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Overpopulation. Its meaning is the excessive population of an area to the point of overcrowding, depletion of natural resources, or environmental deterioration. Having considered some of the ways that humanity is destroying its inheritance, we can look more closely at the concept of "overpopulation." It took all of recorded history until 1804 for world population to reach one billion; it took another 123 years to reach two billion; by 1960, it hit three billion; 1975, four billion; 1986, five billion; and, in 1999, we crossed the six billion mark. (2)
Why is overpopulation so dangerous? We're adding 77 million energy-consuming people to the planet every year. That increase is more than triple the population of fast-growing Texas, the second-most populous state in the world's third most-populous nation. (1) When our world is growing that fast, we have a fast depletion of the world’s natural resources. Also, overpopulation causes economic slowdown, global warming, poverty and hunger, ecological breakdown, wars, and the spread of density dependent diseases.
Even with all these horrible effects of overpopulation, we can all do our part to help reduce it and there are many possible solutions that we and our governments can enforce. First, there are those unwanted pregnancies. If teens were more educated throughout the entire world about safe sex practices, there would be fewer teen pregnancies and children who aren't wanted. Likewise, if abortions were easier and cheaper to have, more people would have access to them and again - less unwanted children.
Secondly, we could have tax laws that encourage people to have 2 or less children. Take a look at China’s one child policy. China, the world's most populous nation, holds approximately twenty percent of our planet's people. So when the government saw this problem, they forced families to have only one-child. (4) When the one-child policy was first introduced, they wanted to be at 1.2 billion by...