Kevin Colby: News, culture, political blog

There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government.

Overpopulation is more dangerous than that stupid hoax called global warming caused by humans.   This is something that I have always thought about and that is human population growth and the dangers it can cause the planet.  Just think about this, the more humans there are the more we’re going to need and use of these precious resources of Earth:  water, food, land and energy resources.  Then comes our waste: garbage and pollution.  Now granted we have come along way with recycling and reusing materials, but not enough has been done yet.

How about water, land and food?  The more humans that are born, the more we are going to have to spread out and take out valuable crop space.  We need water and lots of states in the U.S. have major droughts.  The funny thing is that Earth 70% water, of course most of it is salt water but there is a way to desalinate salte water.  Unfortunately here in the U.S., EPA regualtions will not allow the process of reverse osmosis of ocean water.

One of the main environmental considerations of ocean water desalination plants is the impact of the open ocean water intakes, especially when co-located with power plants. Many proposed ocean desalination plants initial plans relied on these intakes despite perpetuating ongoing impacts on marine life. In the United States, due to a recent court ruling under the Clean Water Act these intakes are no longer viable without reducing mortality, by ninety percent, of the life in the ocean; the plankton, fish eggs and fish larvae.

And what about food?

A National Medal of Science laureate (America’s highest science award), the professor of molecular biology believes part of that better land management must include the use of genetically modified foods.

“We have six-and-a-half-billion people on the planet, going rapidly towards seven. “We’re going to need a lot of inventiveness about how we use water and grow crops,” she told the BBC.

Check out these other effects of overpopulation

• Inadequate fresh water for drinking water use as well as sewage treatment and effluent discharge. Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, use energy-expensive desalination to solve the problem of water shortages.
• Depletion of natural resources, especially fossil fuels^.
• Increased levels of air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination and noise pollution. Once a country has industrialized and become wealthy, a combination of government regulation and technological innovation causes pollution to decline substantially, even as the population continues to grow.
• Deforestation and loss of ecosystems that sustain global atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide balance; about eight million hectares of forest are lost each year.
• Changes in atmospheric composition.
• Irreversible loss of arable land and increases in desertification^. Deforestation and desertification can be reversed by adopting property rights, and this policy is successful even while the human population continues to grow.
• Mass species extinctions. from reduced habitat in tropical forests due to slash-and-burn techniques that sometimes are practiced by shifting cultivators, especially in countries with rapidly expanding rural populations; present extinction rates may be as high as 140,000 species lost per year. As of 2007, the IUCN Red List lists a total of 698 animal species having gone extinct during recorded human history.
• High infant and child mortality. High rates of infant mortality are caused by poverty. Rich countries with high population densities have low rates of infant mortality.
• Increased chance of the emergence of new epidemics and pandemics^. For many environmental and social reasons, including overcrowded living conditions, malnutrition and inadequate, inaccessible, or non-existent health care, the poor are more likely to be exposed to infectious diseases.
• Starvation, malnutrition or poor diet with ill health and diet-deficiency diseases (e.g. rickets). However, rich countries with high population densities do not have famine.
• Poverty coupled with inflation in some regions and a resulting low level of capital formation. Poverty and inflation are aggravated by bad government and bad economic policies. Many countries with high population densities have eliminated absolute poverty and keep their inflation rates very low.
• Low life expectancy in countries with fastest growing populations^.
• Unhygienic living conditions for many based upon water resource depletion, discharge of raw sewage and solid waste disposal. However, this problem can be reduced with the adoption of sewers. For example, after Karachi, Pakistan installed sewers, its infant mortality rate fell substantially.
• Elevated crime rate due to drug cartels and increased theft by people stealing resources to survive^.
• Conflict over scarce resources and crowding, leading to increased levels of warfare^.

There are two things that can slowly ease this problem and that is higher abortion rates and governments allowing for euthanasia or assisted suicide.   We could try to do everything humanly possible to solve problems like the global warming hoax or a real threat to civilization which is over population.  But, the bottom line is that you can’t stop nature, you can contain it for a little while, but all things come to an end.  The Earth has gone through six mass extinctions, and guess what?  We’re number seven and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it!

Check out these statistics on overpopulation.

Some interesting articles to read: