Am I being cynical. Is over population encouraged to provide cheap labour and to sell more cars? As we become more mechanised manual requirements reduce. At the same time people are getting richer, placing more strain on natural resources and increases Global Warming. If the world population was reduced would it lead to a more sustainable situation in the long run. I say this as geriatric who has polluted the atmosphere and should probably have been dead years ago and is kept alive by improving medical science. How do you young fifty-fivers see the situation ?
Is overpopulation really a "worldwide" phenomenon? Several developed countries including Asian ones are described as having an ageing, i.e. dwindling population due to a decreasing birthrate. So we predominantly see a regional overpopulation with all its implications. Overpopulation is not encouraged but it is an inevitable result of unwanted and/or unavailable birth control and missing family planing especially in vast rural areas in parts of the world. If people have real job opportunities, are becoming more educated, and are better socially secured, in short: are better-off, they tend to have not as many children as they tend and need to have if all that is lacking. A more sustainable situation in the long run would not only depend on how large the population is but on how people live and how they feed themselves. I don't think that you need to feel sorry because you are still alive due to improved medical treatment. Everybody wants to benefit from that. Where are the young fifty-fivers? I'm saying this as someone turning 64 soon.
We actually populate a very small percentage of this earth, even when you only consider the land part of it. Some parts of the earth just do not lend themselves to being a place where humans can live, at least not without substantial alteration. That being said, we definitely DO have parts of the wold that are over-populated, and it is a serious problem, with no good answer. Some places there are so many people living that no ground is left to grow crops for food, and then people starve. In earlier times, these overpopulated areas stopped when the inhabitants starved to death and died, until only a few were left, and they could grow enough food to feed themselves again. Now, we send food to the area, feed the people, and they have more babies and need even more food. Many of the vaccines also have birth control serums , from some of the articles I have read; so this would help slow the population growth somewhat; but we still have way too many places where it is over-populated. Moving these people to a whole different part of the world is not turning out very well, either, and since they often have no skills suitable for the country they are moved to, they still have to be fed and taken care of. Plus, feeding the people in these areas then takes food that should have been feeding people where the food was actually grown, thus leaving less food for the people who grew and harvested it. If people stopped eating meat, and became vegetarians, there would be more food, because many acres are used in growing grain crops to feed livestock. This has been presented as a solution; but even that would only work temporarily, because of the ever growing populations in the overcrowded countries.
I agree with most of your comment, @Yvonne Smith. One of the things that once turned me anti-Catholic was the birth control situation in underdeveloped countries. I work in missions in South America, and the government would hold birth control clinics and give out free birth control. The priests would then rail at the parishioners and tell them they were going to Hell if they used birth control. People would have 10-12 children, but could only feed 4, so the entire family would be under nourished and subject to many diseases. It took me many years to come to terms with that. I also wonder about organizations like Feed The Children, that improve the state of sick underfed children only to kick the can down the road and make the famine situation worse in the future. It is hard to draw a line on suffering of children. Sometimes animals are raised and eaten because the land is not suitable for tillage, in which case, if animals were not used, no food at all would be grown on that land. That is true in many areas of the North, and for some areas in the tropics and subtropics. I do agree when applied to modern farming; so much crop land is devoted to raising animal feed that could be easily used for human food, however.
These are harrowing comments. With finite natural resources it is difficult to picture the future we are handing to our children and grandchildren.
Over population doesn't affect me and not likely it ever will. I had the good fortune to be born in a country that has and abundance of everything. And probably even greater good fortune to be born 70 plus years ago. I wonder what chaos will take place when & if this population prediction comes true. "World population projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100. The current world population of 7.6 billion is expected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, according to a new United Nations report being launched today.Jun 21, 2017"
People would fit here, but they couldn't feed themselves. There is plenty of living space on earth, but the arable land and fresh water are the limiting factors. If we wanted to live as pre-industrial people lived, things would go a lot further. I have heard that the U.S. has begun compiling "Social Scores" on all of us already. I guess that is perhaps to determine who should live and who should die.
I read somewhere sometime back that, the entire world population could be placed in Jacksonville , Florida . And maintain that 'fictional' 3 feet of personal space.