Overpopulation

Overpopulation The Enviromnetal Degradation as a Result of Overpopulation Introduction There are simply too many people on our planet, and the population is not showing any signs of slowing down(see Figure 1). It is having disastrous effects on our environment. There are too many implications and interrelationships to discuss in this paper, but the three substances that our earth consists of: land, water and air, are being destroyed. Our forests are being cut down at an alarming rate, bearing enormous impacts on the health of earth. Our oceans and seas are being polluted and overfished. Our atmosphere is injected with increasing amounts of carbon dioxide, which hurts the entire planet. All of these problems can be traced to our vast, rapidly expanding population, which has stressed our world far too greatly. Our Population In 1994, the world population was 5 602 800 000. This population had a doubling time of only forty-one years (De Blij and Muller, 1994, p.527). The massive amount of people has had highly destructive impacts on the earth’s environment. These impacts occur on two levels: global and local. On the global level, there is the accumulation of green house gases that deplete the ozone layer, the extinction of population, 1994, environment, carbon, forests, earth, countries, world, global, forest, dioxide, 1992, one, areas, impacts, ehrlich, atmosphere, water, rate, planet, growth, great, wood, warming, oceans, must, food, two, thus, source, people, out