by Victor Zheng - Sunny View MS (1439) 3 years ago
178
Population
Human population growth was historically slow, reaching 1 billion in the 18th century. The advent of the industrial revolution, however, led to a rapid increase, with the global population nearing 8 billion within two centuries.
Reduce the amount of children being born, educate people about family planning and effects of overpopulation. If people had 1.5 children per couple, the world population would fall to 6 billion by 2100.
Better farming techniques will be needed to support a larger population with the same amount of land. People will likely have to give up eating meat because it takes alot more land to raise animals than to grow crops.
Contraception will decrease the amount of accidental pregancies therefore reducing the amount of children being born.
Education lifts people out of poverty by giving them better jobs, reduces the fertility rate because people will marry later in life and focus on careers first.
Problems
With a growing population, wars are likely to be fought over natural resources and land as they become even more scarce.
With alot of the population growth being in devolping nations who do not have adequate healthcare systems, disease is a huge concern. Cities also spread disease faster than rural areas because people are packed much closer together and there is alot more contact between people.
Climate change is a serious issue, with more people means more energy demand, which increases CO2 emissions. Rising sea levels and tempature increase have severe effects on the earth.
Overpopulation can put a strain on global food, energy, and resource usage. Having too many people can lead to poor living conditions or lower quality of life for many people.
Physical Geography
Physical factors such as temperature, climate and other geological factors can affect where people live. For example a city is less likely to built very far north because its far too cold.
The best farming land should be used for farming and not residential land.
Cities tend to be near water because in the past, people settled near water because it was a source of food and transportation, that has carried over to the modern day where 14 out of the 15 largest cities are situated near a body of water
Having alot of people means we need room, forests will be cut down to make room for housing. Lakes and rivers turned into dams to generate electricity.
Past
As medicine improved and less babies died, the population was able to sky rocket, because people were still having alot of children while less of them died.
There was once a point where every country was poor and had very low life expectancies, now many devolped countries no longer have to worry about this. But most devolping countries have to play "catch up"
During this time, people had alot more children because they needed workers to support the family financially. Also because since infant mortality was so high, people needed to have alot of children to ensure that atleast some of them survived to become adults.
The population growth peeked in 1965, it has been steadily declining ever since but is still very high. Back then the fertility rate was about 5 children per woman
Population growth has been slow for most of human history, it just reached 1 billion in the 18th century. But ever since the industrial revoloution, the population has reached almost 8 billion in just over 2 centuries.
Present
Since there were alot of people born back then, there are alot of people still in reproductive age contributing to fertility levels. Although decreasing fertilty rate is now at 2.5 still higher than the 2.1 needed to stabalize the population
Many people in devolping countries stuggle to put food on the table or buy a pair of shoes, while the devolped nations have everything they need.
Humans have caused a 6th mass extinction event, many species have gone extinct or have become endangered because of our rapid growth in population.
The fertility rate in developed countries has been low and almost negative in some cases. This is due to better healthcare and urbanization
Devolping nations still have incredibly high fertility rates, these countries don't have the required infastructure to support so many people. Although efforts are being put in place to help combat this
Future
Latin America and Europe are both expected to have decreasing fertility rates in the future. Europe is expected to peak at 748 million people in 2021 and then start decreasing.
Almost all of the population growth will happen in devolping nations like in Africa or some parts of Asia. The rest of world's population will stay reletively the same.
The population will have alot more elderly people due to less children being born, and people living longer lives.
The world's population will increase to up to 11 billion people if the fertility rate stays constant, and will increase to up to 9 billion if there is a steady decline in the amount of children being born.
The population will become alot more urbanized, the urban population will increase by 2 times while the rural population stays the same. Almost all of this urbanization will be in devolping nations