Overpopulation or overconsumption?

I have recently been faced with the question of what is a bigger issue, overpopulation or overconsumption? After reading a few articles, I have come to the conclusion that overconsumption is the main issue at hand, as well as being the only issue that we have control over.

It is hard to think that overpopulation is an issue here in Canada, where we have about 33 million people in an area of 3,559,294 square miles. In short, there are about 9.27 people per square mile. In reality the Southern half of the country inhabits most of the population. Although it seems like we have a lot of resources and space, we are only just living within our ecological footprint. This is shamefull! We have such a large amount of space but if our population continues to grow (and it will), we won’t have enough resources to sustain it.

Although population is growing, it can be seen in this chart that underdeveloped countries are growing at rates faster than in developed countries. This could be due to lack of education in birth control options and such education should be given to young females in underdeveloped and developed nations.

It has been suggested that the earth would not be able to produce enough food to sustain the growing population, but we have more food now than ever, and consequently we are consuming more now than ever before.

This leads me to believe that we are overconsuming and using our resources faster than they can be produced. The lack of enough resources to meet the growing population demand is a serious global problem. It is such a problem that people don’t see just how big of a problem it is. We are genetically modifying foods and crops to obtain the maximum yields of food, and people are still starving all over the world.

Major consumption of all of our resources seems to be taking place mainly in developed countries and underdeveloped countries are going to be affected. Not only are we overconsuming food, we are using up all our oil and creating a problem that will affect developed countries the hardest. Once we have used up all the oil (which we will at this rate), gas prices will be so high that we won’t be able to afford to drive our vehicles.

There are so many programs on TV that glorify overconsumption.Shows like CRIBS, where you get to see celebrities that have massive houses and 5 cars (probably a Hummer), make Americans feel that they need those things to be happy. But in reality, who needs 5 cars, or a massive house that resembles a hotel? The energy needed to heat a house that large is probably enough to heat 5 smaller houses. Another show, Man vs. Food, viewers can watch a man eat enough food to feed 5-10 people. It seems ridiculous that people are supporting this show and that money is being spent to allow this man to consume such a large quantity of food when there are people starving. The money used to produce this show should be put into a food security program for a developing country. It is disgusting how much people consume, even the McDonalds meals have grown considerably since they first opened. Why is this necessary? People don’t need to eat that much McDonalds.

The issue of overconsumption goes hand in hand with overpopulation and people around the world need to understand that this is an issue that won’t go away. Everyone needs to consume less to sustain the growing population demands.

Information from this blog was taken from a Sustainable Development Series class, taught my Dr. Ling.