The Negative Effects Of Overpopulation

Humans are part of the Earth's ecosystem. The Earth has limited resources to support populations. In addition, our activities and lifestyles have affected these resources negatively. According to Miller and Spoolman in Sustaining the Earth (2015),”human activity is putting such as a strain on the natural functions of earth”. When we chose house to live in or clothes to wear, we are affecting the availability of these resources for the long term. Overpopulation has caused several issues such as lack of natural resources, pollution, and species extinction. Firstly, increasing the population number has negative impacts on living standards and food resources. Human population has increased at a fixed percentage and this caused overpopulation

The Earth produces a limited amount of fresh water and food, which is falling short of the current needs. When population growth increase, the living standards decrease because they consume resources faster than they can regenerate. Many developing countries with rapid population growth face the urgent need to improve living standards. While the populations are expanding, our demand for health care, food, fresh water and shelter have increased. According to Miller and Spoolman in Sustaining the Earth (2015), we are about 7.1 billion people on the planet and this number will increase to 9.6 billion by 2050. As a result, many people do not have access to food and clean water. According to the World Bank, “about 900 million people almost three times the U.S. population live in extreme poverty,

When population increase, the consumption of resources increase. Therefore, a lot of factories have been built and a lot of lands have been used to get rid of different kinds of waste. For example, in lots of major cities in China, there are hundreds of factories that make it difficult for Chinese people to breathe naturally because the air is polluted. In addition, polluted air has become the biggest problem to the human on the earth because it causes some dangerous diseases such as respiratory diseases and heart diseases and sometimes leads to death. According to World Health Organization, around 4.5 million people die each year from air pollution. When we use industrial chemicals or burning substances, chemicals release toxic gases and this causes air pollution. Water pollution is another problem of overpopulation. When we dump our toxic waste in the rivers and lakes or spilling oil in oceans, we contaminate our sources of clean water. Without clean water, we cannot be able to be alive for long time. For instance, Michigan has contaminated drinking water and this causes a big impact on people’s health especially for their children such as blood poisoning, rashes and hair loss. Many people do not have access to clean water in many countries because our activities destroy these sources of water. Many of our resources are affected by pollution, and people are looking for other resources in the nature, so that