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Global Overpopulation

© Cara Swann

If asked, most childfree people would say overpopulation of the world was not their main reason for choosing to be childfree. However, once we do a bit of research on the topic, we quickly come to realize what an important contribution we've made to the global resources simply by the act of not reproducing.

Have you ever sat in a rush hour traffic jam while traveling to a large city? Have you ever been upset that our inner cities are crime-ridden and dangerous? Have you ever worried about the extinction of animal species? Have you ever been concerned about the environment and the green-house effect, rapid climate changes, global warming and depletion of the ozone? How could you watch the national news and not be concerned with these modern problems? These words ring so true from Paul Storey, "Whatever your cause, it's a lost cause without population control."

The fact is that most people are not educated about population growth and how it contributes to our modern-day problems. If you want to be truly alarmed at how fast the population is growing, drop by Overpopulation Awareness and watch the world population clock ticking off births rapidly. Basically this is what is happening:

In 1 second: 5 babies born

2 people die

Increase of 3 humans every second.

In the same second, 1.5 acres of rainforest get cut down.

This is 250,000 people per day. Every four days a new Dallas or Detroit is added to the earth.

I live in a city once thought of as a small town. In the past twenty years, it's astounding how this region has grown in population. Where once there were forests and farmland on the outskirts of town, there's now many housing developments. In the past two years, there have been houses built a few blocks to the east of our neighborhood -- which was once a wooded area. I now have chipmunks living in my backyard, no doubt run out of the woods. I've also seen wild rabbits. And this is by no means an isolated incident; all across the country wild animals are being deprived of natural habitats by the demands for housing developments and urban sprawl.

According to the Overpopulation Awareness Website: "Every decade, a billion new inhabitants are added, the equivalent of a new Africa and South America combined. At this rate, Central and South America will be stripped of tropical rainforests by 2010. At the same time, growth in food production has slowed due to soil erosion, deforestation, water pollution. The US loses 1M acres of productive farmland each year to urban sprawl."

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