Sustainable Life on Earth Is Slowly Coming to an End

Some of the leading factors include overpopulation and the depletion of the ozone layer as well as low water availability. Overpopulation is our main focus because for me it is the most important, planet earth is reaching its carrying capacity. Currently, there are 7.7 billion people (worldometers) It is estimated that the world population in 2100 will surpass 11billion people (the world counts.) Overpopulation is the umbrella, underneath it is all of the effects that it has on the earth. One of them would be the most important thing that humans need to stay alive, food.

The world will need food if it wants to survive for years to come. We need to figure out how to keep nutrients in the soil without it washing away and creating dead zones like the one in the Gulf of Mexico or agile blooms like in Lake Erie caused by nutrient runoff. The soil can’t be overworked and the topsoil has to be left intact. Farming requires large land that has fertile soil and some practices to keep the soil fertile are crop rotations, they allow for different nutrients to be used up at different times. With the increase in population, there needs to be enough land to cultivate food. Some foods are already in danger like fish. Some species that are not native have been introduced like the zebra mussel, they are eating away all of the algae that are the food source for some bigger more beneficial and native fish.

If the fish can't eat the larger fish will starve causing humans to have a smaller selection of food. There is also another problem, Asian Carp. It is a non-native fish to the United States and it is competing for food. It is a problem because if it takes hold of the great lakes then all of the fish that inhabit the fresh waters are in danger, causing humans to be in danger as well. This means that fish that are only found in freshwater have a smaller chance or reproducing and eventually becoming extinct for future generations. By human nature, we all need a home. It does not matter what you define as a home, whether its a car, an actual house or even a bridge. As of now, China has homes that are 5 or more floors tall to accommodate their 1.4 billion population(worldometers).

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Building a new home will need space and timber, but in some places that are so crowded like China you cant expand your home to either side you have to go up. The same thing has happened with India’s 1.3 billion (worlometers) population and their homes. These are some of the prime examples of the earth reaching its breaking point, people having to build additional stories in order to hose more people. In places that are close to the rainforest it's easy, once it gets too crowded you can just cut down a few trees and there you have it more space. With the demolition of trees, there are more problems that arise as well as CO2 levels.

Cutting down trees may not be a solution to the state that the world will be at because of overpopulation. Trees are our main source of oxygen, and they need the carbon dioxide that we expel when humans breath out. Now imagine that there aren't enough plants that can convert it into oxygen. We won't be able to breathe, yes I understand that oceans also help with the reduction of CO2 in the air but for now, we focus on the trees. In research done by NASA, it was found out that “During ice ages, CO2 levels were around 200 parts per million (ppm), and during the warmer interglacial periods, they hovered around 280 ppm (see fluctuations in the graph).

In 2013, CO2 levels surpassed 400 ppm for the first time in recorded history.” This means that the ppm have doubled, it only shows that the CO2 in the air by 2100 will increase exponentially. This has many factors that have to be addressed like global warming. Global warming, in a nutshell, is the heat from the sun being trapped in the atmosphere and it's not able to leave which then causes the global temperature to increase. Things that help reflect the sunlight back into space are the ice sheets. The thing is that if they start to melt because of the temperature increase then the sunlight will not be reflected back. Some way’s that overpopulation can be solved are drastic and some will say are gruesome and against human rights. It all depends on if you are willing to make a sacrifice and how much you want future generations to live.

Some might take the recreation of the Black Plague as an option and I can't say that I have not considered it as well. The problem then becomes where can a controlled plague be dispersed without whipping out a whole country or race? Keep in mind that the plague only killed about 25 million people(National Geographic) It won't be nearly enough to live more comfortably since the world would be populated by about 9 billion people. The question still lies in where the plague would be the most effective without it being focused on a certain group of people. Any way that this is looked at would cause the economy a lot of money. If it is distributed in China or India since they are the most populated countries then electronic brands, as well as clothing brands, will be affected since they are the more labor intensive places that provide their products.

If everyone that is in jail where to die first then there would be “More than 10.35 million people are held in penal institutions throughout the world”(prison studies) dead. This is gruesome I understand that but keep in mind that those are the most recent numbers for a population of 7 billion people, now think of the number of prisoners in the year 2100. Other ways to control the human population would be considered acting like “God”. The woman will be restricted to having only one child no matter what gender, shortly after the woman would have her tubes tied to prevent another child to be conceived. I think that this would be the best option to prevent the world in the year 2100 to be more sustainable.

Now I understand the ethical dilemma in this, you can't tell anyone the number of kids that they can have. But what future are you providing for them when the world is no longer at its prime? Are you willing to subject your child to a world that is overpopulated and is much warmer with low biodiversity? In the same school of thought, there are less drastic measures. Providing protection to high populated areas would be the most ethical. Making berth control more available with less stigma attached to it would cut down on childbirth. The people who can prevent this issue is you. It's us, everyone, who is worried about their children having a happy and healthy place to live. Ways that this can be prevented now would be using protection and adopting kids. Having kids on a whim just because you are able to support them is not the best way. There are many kids that want a home but don't have one. I think that this is one of the reasons which the population has increased.

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