Overpopulation

Why the Real Victim of Overpopulation Will Be the Environment

By BRYAN WALSH Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011

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Zebras roam at the Nairobi National Park in Kenya, one of many developing countries experiencing a population boom

PETER MACDIARMID / GETTY IMAGES

• Maybe it's just the fact that the official day has been set for Oct. 31 — Halloween — but there's a distinct whiff of panic and fear around the expected birth of the 7 billionth person on the planet. Here's Roger Martin, chair of the NGO Population Matters, writing in the Guardian recently:

The 7 Billion Day is a sobering reminder of our planet's predicament. We are increasing by 10,000 an hour. The median UN forecast is 9.3 billion by 2050, but the range varies by 2.5 billion — the total world population in 1950 — depending on how we work it out.

Every additional person needs food, water and energy, and produces more waste and pollution, so ratchets up our total impact on the planet, and ratchets down everyone else's share — the rich far more than the poor. By definition, total impact and consumption are worked out by measuring the average per person multiplied by the number of people. Thus all environmental (and many economic and social) problems are easier to solve with fewer people, and ultimately impossible with ever more.