When I was born, there were roughly half as many people in the world as there are now. The earth was populated by three times the number of birds and animals existing now, concentration of atmospheric CO2 was less than 350 parts per million, and global dimming, not warming, was the main concern for atmospheric scientists. The human population is currently racing towards the 7.9 billion mark on a planet ravaged by the correlated health, climate and ecological crises. The history of human population growth and the rise in greenhouse gas emissions are intertwined, with exponential increase following the industrial revolution.
It took hundreds of thousands of years for Homo sapiens to reach the 1 billion mark, and then it exploded by sevenfold in only about another 200 years. The invention of the popular steam engine in 1712 paved the way for the use of coal on an industrial scale and the Industrial Revolution happened. By 1800, there were one billion humans on earth.
The population then doubled in 130 years, and around the time of India’s independence it was estimated at around 2.5 billion people. By 1960, 3 billion people lived on earth, with the extra billion added over three decades. The next 30 years saw more dramatic increase with 2 billion added, with the 4th and 5th billion marks reached in just 15 years and 13 years respectively. By October 2011, there were 7 billion humans and the population growth is projected to continue and peak at around 11 billion by 2100.
This dramatic growth has been driven largely by increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age, and has been accompanied by major changes in fertility rates, increasing urbanization and accelerating migration. These trends will have far-reaching implications for generations to come. World Population Day, which seeks to focus attention on the urgency and importance of population issues, was established by the then-Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme in 1989, an outgrowth of the interest generated by the Day of Five Billion, which was observed on 11 July 1987.
A 2009 paper ‘Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals’, which studied the relationship between population growth and global warming, determined that the “carbon legacy” of just one child can produce 20 times more greenhouse gas than a person will save by driving a high-mileage car, recycling, using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs, etc. Several reports have pointed out that humans have already exceeded the ‘carrying capacity’ of the planet.
We have affected most life forms through climate modification, habitat loss and fragmentation of habitat, disease, and the spread of alien species. We are rapidly displacing wildlife species across the globe and degrading ecosystems that provide essential, irreplaceable environmental services for human wellbeing, thereby imperiling the lives of our future generations. Some are of the view that here are too many of us to share the planet fairly with other species and with future human generations. In other words, planet earth is overpopulated by humans.
The Living Planet Report 2020 points to a catastrophic two-thirds decline of the global populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish in less than half a century. There are many other studies detailing the consequences of human populations on biodiversity of the planet. The 2019 report Where the Wild Things were is Where Humans are Now: an Overview assess current and potential risks stemming from the environmental changes due to unchecked human population growth. The interaction of human population, food production, and biodiversity protection suggests that the scale of human population and the current pace of its growth contribute substantially to the loss of biological diversity.
Although the word ‘overpopulation’ is rarely used by political leaders, media, or even environmentalists, a recent international survey showed that people in many countries consider overpopulation to be a serious problem and are willing to consider futures that do not rely on unmitigated and unsustainable population growth on a finite planet. Whether human population will continue to rise, peak or decline is still uncertain, but unabated growth in any region will be detrimental to the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals and emissions reduction. On this World Population Day let us think about the corresponding loss of species connected to anthropogenic pressures and rededicate ourselves to raising awareness about overpopulation and sustenance all life forms on our beautiful planet.
C.A.R.E. 
Do you see that China’s two-child policy is good?
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