A. Human Overpopulation

B. Population Growth from 8000 BCE to 2042 CE

C. Environmental Impact

D. Mandatory Pregnancy for Women or Family Planning?

E. Frequently Asked Questions on Contraception

F. Population Stabilization through Demographic Transition

A.                         Human Overpopulation

Human overpopulation is the condition when people outnumber the carrying capacity of their geographical location or that of Planet Earth--it is an unhealthy relationship between the human population and its environment. If a given environment has a population of ten million, but there is food for only nine million, then that environment is overpopulated. On the other hand if the population is 10 million individuals, but there is enough food for 11 million, then it is not.

     Overpopulation most often results from an increase in births, a decline in mortality rates due to advances in hygiene and medicine, from an increase in immigration, a decrease in emigration, or from an unsustainable biome (life zone) and depletion of resources. It is possible for very sparsely-populated areas to be overpopulated, as the area in question may have a very meager or non-existent capability to sustain human life.

     There are at least four main causes for the already diminished well-being of humans and the environment (for solutions see further below):

1. Exploding population growth. Overpopulation is a serious problem getting worse every year. The population will grow by another 50 percent to 9,000 million by the year 2042. Moreover, growth in the human population is accompanied by a growth of livestock populations of more than 35 million per year. Also, consumption levels in the developing world are growing fast in line with economic growth. Without attention to population, rising per capita consumption multiplied by large and growing populations puts the developing world on a course toward disaster.

2. Excessive consumption on the part of the more well-off people in the world. This is exacerbated by obscene luxury of the very rich who often own their wealth on account of the favors granted by corrupt legislators and unjust economic systems.

3. Excessive build-up and maintenance of military power almost everywhere. For example, the U.S. with only 5% of the world's population, spends as much as the rest of the world together. Also, the U.S. generates 25% of the world's pollution.

4. Corrupt, special-interest-owned national governments pass laws that harm the well-being of its people and the environment. Often, bad economic policies favor the few over the many. Moreover, incompetent, unscrupulous legislators sell the people's power to control their destiny and country to powerful multinational corporations.

During a remarkably short period of time:

• We have lost a quarter of the world's topsoil and a fifth of its agricultural land. For instance, in Mexico, the degradation of cropland forces some 700,000 Mexicans off the land each year in search of jobs in nearby cities or in the United States.

• We have, altered the composition of the atmosphere profoundly resulting in global warming, that is, temperature increases from the burning of fossil fuels. Also, the rising concentrations of carbon dioxide destabilize the earth's climate in other ways. 

• We experiencing advancing deserts and rising seas that threaten populated areas. Hundreds of millions of people will be forced out of coastal regions in the next century or so.

• We have destroyed a major proportion of our forests to create land for agriculture and by the over-harvesting of timber.

• We have lost plant and animal species on the account of natural habitat loss.

• We have depleted our oceans and other waters due to over-fishing.

• We already suffering causing food shortages, water shortages, air pollution, water pollution, flooding and mudslides.

Solutions must include the preservation of the environment and its natural resources for the benefit of all life including people, families, future generations, and all sentient creatures. A three-prong approach is necessary:

1. Empower and enable women to have fewer children. Hence, particularly in developing countries, we need to increase girls' educational opportunities and women's economic and health care options, that is, we can assist with humane programs to hasten lowering fertility rates. Improved healthcare leads to a decline in childhood death, which tells parents that they need not require so many children to be born to secure a comfortable--survivable--old age.

2. Develop simpler lifestyles, change dietary habits, and shame those who live in luxury, which is often at the expense of others. The overall objective is to reduce unnecessary personal resource consumption. One way to boost the world's food supply would be if people ate more grains and vegetables and less meat, the world could then feed another billion people o so. The amount of grain it takes to produce 1 calorie of beef would yield 10 calories if eaten directly. For poultry, the ratio is 1 to 6. The average American consumes 20 times as much in natural resources as the average African.

3. Military gigantism and ethical dwarfism must be reversed. Nation states must reduce their military capability to defensive needs only. All weapons of mass destruction must be eliminated together with their delivery systems. The more powerful nations must give up their ambitions to rule the world militarily or economically. The world's largest religions too must give up on their "mission from God" to convert the rest of humanity with the military help of powerful nations. The monies saved could reduce or even eliminate much suffering and educate all children every where.

4. Promote genuine democracies thru educating citizens who are then self- rather than other directed by the mass media that often serves the self-interest of powerful economic, religious, and ideological interests. These autonomous citizens could then elect a functional government that actually represents the interests of the many. Such a people's government would then:

• Reduce or eliminate pollution of all kinds and the depletion of non-renewable resources. We reverse these trends or risk being overwhelmed by them.

• Develop renewable energy resources.

• Strengthen national and international governments so that they can set up, implement, and maintain programs that save the environment. 

The ideal number for the planets human population, while maintaining the natural world, would be its carrying capacity minus a 10-20 percent safety margins for crop failures that seem periodically and inevitably occur. At present, as many as 400 million people are at risk of starvation because of drought and crop failure.

B.      Population Growth from 8000 BCE to 2042 CE

What becomes of the surplus of human life? It is either, 1st. destroyed by infanticide, as among the Chinese and Lacedemonians [Spartans]; or 2d. it is stifled or starved, as among other nations whose population is commensurate to its food; or 3d. it is consumed by wars and endemic diseases; or 4th. it overflows, by emigration, to places where a surplus of food is attainable.
                                       James Madison (1751-1836), U.S. President

Up to 8000 BCE, the food supply for humans was very limited because people were for the most part nomadic, hunters, fishers, and gatherers, but not producers of food. The world population at this time is estimated at about 4 million. However, with the domestication of plants and animals that begun around that time, the world population would experience rapid growth:

The Green Revolution began around 1940. It transformed agriculture around the globe. By 1984 world grain production increased by 250%. These production increases are widely credited with having helped to avoid widespread famine, and for feeding billions of people. Green Revolution techniques also heavily rely on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, some of which must be developed from fossil fuels, making agriculture increasingly reliant on petroleum products.

The U.S. Census Bureau's latest projections imply that population growth will continue into the 21st century, although more slowly. The world population is projected to grow from 6 billion in 1999 to 9 billion by 2042, an increase of 50 percent that will require 43 years.

According to data from the United Nations:

• Almost all growth will take place in the less developed regions, where today’s 5.3 billion population of underdeveloped countries is expected to increase to 7.8 billion in 2050. By contrast, the population of the more developed regions will remain mostly unchanged, at 1.2 billion. The world's population is expected to rise by 40% to 9.1 billion.

• Fertility at the world level in 2000-2005 stood at 2.65 children per woman, about half the level it had in 1950-1955 (5 children per woman). In the medium variant, global fertility is projected to decline further to 2.05 children per woman.

• Global life expectancy at birth, which is estimated to have risen from 46 years in 1950-1955 to 65 years in 2000-2005, is expected to keep rising to reach 75 years in 2045-2050. In the more developed regions, the projected increase is from 75 years today to 82 years by mid-century. Among the least developed countries, where life expectancy today is just under 50 years, it is expected to be 66 years in 2045-2050.

• The population of 51 countries or areas, including Germany, Italy, Japan and most of the successor States of the former Soviet Union, is expected to be lower in 2050 than in 2005.

Map of countries by population density per square kilometer. (Photo source: Wikipedia).

C.                       Environmental Impact

Our burgeoning population and urban way of life have been purchased at the expense of vast ecosystems and habitats. ... It's no accident that as we celebrate the urbanization of the world, we are quickly approaching another historic watershed: the disappearance of the wild.

                                                                        Jeremy Rifkin (1943-)

Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the "environmentalist" view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.

                                                                       Edward O. Wilson (b.1929)

Overpopulation has had a major impact on the environment of Earth starting at least as early as the 20th century. Many assert that the human population has expanded, enabled by over-exploiting natural resources, with resultant adverse impacts upon biodiversity, aquifer sustainability, climate change and even human health. There are also indirect economic consequences of this environmental degradation in the form of ecosystem services attrition. Beyond the scientifically verifiable harm to the environment, some argue the moral right of other species to simply exist, protected from human exploitation (see Animal Welfare and Rights).

     These reflect the comments also of the United States Geological Survey in their paper The Future of Planet Earth: Scientific Challenges in the Coming Century:

As the global population continues to grow...people will place greater and greater demands on the resources of our planet, including mineral and energy resources, open space, water, and plant and animal resources.
 

Some problems associated with or worsened by human overpopulation:

• Depletion of natural resources, especially fossil fuels.

• The use of unsafe, polluted drinking water and discharge of untreated or improperly treated sewage. However, some countries use energy-expensive desalination to solve the problem of water shortages.

• Increased levels of air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination and noise pollution. However, once a country has industrialized and become wealthy, a combination of government regulation and technological innovation causes pollution to decline substantially, even as the population continues to grow.

• The chronic inability of many of these countries to escape from the "population growth trap" via economic growth exceeding population growth. Many Third World countries simply lack the economic or infrastructural base to provide a rising standard of living for most of their people, especially in Africa, the Arab world, and parts of Latin America.

• Deforestation and loss of ecosystems that sustain global atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide balance; about eight million hectares of forest are lost each year.

• Changes in atmospheric composition and consequent global warming

• Irreversible loss of arable land and increases in desertification. Deforestation and desertification can be reversed by adopting property rights, and this policy is successful even while the human population continues to grow.

• Immigration (legal and illegal) to the developed world on an unprecedented scale, creating an unprecedented demographic and political problem in Europe and the United States.

• Poor countries suffer while the rich ones benefit from the even controlled and legal migration of talented and well-educated people from the developing to the developed world. 

• Mass species extinctions from reduced habitat in tropical forests due to slash-and-burn techniques that sometimes are practiced by shifting cultivators, especially in countries with rapidly expanding rural populations; present extinction rates may be as high as 140,000 species lost per year.

• High infant and child mortality. High rates of infant mortality, 8 million/yearly, are caused by poverty in the developing world. This is in part due to low birth weight because mothers do not get enough resources to sustain a fetus from fertilization to birth. Rich countries even with high population densities have low rates of infant mortality.

• Every year some 514,000  women die per UN statistics of complications from pregnancy and abortion in the developing world.

• Increased incidence of heavy blood loss from fevers and other infectious diseases from crowding, lack of adequate sanitation and clean potable water, and scarcity of available medical resources.

• Starvation, malnutrition or poor diet with ill health and diet-deficiency diseases (e.g. rickets). Famine is aggravated by poverty. Rich countries with high population densities do not have famine.

• Poverty coupled with inflation in some regions and a resulting low level of capital formation. Poverty and inflation are aggravated by bad government and bad economic policies. However, many countries with high population densities have eliminated absolute poverty and keep their inflation rates very low.

• Low life expectancy in countries with fastest growing populations. Unhygienic living conditions for many based upon water resource depletion, discharge of raw sewage and solid waste disposal.

• Conflict over scarce resources and crowding leads to increased levels of crime,  escape from reality with harmful drug use and association with militant and fanatical religions and ideologies.

• Over-utilization and subsequent deterioration of infrastructure, such as mass transit, highways, and public health systems.

• Higher land prices reduce home ownership because the price for the building lot is as much or a multiple of the cost to build a dwelling.

D. Mandatory Pregnancy for Women or Family Planning?

All couples and individuals have the right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have access to the information and means to do so.

                                                  United Nations Population Fund.

The right of a woman to control her own body with respect to reproduction is under attack by influential Christian and Islamic fundamentalist groups who are joined and supported by conservative politicians. On the international level, at the United Nations, family planning is opposed primarily by the political arm of the Catholic Church, the Vatican, and by the United States Government when under conservative control.

     But not only on the international level is family planning fought, in the U.S., for instance, the Republican President's recent (2007) Catholic appointments have now the majority on the nations highest court. This majority, with their spiritual allegiance to the Vatican, will most likely water down a woman's right to pregnancy termination by delegating it to the states, and many of them will then abolish this right.

     The suffering and death on account of lack of family planning opportunities is at Holocaust proportions in the poorest countries of the world. Below is a relevant question with excerpts from an answer by Werner Fornos who is the president of the POPULATION INSTITUTE, a Washington-based nonprofit organization seeking a more-equitable balance between the world population, environment and natural resources. The other contributor is Steven W. Mosher who is president of the POPULATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE in Front Royal, Va., a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending human-rights abuses in the name of "family planning" (in Insight on the News,  Dec 10, 2001, below my emphases).

Should the United Nations support more family-planning services for poor countries?

YES: Population pressures lead to poverty, health, environmental and security concerns.

The programs UNFPA [United Nations Fund for Population Activities] does support, including access to reproductive health and family planning, represent the antithesis of force and coercion. There are an estimated 350 million women in the poorest countries of the world who either did not want their last child, do not want another child or want to space their pregnancies, but they lack access to information, affordable means and services to determine the size and spacing of their families. Credible demographic and health surveys indicate that 120 million of these women would use modern contraception immediately were it available and accessible.

Denying these women their internationally recognized right to family planning amounts to forcing them to become pregnant. Such denial can no longer be ascribed to ignorance or unintentional neglect; it is utterly shameful and blatantly reprehensible -- inaction that is unworthy of any society that at the dawn of the 21st century considers itself to be progressive or even moderately civilized.

Those who persist in spreading the myth that UNFPA is engaged in "population control" fall into two categories: the misinformed and the ideological ax-grinders who disseminate malicious propaganda with a heavy hand and a cold heart. . . .

More than 4 billion of the world's 6.1 billion people live in the developing world, countries beset by poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, unemployment, environmental degradation and social disintegration. Among the inhabitants of developing countries are 3 billion people -- one-half the population of the entire world -- who subsist on the equivalent of $2 or less a day; 1.5 billion people who lack safe drinking water or adequate sanitation; 800 million who are chronically malnourished; and 600 million who lack adequate shelter. An estimated 97 percent of population growth in the foreseeable future will occur in these same countries and regions.

In the developing world, where life for far too many amounts to a day-to-day struggle for survival, every year some 514,000 women die of complications from pregnancy and abortion. And every year 8 million infants die, many because of malnutrition or preventable diseases. . . .

E.        Frequently Asked Questions on Contraception

         (Source and for more info consult: Family Health International, www.fhi.org)

while most modern means of contraception are effective, the true tests of a method's value are whether it is right for a specific user and whether consistent and correct use is possible within the context of his or her life.

     FHI's contraceptive research and development broadens the range of safe, effective, and affordable contraceptive methods for women and men, and our programs and information dissemination efforts help ensure that family planning services are based on sound scientific evidence.

• Contraception and HIV: Of all the contraceptives currently available, only abstinence and male and female condoms have been shown to protect against HIV.

• Diaphragm: Although only somewhat effective the way most women use them, diaphragms are a method that women control and can use when needed.

• Emergency Contraception: Emergency contraception pills prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex.

• Female Condoms: The female condom is a thin, soft, loose-fitting polyurethane plastic pouch that lines the vagina.  

• Family Planning Counseling: Counseling is a key component of family planning services and client satisfaction.

• Female Sterilization: Because of the permanency of sterilization, counseling by health care providers is critical. Who is a good candidate for sterilization?

• Injectables: Injectable contraceptives are an effective and popular method in many countries.

• Intrauterine Devices: IUDs provide effective, cost-efficient, long-term, yet reversible pregnancy protection.

• Male Condoms: Studies have shown that consistent and correct use of condoms is by far the most important factor in their effectiveness in preventing both pregnancy and disease.

• Male Sterilization: Vasectomies are highly effective and intended to be permanent.

• Natural methods: Natural methods of family planning include periodic abstinence, and withdrawal [also known as Coitus interruptus, withdrawal of the penis from the vagina prior to ejaculation].

• Oral Contraceptives: More than 80 million women worldwide take "the pill" to prevent pregnancy. Check what you should do if you miss a pill. Also, find out about the differences between combined oral contraceptives and the progestin-only pills. 

• Spermicides: Spermicides are available as foam, cream, jelly, film, suppositories or tablets [they do not protect against sexually transmitted diseases].

(Photo source: A Thai T-shirt by unknown)

F. Population Stabilization through Demographic Transition

Demographic transition, if correct, promises zero or even negative population growth after nations develop--transit--from high birth rates and high death rates to low birth rates and low death rates. This is a byproduct of the economic development of a country from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economy with a corresponding rise in well being and freedom, particularly for women.

Summary of the Theory

The demographic transition involves four stages, or possibly five.

• In stage one, pre-industrial society, death rates and birth rates are high and roughly in balance.

• In stage two, that of a developing country, the death rates drop rapidly due to improvements in food supply and sanitation, which increase life spans and reduce disease. These changes usually come about due to improvements in farming techniques, access to technology, basic healthcare, and education. Without a corresponding fall in birth rates this produces an imbalance, and the countries in this stage experience a large increase in population.

• In stage three, birth rates fall due to access to contraception, increases in wages, urbanization, a reduction in subsistence agriculture, an increase in the status and education of women, a reduction in the value of children's work, an increase in parental investment in the education of children and other social changes. Population growth begins to level off.

• During stage four there are both low birth rates and low death rates. Birth rates may drop to well below replacement level as has happened in countries like Germany, Italy, and Japan, leading to a shrinking population, a threat to many industries that rely on population growth. The large group born during stage two ages creates an economic burden on the shrinking working population. Death rates may remain consistently low or increase slightly due to increases in lifestyle diseases due to low exercise levels and high obesity and an aging population in developed countries.

     As with all models, this is an idealized picture of population change in these countries. The model is a generalization that applies to these countries as a group and may not accurately describe all individual cases. The extent to which it applies to less-developed societies today remains to be seen.

     Many countries such as China, Brazil and Thailand have passed through the DTM very quickly due to fast social and economic change. Some countries, particularly African countries, appear to be stalled in the second stage due to stagnant development and the effect of AIDS.

     For the world as a whole, the number of children born per woman decreased from 5.02 to 2.65 between 1950 and 2005. Europe 2.66 to 1.41. North America 3.47 to 1.99. Oceania 3.87 to 2.30. Central America 6.38 to 2.66. South America 5.75 to 2.51. Asia (excluding Middle East) 5.85 to 2.43. Middle East & North Africa 6.99 to 3.37. Sub-Saharan Africa 6.7 to 5.53. In 2050, the projected number of children born per woman is 2.05. Only the Middle East & North Africa (2.09) and Sub-Saharan Africa (2.61) will then have numbers greater than 2.[23]

     A comparison of fertility rates in Italy and Sweden suggest Italy is alleviating overpopulation more than Sweden due primarily to greater gender inequality and fewer social services, similar findings from the same source relate to Japan, Russia and Estonia. First and second world effects of social services and gender equality on overpopulation appear to be the opposite of those found in the third world.