Busting at the seams: the world’s most pressing problem

Colin Hannifin
Columnist

What is the biggest threat to the possibility of global peace and stability? Terrorism? Religious ideological differences? Religion itself? The military industrial complex? Politicians? There is a wealth of possible answers.

If you gave any of those above answers, or perhaps substituted your own, chances are you didn’t say overpopulation. Maybe you did, but only because of the recent focus on the birth of the seven billionth resident of our planet. Overpopulation, however, and the problems that follow it, are the biggest threat to sustained global stability.

According to the United Nations, the earthly population struck 7 billion sometime within the past two weeks. The U.S. Census Bureau released a contradictory report that found global population to actually be a mere 6.97 billion people, but scheduled to hit 7 billion in the coming months.

Any way you cut it, that’s a lot of people. Consider that, according to the UN, global population hit 1 billion just over two centuries ago in 1804. Back then, we had just a fraction of the number of people we currently have. We are in the midst of a population explosion, heralded by significant advancements in medicine and agriculture.

Overpopulation should be one of the primary focuses of global leaders. Put simply, population is growing at an unsustainable rate, and people know it. This kind of growth has inevitable negative consequences. Unfortunately, every effort made to curtail growth has also led to not-so-positive consequences.

The largest consequence of this population growth is the stressing of resources. When there’s a shortage of resources, the result often involves violence for the control of those resources. Examples can be found scattered throughout history, as tribes or kingdoms fought over a piece of particularly productive land or some other scarce good. More recently, many people would think of the scarcity of oil and the continued unrest in the Middle East.

Many are eager to point out that, on a basis of biomass, the Earth can grow enough crops – the most obvious of scarce goods – to feed all 7 billion of us. This is true, and Earth could (and will probably have to) support more. But growth of food isn’t enough; there’s the matter of distribution, which is the harder issue. With modern science, we can overcome many of the agricultural challenges that we once faced. But we have yet to correct corrupt foreign government officials, who hoard the aid that first world countries offer.

This brief example is in reference to just one of the resources that is hugely affected by overpopulation. What about oil and the other fossil fuels that largely power the civilized world? Even if alternative energy sources were ready to be applied widely, the required investment in new infrastructure would be tremendous.

What about the economy – are there enough meaningful jobs to employ the billions that are in the job market? What about biodiversity? We’re pushing a number of species to the brink of extinction – how is that solved?

The most obvious answer is to curtail our growth. People look at China’s one-child policy and point out the decreasing rate of growth. It’s a good point, but that’s not enough. When there is a large increase in population (as Europe is facing and China will face in the coming decades) and then a subsequent decrease, there’s a huge economic downturn when those baby-boomers move to retire. America will also face that same trial of economic stability in the next decade.

Essentially, there are many questions and concerns associated with the burgeoning growth of the world’s population. We were all alive when the population hit 6 billion in 1999, and now it has hit 7 billion. Chances are, most of us will be alive when it hits 10 billion, and possibly even more. The challenges that lie ahead, not just for America, but for the world, should be at the forefront of international politics. There are a lot of pressing issues vying for the attention of the world’s powerful, but this is one that absolutely cannot be ignored. It has to be addressed now, before it gets even worse in the coming decades.

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Photo courtesy of flickr.com/jamesscridland