Overpopulation Impacts

After finding out what overpopulation even is and then writing the blogpost about it a few weeks ago, I now concentrated on the impacts of overpopulation for the next round of research. 

The impacts of overpopulation can in general be split up in three big categories. First we have the decrease of the quality of life, then the consequences for society and democracy specified and third, probably the biggest part,  the impacts of the climate catastrophe. 

When talking about overpopulation and its impacts, you first always have to consider the actual change for people in their daily lives. How is it different from their lives with no population growth/overpopulation? What are the first effects that can be directly seen? 

By then taking a closer look you can definitely see changes and consequences for people. First of all, there will definitely not be enough jobs for all people, especially in big cities, because of the fast growth but the slow growing industries and firms, which in return leads to lower wages because there is a bigger range of people being able and wanting to get the job than there are jobs, so the owner or manager can decrease the worker’s wages very easily (3). Additionally to that there will be big problems with food shortages. The food capacities right now are already not enough, so when having more and more people living on the earth the whole system could collapse and there would be drastic catastrophes because of people not having food (4).  

Another big impact is that overpopulation brings up a lot more conflicts and difficulties when taking a closer look at living together as a society (1). Starting with more conflicts between just a few people (1+2) because with more people there are also more opinions and expectations but then also leading to violence and political unrest affecting whole countries and continents.(2). 

The last huge aspect then is the influence on the climate catastrophe. With more/”too many” people living on the earth and especially in cities (4) the demands of resources such as coal, gas and oil will increase (3), which in return then leads to a higher pollution rate (2), pollution of water resources, biodiversity and air, and higher emissions (2).  Because there are also more people needing a place to live, another impact affecting the climate is deforestation(2 + 3). This deforestation will be a big problem because there won’t be enough trees at all to absorb the Carbon dioxide emissions and then transform them into oxygen (3), but clear the protection for people when it comes to storms and tsunamis (4). 

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation#Proposed_impacts 
2. https://info.populationmedia.org/blog/overpopulation-cause-and-effect
3. https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-overpopulation-impacts-the-environment-4172964 
4. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2929&context=gc_etds