Solutions for Population Growth

Video Transcription

Hi, I'm Jensen Morgan. We're going to talk about some great concepts in environmental science. Today's topic is population growth solutions. So let's get started. Today we're going to talk about overpopulation, its impacts, and efforts to address the challenges it poses.

Overpopulation essentially means that there are more humans than the Earth can sustain. Humans have exceeded our Earth's carrying capacity with our current lifestyles. Over 83 million people per year, 200,000 per day, or 150 per minute are joining the human species.

Human population growth has largely occurred as a result of improved medical care and technology. The more people living on the Earth, the larger the human population, the greater the strain on resources such as food, water, energy, and space.

Impacts of population growth are diverse. Food supplies may not always be able to match population expansion. Current population size has resulted in a degradation of arable land to provide food and other services, making this even more difficult.

Population growth increases the demand for water. But many polluting human activities make it difficult to keep water supplies for drinking and bathing safe. Primarily in developing countries, the challenge of adequate and safe water supply has resulted in the deaths of millions every year. On top of that, oceans and their coastlines have been polluted, and fisheries over-exploited, decimating aquatic ecosystems and species.

Primarily due to overpopulation, half of the world's forest cover, or 10 million hectares per year, has been raised, cut, burned, and bulldozed to the ground. Not only does this impact biodiversity and habitat availability, but it also reduces carbon sinks like forests, which can absorb carbon dioxide and slow global climate change.

Climate change worsens as air pollution increases, primarily from over population demanding more burning of fossil fuels. As the Earth's heating and cooling systems intensify, it may lead to rising sea levels, more frequent and intense natural disasters, flooding and droughts.

Population growth's increase in air pollution is also causing more airborne heavy metals, which when breathed in cause health problems and even death. As natural resources are mined or cut from local ecology, like this forest here, to produce infrastructure for humans increasing population, approximately 66%, or 2/3 of the world's biological species are declining in population.

In response to such severe impacts and the speed of population growth, people are building facilities and infrastructure to support growing populations in such a short time period. Private companies and policymakers are attempting to develop sustainable strategies, plans, and technologies to respond to increasing population demands.

Some countries are discussing, or even enforcing, child limitation laws to enforce population stabilization or even decline. Scientists and engineers are developing models through analysis of current effects to better understand potential futures and develop technology to mitigate or eliminate challenges posed by population growth.

Now let's have a recap. Today we talked about overpopulation, its impact, such as climate change, biodiversity decrease, and efforts being made to mitigate or eliminate those impacts, especially in the future. Well, that's all for this tutorial. I hope these concepts have been helpful, and I look forward to next time. Bye.