrastructure of streets, schools, housing, hospitals, and sanitation. A broader concern, and one that relates to both developed and developing nations, is that urban growth (or sprawl) is encroaching ever more deeply on lands needed for agriculture or valued for natural habitat." http://www.history.com/topics/overpopulation

"In terms of the planet's resources, First World nations such as the United States currently eat up far more than their share. The Sierra Club notes that Americans represent five percent of the world's population but consume approximately 25 percent of its resources. Per-capita consumption rates are smaller in the developing world, but as the economies of rapidly industrializing nations such as China and India continue to expand and standards of living rise, the strain on natural resources will intensify and environmental problems such as pollution will soar. Experts debate how much population growth is too much, but there's no question that certain resources, such as oil, won't be available in unlimited supplies." http://www.history.com/topics/overpopulation The following is an imperative remark fromJeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and author of Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, to fully investigate in attempt to ameliorate the dire situation base on his research. "The current trajectory of human activity is not sustainable. If we simply do what we are doing on the planet with unchanged technology—but on a much larger scale as China, India, and other population centers experience rapid economic growth—the environmental underpinnings of global well-being will collapse. The limits of the environment itself will defeat our global aspirations for prosperity." http://www.history.com/topics/overpopulation

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