Our growing world

In 2010, the UN predicts that the world population will be approximately 6,830,283,000. In 2020, it will be 7,540,237,000. In 2030, it will be 8,130,149,000. And in 2050, it will be 8,918,724,000. In other words: our world is undergoing a population explosion. In a matter of centuries—a blink of the eye in relation to human history—the world will be packed with human beings.

How did this happen? How did we, as a species, manage to break out of our early years as hunter-gatherers and form such large, complex societies? The answer, as Jared Diamond explained in his groundbreaking book Guns, Germs, and Steel, is agriculture. Once agriculture was developed, societies could support large populations and specialization, leading to more complex and larger groups of human beings. Over time, fertility rates increased as a result of this newfound food supply, eventually creating the population explosion that formed the modern world.

But the “why” is irrelevant—the issue this population forecast raises may be the most important question of our time: How do we deal with it? How do we support a world population of 10, 20, or 30 billion?  This is obviously a problem of resources: Today, I would like to go down the list of resources essential to our survival, and discuss possible solutions.

The first and most important resource is water. Fresh water makes up only a small fraction of the total amount of water on this planet—and we have an endless demand for it. Remember that water is not only for drinking—even more is needed for agriculture, industry, and infrastructure. Fortunately, desalination is a viable alternative—Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other countries have the technology to desalinate a cubic meter of water for about 50 cents. In other areas of the world this technology is more expensive—so, in order for the world to begin transitioning to desalinated water, the technology must be made cheaper and more readily available. However, this is not as easily achievable as it sounds, and I would not be surprised if fresh water becomes the cause of resource wars, especially in Africa or the Middle East.

The next resource, which is equally important, is food. The future of agriculture does not look as bright as the future of water—even as far back as the 1800’s, the economist Thomas Malthus predicted that overpopulation would eventually result in an food crisis, since he believe that food production increases at a linear rate and population increases at an exponential rate. Though this theory has been proven wrong, Malthus’s prediction is right: food production has not been increasing as much as it needs to be. Even in the past few years, food riots have occurred in areas like the Philippines, where he price of wheat has skyrocketed due to shortages. Looking forward, it is obvious that land is going to become an issue for the food industry. North America and Asia have already used of most of their arable land, while Africa and South America have more untapped potential, especially Africa. In order to ensure a more stable food supply, the world must encourage a major agricultural revolution in Africa. Furthermore, in order to grow food more efficiently, high-density crops such as lettuce must be grown in place of more inefficient ones. Next, the effects of global warming (regardless of whether it is natural or man-made) will have a huge impact on the future of agriculture. If it reduces the amount of arable land in the world, we may have a much harder time supporting a large population. Though hydroponics and vertical farming can counteract this to some extent, the loss of arable land could seriously cripple farmers, which could leave the worldwide agricultural industry in a slump. Also, the food industry is linked to the water supply—if water desalination does not progress enough, agriculture will suffer regardless of any other factors. Additionally, this is linked to the problem of fertilizer—modern fertilizers use a large amount of petroleum, and if peak oil is true and/or the oil industry crashes a food crisis will occur, hurting the agricultural industry even more. Fortunately (and somewhat surprisingly) the amount of land area occupied by human dwellings is not much of a threat to agriculture—cities are predicted to become even denser, and the UN predicts that in the next 20 years 3 out of 5 people will live in a city. Even so, there are a multitude of problems confronting the food industry, and unless these can be solved we are almost certainly headed for a Malthusian catastrophe.  

The next resource we need to worry about is energy. I am not as worried about this one as I am about an impending food crisis, but energy is still an issue we need to consider. The first step is to gradually transition to renewables, but this is not too much of a problem because many countries are motivated by global warming to do so anyway. Obviously relying on a non-renewable resource in unwise, and with the world population expanding so quickly a finite resource can run out startlingly fast. However, I am not worried because the technology of renewable energy will continue to increase over the next few decades, and very soon renewables will be economically superior to finite sources of energy.

In addition to these, overpopulation has other adverse effects on our planet. I would like to take a moment to discuss these as well.

The main problem posed by overpopulation is the danger to the environment. Deforestation and desertification will most likely increase as the population rises, which will harm ecosystems and my result in mass extinctions. Also, air pollution may be a result on an increased population unless filtering technology increases dramatically. If global warming is man-made, overpopulation may very well drive it over the edge. This would not only hurt the environment even more, but it would also make things more difficult for the agricultural industry.

Next, overpopulation may result in widespread poverty. Even if we manage to handle the resource problems well, I doubt we can deal with them well enough to allow however many billion people there are to live in prosperity. This may make it harder to ensure we have enough of the resources listed above, and it might lead to an increase in crime or other factors that lower quality of life. Malthus would have us believe that we should welcome this—he famously stated that when people allow themselves to expand, nature will take over and do the job for us. However, I hope we can avoid poverty to the point of starvation by implementing our own, more peaceful solutions to overpopulation and by ensuring that the human race has enough food.

Because overpopulation makes our future looks quite bleak, many intellectuals have suggested ideas to curb the population, preventing this Malthusian crisis from occurring. Though most of these ideas are wildly impractical or controversial, I would like to talk about them because they may be our only hope for the future.

One of the more popular—and also more controversial—solutions to the overpopulation problem is eugenics. Many groups have advocated a “one-child rule” for the entire planet, in the hopes that this will curb the exponential trend of population growth. This is probably the most viable of the solutions offered, and even though the rule would be ignored to some extent it might be able to reduce population growth somewhat. The main problem with this program, though, is that it would be very difficult to implement—the UN is not influential enough to convince many nations to submit to the program, so it would have to come from an international agreement like the Kyoto Protocol.

On a similar vein, some have suggested that we must make changes to our social structure, such as the elimination of marriage or even polygamy. These are probably not as effective, and since they are so radical I doubt many countries would implement them. However, plain old feminism may be good enough to reduce the population growth rate, coupled with an increase in the availability of contraception. Overall, though, none of these are true solutions, since they are probably not powerful enough to really curb the growth of the world population.

Other scientists and economists have offered more radical solutions, such as space colonization. Though this would solve the population problem, it is far from a practical solution. Space travel remains exorbitantly expensive, making it impractical to transport large populations to other worlds. Also, not means of space travel currently exists that can transport human beings outside of the solar system within one lifetime, and astronomers do not even know if other planets capable of supporting human life exists. However, outer space may be a viable source of resources—the Moon, for example, contains a variety of useful metals, and lunar ice could be a potential source of fresh water. For now, though, this solution to the population problem resides only in the realm of science fiction.

Fringe groups are also suggesting that vaccinations should no longer be issued, so that healthcare will decrease, causing people to die “naturally.” This will create a sort of social Darwinism, which will gradually reduce the population. Though this may be effective, it is hardly a desirable or practical solution. No country is going to willingly give up vaccinations, and no one wants to hear that the solution to overpopulation is to allow a large amount of the population to die.

So, what is the verdict on overpopulation? Simply this: we should be worried. Though the dreaded Malthusian crisis may not happen in our lifetime, our children and our children’s children may have to deal with it. We should work towards ensuring that our supply of food, water, and energy is secure, so that we can deal with overpopulation as smoothly as possible. Unless space colonization becomes viable, we are going to have to figure out how to stabilize our population. Overpopulation is often over looked, but very soon it is going to determine whether we as a species are able to survive as a large and complex civilization. The sooner we start dealing with it, the better.