We have about 6.8 billion people on a small orb just 8,000 miles wide and 24,000 miles in circumference that we call Earth. We add about a million and a half people to our world population every week! How did we get to the point that many describe as global overpopulation? What is the carrying capacity of our Planet? Is zero population growth desirable or possible? What are the causes and effects of human overpopulation?

The family of humans, known as the hominids, have populated the Earth, according to the fossil record, for 5 to 6 million years. Hominins passed from one genus to another before our genus, Homo, appeared about a million and a half to two million years ago. We transitioned through a number of homo species before our species, homo sapiens (“sensible humans”) arose around 150,000 years ago.

During the 5 to 6 million years that we hominids have been here (Earth has been here for 4.56 billion years in a universe that has been here 13.7 billion years), we have been mostly Earth Age hunters and gatherers. Stone. For the 150,000 years that modern humans have been here, we’ve also been primarily hunters and gatherers. About 12,000 years ago, with the domestication of plants and animals, our Agrarian Age began. Since then, we have been mostly agrarian. A little over 200 years ago, at the end of the 18th century, the industrial age began in England. In 1850 it spread to Belgium, Germany, France and the United States. Over time, it spread to other industrial countries. About sixty years ago, we made the transition from the industrial age to the post-industrial high-tech information age in which we live today. It is an era that allows us to disseminate information almost anywhere instantly.

Over time, we accumulate people. Two thousand years ago, our population was 250 million. In AD 500, it was still the same. By the year 1000 AD, we numbered 500 million people. We reached 750 million people around the year 1500 AD. C. We reached our first billion mark in 1800, at which time the Industrial Revolution began. We added people faster and began to move rapidly in the direction of human overpopulation. Between 1800 and 1900 we added 600 million people. In 1900, we were 1.6 billion. By 1960, in 60 short years, we almost doubled it when we hit 3 billion.

In 1960, humans had been here for about 150,000 years. It took us so long to accumulate 3 billion people. How long did it take us to double that number? Thirty nine years! In 1999 we reached 6 billion people. It is estimated that we will be 9.2 billion by 2050. This is an exponential increase in the birth rate, raising questions about the Earth’s carrying capacity.

The effects of human overpopulation are multiple and sinister. As birth rates rise, natural resources are depleted faster than they can be replaced, creating enormous economic pressures at home while living standards plummet around the world. As a result of having so many people who do not understand our reality and its behavioral demands, we have created an interrelated web of global environmental problems. We are depleting our natural resources: our forests, fisheries, grasslands, farmland, and plant and animal species. We are destroying the biological diversity on which evolution thrives (this is called the sixth great wave of extinction in the history of life on earth, different from the others in that it is not caused by external events, but by us).

With powerful new electric and diesel pumping techniques, we are draining our aquifers and lowering our groundwater tables. We are systematically polluting our air, water and soil and, consequently, our food chain. We are depleting the stratospheric ozone that protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. And we are experiencing symptoms of global warming: heat waves, devastating droughts, dying forests, accelerating species extinctions, dying coral reefs, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, more frequent and intense storms, and faster spread of diseases.

What is the solution to global overpopulation? What should we do to ensure that population growth is not out of control? The answer is in education. Humans are a very young species. We have been here a short time. We are like a child who has just learned to walk. We face serious challenges that require a rapid change in our behavior. Our teacher is our father. Our father is the natural world from which we came. In every way, in every facet of our existence, we must learn to align with that which sustains life. There is no alternative if we want to avoid catastrophic consequences.

With so many of us on a very small planet, and with so many more added every week, we can no longer interact with each other, our environment, ecological systems, and the biosphere as we have or we will succumb to the effects. of human overpopulation. Nature, who couldn’t care less, will wipe us out. Human beings must grow and learn to walk… hand in hand with each other and with our natural world. There is no alternative if we want to sustain humanity and advance our civilization.