Overpopulation Problem? What Overpopulation Problem?
I keep reading more and more comments about overpopulation on the social media. It is not just an impression: the trend of increasing interest in population matters is visible in Google Trends. Still weak, but it is there.
It is puzzling how the question is returning. It had disappeared from the media after it had been popular in the 1970s, at the time of the first “The Limits to Growth” study. At that time, there were less than 4 billion people and that was viewed as a huge problem. Then, somehow, it became unfashionable to mention overpopulation, just as it became unfashionable to consider “The Limits to Growth” as anything more than a completely wrong study written by people not smarter than Chicken Little (it wasn’t the case).
Now, with twice as many people – 7.6 billion humans – we see a return of the idea that – really – there may be a little problem of overpopulation. Humans are so many that they are appropriating a larger and larger fraction of the ecosystem. That means less and less space for other species which are, indeed, fast disappearing. When you read that, in a not too remote future, the only large animal left on the Earth will be the cow, well, that makes you think.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
