• Question: How do we solve the population problem? Will we one day run at of resources and space?

    Asked by Dylan to Daniel, Giovanna, Greg, Kelly, Lowri on 8 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Lowri Evans

      Lowri Evans answered on 8 Mar 2016:

      Wow, interesting question! 🙂

      The impact of overpopulation is pretty serious, and one of the first things to consider as you pointed out is the depletion of our resources. The earth can only produce a limited amount of water and food, which is currently falling short of our needs. Can you believe that over 1 billion people do not have enough food and safe drinking water? The damage to our environment has been caused by the growing number of humans on the planet – we cut down forests, hunt wildlife, cause pollution and other problems. We overuse coal, oil and gas which is melting our polar ice caps, changing climate patterns and causing a rise in our sea levels.

      This population pressure has pushed people into living in areas that are basically unsafe. Hundreds of people died in 2010-2011 because they lived on floodplains in pakistan or by the tsunami-prone coast of Japan (which had hardly anyone living there 30 years ago!)

      The sad thing is that as our resources and space run out, the amount of people living on the planet *should* decline. There are lots of solutions to the population problem that we as a society should be looking into, such as education and job opportunities (especially for women) which has the effect of encouraging people to have smaller families and invest more in their children, helping to break the poverty cycle. Our efforts now to make a more sustainable future could reduce the effects of the population as much as possible.

    • Photo: Daniel Biggs

      Daniel Biggs answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      This is a really intereting question, and one that has no right or wrong answer. I echo what Lowri has said the impact of overpopulation is serious, and to solve will take a long time and a lot of education.

      I do think that one day we will run out of space and resources, but which will happen first I could not say.

      Really got me thinking, thank you.

    • Photo: Greg Irving

      Greg Irving answered on 10 Mar 2016:

      Fantastic question. One of my heros is Thomas Mathuls who wrote about the principle of population. “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man”. He predicted a malthusian collapse where we will one day run out of resources.

      This cool video shows how quickly the worlds population is growning – take a look; it’s quite scary !

      A charity group called ‘Population Matters’ suggests that the solution to the population problem is better family planning , better education, and more womens rights. What do you think ?

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_Matters

    • Photo: Giovanna Tancredi

      Giovanna Tancredi answered on 14 Mar 2016:

      Hi, this is a very tricky question…I don’t know how to solve the population problem and maybe we will really need to have restrictions on how many children a couple can have (do you know that in China a couple could have just one child until last year?).
      However I believe that we will end our resources one day and that governments should make sure that they educate people to reduce waste to a minimum. I like to think that space exploration could save us…

Comments