There is no doubt that the growth of the population on Earth is increasing day after day. The real question is whether there is something we can do about this, in order for the issue to stop. But first of all we have to consider if we actually know the whole concept of the human population. This blog is written in order to introduce you to the effects of the increasing population on the environment and so the quality of life.

There are many opinions that support different arguments, which come in conflict; however, no one can distrust the actual numbers that are provided. For example, it is very important to say that the current population on our planet is definitely over the limit of the carrying capacity; by that we mean that we have already passed the population size that our given environment can sustain.

Yet, it is very important to mention the factors that lead to such a situation. Briefly to mention some of the main ones such as the massive agricultural production, the improvement of technology and the medical care based on the better hygiene. Such developments caused basic differentiations on the human population. Moreover, the consequences that affected the planet significantly are the faster density among specific areas and as a result more waste and pollution by the humans, absolute extraction of the available resources, which also caused the change of the climate.

There is a big dilemma about the population issue. The two main views are the Cornucopians and the Cassandras that try to explain and maybe give a specific answer to the question: How is our planet affected by us? Firstly, the Cornicopian view is supported by the world economists, whlo argue that there is no negative effect on the planet or no problem is caused by the overuse of the natural resources, since there could other resources that could replace the previous. On the other hand, there are the Cassandras, who say that such an argument is not reliable, due to the fact that no all of the resources can be replaced. A good example they provide is that if a plant species extinct, humans can replace it and make it function perfectly in an ecosystem like it did before. No matter the two sides support, we should take into consideration that the human population growth is a serious problem that can cause severe problems to the planet Earth.

The Cassandra’s view has been totally embraced by the well-known biologist Paul Ehrlich, from Stanford University. His book named “The population Bomb”, which was a best seller when published in 1968, he states that: “population growth would unleash famine and conflict that would consume civilization by the end of the 20th century”. Although his theory could not have possibly taken into account the Green Revolution’s effects on agricultural production and population growth, Paul Ehrlich has made significant scientific contributions by his famous IPAT model, which he designed together with John Holdern of Harvard University. “The IPAT model represents how our total impact (I) on the environment results from the interaction among population (P), affluence (A), and technology (T):

I = P x A x T

In order to make more clear how the equation functions we can take as effective examples the two major countries of the world, USA and China and examine their results. These two countries consist the two economies worldwide and so their results are really interesting. Firstly, their economies are based on their population, which uses high financial resources (A), their high equipped technological methods (T); something that is proved by their great number of GDP per capita. Although the coefficients of these two variables may be almost equal for both countries, the number of their population (P) is different; for example, the number that describes the population of China is significantly higher than the one of the USA, something that makes it the country with the highest population (almost 1 ½ billion). As a result, both countries do have a high total impact (I) coefficient, because of the factors listed above.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_at_state.html

According to the video, we can come closer to the definitions of the issue, since the speaker explains them in detail, such as the human population is correlated with the development. It is clear that the professor belongs to the Cornucopian group, since he establishes how the economic development has helped life expectancy to be increased and so stabilization of the population of some countries to be achieved. It is really interesting to watch this video and figure out the main differences between the “Western World” and the “Developing World”; he argues that nowadays there is no line between this two “worlds” and that this is the result of the political matters of the powerful countries.

Indeed, there are still some questions that have not been answered yet, when it comes to the world’s population issue. However, we, as citizens of organized countries, have to take under our responsibility the way that we follow in our every day life and what effects this has to the environment around us.