Brian Smith

 

Genre: Essay

Overpopulation is an issue that will sooner or later become a life-or-death issue for everyone. It is a long-term dilemma that can mean the end of our species. In ecosystems where animals overpopulate, the ecosystem can self-destruct and break the food chain. The same thing can happen to us on a global scale. This issue will affect us in three main ways, economically, socially, and politically. They all affect us in bad ways, some good, but mainly bad. There are ways to prolong this process, or completely stop it, it just depends on the situation. But first, what are the causes of overpopulation in our society?

Overpopulation stems from a few issues. One issue is poverty. Being poor doesn’t give you much access to many things, including access to contraceptives. Also, with a lack of proper sexual education, it can be expected to believe that babies are going to be born, and people are going to be unhappy and suffering, and wish they knew this information before having sex. Overpopulation also stems from humanity technologically advancing. With modern medicine, people live longer, and life expectancy grows, so the death rate has decreased. With people dying slower there are going to be more people on the planet at the same time. So, babies are going to be born faster since more people are having babies, and people are dying slowly due to modern medicine. Furthermore, overpopulation stems from people migrating. Anyone would rather have a better life than the one they have. And if moving to the city is the way to do that, people would do it in a heartbeat. With everyone moving to one place it can make a space feel more crowded than it is. So now that we know where it came from, in what ways does Overpopulation affect us?

Overpopulation will affect the world economically in a terrible way. Many things will happen with the economy, the biggest one being inflation. With more people comes a major need for space, and because of this, the price of houses will increase. The need for raw resources like food and water will dramatically increase due to the increase of people, creating an increase in the price of those materials. These both create a need for more money, which creates the need for more jobs, leading back to inflation. More trees need to be cut down to produce more money but cutting down trees only makes the environment worse.  With more money being printed, the value of money goes down, the price goes up, the cycle continues, and the world stays round, right? Wrong, because with the economy in shambles the world goes to crap, which brings me to the social issues that overpopulation brings.

With the world in shambles due to its overpopulated economy, the social structure will start to crumble, self-implode even. With more humans, several things will happen. One, with more humans, there will be a bigger use of coal and fossil fuels, which adds to another looming issue that has its own list of issues, Climate change. Climate change includes Deforestation, desertification, global warming, and more. Two (going back to economics), with a need for jobs and money, it will lead to a rise in crime and protest. Living in an already overpopulated city with these kinds of conditions, New York City would turn into Gotham City. Speaking of cities, with a rise in the need for jobs and natural resources, people are going to move into cities, creating an even more dense environment than it already was. By having more dense areas, it creates a mass need for survival resources like food, water, and protection like a house or a property, which will lead to a shortage of resources. With people protesting, crime at large, and a massive amount of people struggling to survive, finally the world leaders will make some decisions and try to step in, which leads me to political issues.

 

Overpopulation affects the political aspect of the world by giving world leaders a dilemma that can make or break humanity. Out of the three, this can be the most influential part of this process, and there are many ways it can go which leads to different points. It can lead to political faces like governors taking care of their cities, and presidents, dictators, kings, and queens coming together and solving this crisis. A good outcome of having a massive number of people is the massive number of ideas, and ways of thinking those people can bring. Many people can lead to technological advances that can help humanity progress and could find ways to slow down, or potentially stop this crisis with methods that haven’t been discovered yet. It can lead to total chaos and panic among world leaders, which can create a nuclear war that ends everything, or total anarchy, where the world goes crazy. Some in desperate times of hunger and crazy, people start to eat each other. In a diabolical, messed-up way of thinking, this does solve the issue of Overpopulation AND mass hunger at the same time, but I pray we never get to that point. Depending on the way the political leaders decide to handle the mess of the apocalypse, can lead to either destruction of the world, or its social structure, and create a world of cannibals where the one law is kill or be killed. Or society can somehow evolve. Somehow by coming together humanity could survive, but that is hopeful thinking.

Now even though this issue seems extremely scary there is a silver lining. For such a scary problem with scary consequences, the solutions are straightforward. One, learn your sex education. By doing so, you are able to make rational decisions like putting on a condom before sex, taking plan b, etc. All those things previously listed prevent having a child. If society had sex education more accessible and made contraceptives like condoms, and plan B, and those things available for everyone, overpopulation would be a less serious issue that wouldn’t need to be addressed as soon as possible. By simply handing out condoms for the world to use, we can fix a global dilemma that can lead to our demise as a species. Another solution to overpopulation would be to help the poor. The poor not only have easy access to contraceptives but do not have the education to know how to use them properly. By educating the poor about sex, it can lead to a global decrease in repopulation

Overall, Overpopulation is and has been a looming threat to humanity, and it is time for this to come to light. It is a serious topic that can bring about the end of humanity if not taken care of. It can affect the world in apocalyptic ways (economically, socially, and politically). It can be solved with simple solutions like a simple ad about condoms or a newspaper article about plan B, or even an essay about sex education. By educating the world about sexual intercourse, and it the responsibilities it can bring, overpopulation would no longer be an issue. There would be more space in the world, a smaller market so people wouldn’t struggle as badly to make money, natural resources would remain for a longer period, and humanity would not have to resort to cannibalism to survive.  If this issue is not addressed, it will create problems that future generations must deal with tenfold. So, let’s solve this now before it could be too late.

References

Global population hits eight billion – Causes and consequences of overpopulation. (n.d.). Sustainability for all | ACCIONA. https://www.activesustainability.com/sustainable-development/causes-consequences-overpopulation/?_adin=01833301559

Howell, N. (2022, June 9). Overpopulation: Cause, effect and solution. Earth and Human. https://earthandhuman.org/overpopulation-causes-effects-solutions/

Genre: Meme