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Quotations

"We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place."

"We have to educate all of our people to an understanding of the arithmetic and the consequences of growth, especially in terms of populations and in terms of the earth’s finite resources. We must educate people to recognize the fact that growth of populations and growth of rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained."

Featured Resources

World in the Balance: The Population Paradox

Investigating the impact of forces that are radically changing population in both rich and poor country.

Arithmetic, Population and Energy by Dr. Albert Bartlett

The retired Professor of Physics from the University of Colorado in Boulder examines the arithmetic of steady growth, such as 5% per year, the doubling time for such growth, and the large numbers one gets when steady growth continues over modest periods of time. The examination then turns to what happens when one has steady growth in a finite environment.  These concepts are applied to populations and to fossil fuels such as petroleum and coal.  A series of recommendations is given for dealing with the problems that are revealed by the very simple arithmetic.

Population, Resources, and Human Idealism by Richard Heinberg

“An ethic of human rights, of sharing, and of equity without a practically expressed awareness of ecological limits is a setup for disaster.... If we want peace, democracy, and human rights, we must work to create the ecological condition essential for these things to exist. In other words, a stable human population at--or slightly less than--the environment’s long-term carrying capacity.”

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Featured Organizations

A US-based, grassroots, population organization that educates young people and advocates progressive action to stabilize world population at a level that can be sustained by Earth`s resources.

Population Communications International

PCI seeks to work creatively with the media and other organizations to motivate individuals and communities to make choices that influence population trends encouraging sustainable development and environmental protection.

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Issue Description

Human population growth and impacts refers to the environmental, economic, and social impacts that result from human overpopulation on local, regional, and global scales. Such impacts include the environmental impacts of increasing demand from overpopulation for energy that exacerbates climate change, and of the degradation of natural resources from overfarming resulting in food scarcity.

Overpopulation has serious consequences for sustainabiity and the total environment.  A simple model has been used to sketch these consequences:

I = P x A x T

where I is environmental impact, P is the number of people, A is the affluence per person (a measure of consumption), and T is a measure of the effects of technologies on the extraction and use of resources.

Currently, all are increasing over time, thus increasing local and global impact, increasing environmental impact and thwarting sustainability.

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Did You Know?

• An estimated 4.3 people are born every second around the world. (Source: Population Reference Bureau's 2006 World Population Data Sheet)

• Today, 31 countries, or under 8% of the world population, face chronic freshwater shortages. By the year 2025, however, 48 countries are expected to face shortages affecting more than 2.8 billion people, 35% of the world's projected population. (Source: Overpopulation.org)

Keywords

overpopulation, sustainability, scarcity, resource depletion, environmental impacts, carrying capacity, food supply, energy use, natural resource consumption, demographic alarmism, birth rate, death rate, rate of natural increase, population doubling time, infant mortality rate, total fertility rate, population under age 15, dependent population, life expectancy, percent urban population, age structure, sex structure, age at first reproduction, post-reproduction age, age classes, Ehrlich-Holdren Model, nonrenewable resources, marriage age, educational opportunities and fertility, family planning, U.N. International Conference on Population and Development, pronatalist, immigration, migration

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Related Portals

Demographics

Environmental Education

Family Planning

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