Human Overpopulation is Killing Our Planet

Julie Smith, 4/4/26

This is a summary of Chapter 5, The Problem With People, in the book, “2050: What’s it Gonna Be?”.  You can download the full chapter, as well as other chapters.  References are here.

Human overpopulation is killing our planet and our wildlife. We humans are an extremely successful species that has learned how to leverage natural resources with science and technology, far beyond any other living being on this planet.  We’ve figured out how to automate production and transportation and provide food for ourselves very efficiently, as well as cure ourselves of previously fatal diseases and conditions, increasing our quality of life and our lifespans. 

However, the problem at this point is that we’ve now taken all our comforts and conveniences so far out on a limb that we’re now creating a potentially miserable future for our descendants, as well as for all other life on this planet.   We have squandered nearly all the fossil fuels that have been held deep within our planet for millions of years in just the past few generations, and converted that fuel into carbon dioxide (CO₂) that is now warming our planet faster than in any previous time in history.

Basically, we have too many people using too many resources.  And, we’re not only trashing the planet for future generations, we’re driving other species to extinction in the process.  Now is that fair?  To kill off our biological brethren as a byproduct of our success?  After all, we are all in the same boat.  We humans are part of the animal kingdom too.  We may be at the top, but we are simply animals at the end of the day, so when we drive wildlife to extinction, we’re killing our natural family that has evolved to exist together on this planet. 

As the top species, don’t we have an obligation to be responsible with our immense power, to show some level of consideration for all species, and not just ourselves?  Don’t we have an obligation to future generations of humans, when we can make good decisions now so that they can have comfortable lives?  Let me be clear about another personal point.  I like my life.  I like my conveniences.  I simply think it’s fair that my children and grandchildren should get the privilege to enjoy a similar lifestyle because of my good choices, rather than complete crap as the world falls apart around them, because of my selfish, bad choices.

The cold, hard reality is that Earth’s resources are limited, despite what we might want to tell ourselves.  The success of humanity depends on three basic types of resources, what comes from the earth, what lives on or in the earth and the earth’s ability to absorb and recycle our wastes.  Since the mid-80’s we’ve been consuming these resources faster than the earth can supply them naturally.  We are currently running out of energy, food, water and land. 

In 2008, about 20 million people were displaced by extreme weather, compared with 4.6 million internally displaced by conflict and violence over the same period.  The growth of environmental refugees has been highest in sub-Saharan Africa, but risk in other areas is likely to increase as multiple environmental stressors come into play.  As of 2017, when global population had surpassed 7 billion, there were 800 million without enough to eat.²  These numbers are increasing with each passing decade.

According to a United Nations report,⁴ one million species face extinction, more than ever before in human history, and humanity is responsible.  About 25% of the world’s plants and animals are vulnerable to extinction.  The rapid decline of the natural world endangers global food security and quality of life.  Losses of species that pollinate plants would threaten up to $577 billion in crops each year.  We can save a few whales, we can bring back the condors, we can plant that milkweed and we can rip out those invasives all day long, but until we get our population under control, those actions will be mere band aides.  They might be well-intentioned, but they’re not going to come anywhere close to saving our planet unless we get our population under control.

Problem is, there’s not really another planet to fall back on here.  This means that if we run ourselves out of resources on this planet, we’ll simply start dropping dead of starvation and fighting like hell over the scraps until there are just a few stragglers left.  Which wouldn’t really be an undeserved outcome if we don’t get off our asses and deal with this proactively.  Just saying.

While per capita emissions might be low in developing countries right now, as shown in the graph, many of these countries are seeing growing middle classes of people who look across the oceans and see how we live, and strive for a comparable lifestyle.  A lifestyle that would obviously increase their emissions. And the sad truth is, that while everybody certainly deserves to live a lifestyle of their choosing, if we all spewed like Americans, we’d have a global disaster on our hands.  We’d have long since run out of fossil fuels, and we’d be out of food because all the arable land would have gone to desert by now. 

It’s taken nearly two centuries to burn up more than half of the original reserves, and we’ve been increasing the burn rate faster and faster with our population growth.   This implies that the level of global warming that has already happened will double if we burn the rest of the fossil fuel.  We can expect more severe weather, habitat loss for wildlife and humans, continued sea level rise, and more polluting and destructive wildfires.  Given these realities facing us down within the next century, why would we not work on reducing our population now, while there’s still time to make a difference in the quality of life for our descendants?  And for many of you, depending on your age, yourselves?

Now that our extreme population relies on pesticides to grow our food, the poisons are spread throughout the land and water, and we’re unlikely to stop using the poisons any time soon, because of concerns that we couldn’t grow enough food.⁸  Does that  sound like too many people to feed?  I mean, if you have so many people that you can’t feed them without poisoning everything?  With poisons that are made from petrochemicals that we’re running out of?  How long do you think that can go on?  And truth be told, it’s a huge underlying reason that we’ve lost so much wildlife.  It’s also implicated in many health problems in humans, particularly among children.  So, here we are.  Think about that.  Our population is so huge that we have to poison children and wildlife to grow our food.

In Uganda the population is exploding, at a fertility rate of 6.2 children per woman, and married women have an unmet need for contraception.  Currently more than half the population is 15 years old or younger, with 24% of women 15 – 19 years old already mothers or pregnant with their first child.  One in 19 children die before their 5^th birthday.  When young people have limited economic opportunities, it's easy to raise an army of disgruntled insurgencies.  Violence, terrorism, conflict and war are typical expected outcomes when countries are so overpopulated that they run out of food and other basic necessities. 

Poor sanitation and unsafe water in highly populated countries kill more children than measles, malaria and AIDS combined.  Globally, 950 million people still defecate outside, without a toilet.  The land can’t absorb this much feces from all these people, so it runs off into rivers that provide drinking water, that is untreated in undeveloped countries.  Increasing population increases risk of pandemics because of crowded conditions, and a lack of clean water or sanitation. 

Once again, even though it might not feel like you personally are in a resource-stressed area, they exist all over the world around you, and your area will be impacted sooner or later, one way or another.  So, I ask, do we prefer misery and violence caused by the stress of overpopulation or a kinder, gentler approach, like methodical distribution of voluntary birth control, where women can choose how many children to have in their environment?  Where women in overpopulated regions that are warring over territory can choose to avoid having children they can’t even feed?  Think about that.

While Western news tends to pose the underlying problems of social conflict as religious or cultural differences, or, if you will, historical “feuds”, I think the true underlying cause is overpopulation, and not enough to go around.  I’m pretty sure that if you ask most people whether they prefer peace or war, they’ll answer “peace”, but we can get pretty aggressive when there’s not enough to go around.

Honestly, I get sick and tired of media lamenting the problems associated with declining population and I can’t stand it when I see these kinds of dangerous and misleading headlines.  They strike me as clueless, ill-informed and short-sighted, if not complete hogwash.  Whenever I bring up our absolutely urgent need to control population, people ask how we’re supposed to support our old people in an aging economy.  Which tells me that they’ve been influenced by media, who is encouraged and paid by big corp to marginalize population reduction.  Mainly because we can’t have perpetual growth capitalism without a perpetually growing population. 

The inevitable horrors that will come with not reducing our population are far worse to contemplate than the relative inconveniences that we’d have to figure out with reducing our population.  And the last thing we need to shove in front of the general populace is that a reduction in population would cause problems, when it would be an absolutely fantastic win for our planet and humanity and wildlife.  At the end of the day, we need to figure it out.  Other developed countries already are.  Endless population growth is just as futile as infinite capitalism, and has no place in a positive future for our planet.  My own observations point once again to greedy big corps who want the population to grow continuously so they can keep those new customers coming to support our runaway continuous growth capitalism, so they can just keep getting richer forever.  We need to stop eating this crap, and big corp and the media need to stop cramming it down our throats.  Again, we need solutions to less people, not more people to support perpetual growth capitalism.

I ask you, is it fair for us to constantly push aside the wildlife, drive them to extinction, into the corners of the earth, take their food for ourselves and sicken them with our poisons, just because we can?  Why not turn this “problem” that’s killing our planet and ourselves into a win?  We are intelligent, and capable of solving seemingly insurmountable problems, as we’ve proven time and again in history.  We are capable of ethical behavior, and we need to leverage that, and be ethical when it comes to saving our world.  We have the ability to respect our planet and its diversity in order to save this planet.  We just need the will.  We have to care enough to want to do it.

                If we choose to do nothing, our population could be 10 billion by 2050, driving us even further out of balance with our planet.¹⁷    That’s 2 billion more people needing housing, heating and cooling, transportation, food, jobs, education, health care, and so on.  All this means that we can expect the planet to get hotter as we spew more and more CO₂ with more consumption and construction, faster destruction of wildlife, more disease and more scarcity, which will lead to continued increases in costs for essentially everything.  Obviously, this in turn will lead to more discontent and violence as we fight over the last scraps of resources.  When all we need to do is provide birth control to women who want it.  Seriously.  Can we at least do that much?

If we can, our descendants can enjoy a wonderful quality of life and joy, as we do now.  However, we must act now.  We must get our population in control before it’s too late.