Recently, we often hear that our planet is threatened by overpopulation. From here there are a lot of notorious theories about the "golden billion", about Masonic conspiracies against humanity, and so on. We are told that soon the population of the Earth may increase by 1.5 times, and the amount of food and water will decrease proportionally. Humanity is in danger of exhaustion natural resources which will lead to the collapse of the economy. In some countries, laws are being passed on birth control, sterilization of married couples who already have children. How dangerous is all this? And how true is all this?

Scientists are sounding the alarm: in 2050, the world's population may be from 9 to 13 billion people (7.3 billion - 2015, compared with 2014, the increase in the world's population this year is 1.15%). However, is there any reason for concern? Even now, the entire population of our planet occupies only about 5% of its surface. For comparison: this is approximately the territory of Austria or the Moscow region. If all people are collected in Australia, there will be approximately 1000 m2 for each person. According to the calculations of the Romanian physicist Viorel Badescu, the limit figure for the world's population could be approximately 1.3 quadrillion people. And this is not the only such calculation.

A reasonable question arises: let's assume that this is so. What about resources? How to be with them? Indeed, the problem with natural resources is quite serious. They are depleted, but depleted where? In those places where they have been mined for a long time. We have explored only a small part of the deposits of various natural resources - especially since we have the Arctic and Antarctic, the potential of which is still completely unknown. On our planet, there are regularly new deposits of various natural resources that are capable of for a long time provide for the population of the earth.

Many researchers note interesting fact: The world's population is really growing. But for what? Oddly enough - at the expense of the countries of Africa and Asia. The American continents and Europe are seeing declining birth rates. And there is such an incident: in Russia, the state pays large families, and in China, parents are forced to pay a $3,500 fee for their second child. Moreover, even in the countries of Africa and Asia, population growth is declining. And over us there will be a threat of extinction of people. Wars, epidemics, cataclysms, plus the sterilization of people and birth control - all this may soon lead to the fact that there will be very few of us left.

So the problem is not that there are more of us, but that we are killing ourselves. Of course, it is beneficial to someone. Throughout the history of our planet, there have always been people who profited from the misfortune of others. This kind of propaganda still exists today. Always the most important role has an economic component. And, unfortunately, today we see how some people destroy physically and morally other people who also have the right to live on this planet.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus, speaking of the end times, said these words: “And then many will be offended, and they will betray one another, and they will hate one another…and because of the increase of iniquity, the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:10, 12). You and I live in end times earth history. The words that Jesus spoke 2,000 years ago are as relevant today as ever. Our planet is in crisis - and not from overpopulation or a lack of natural resources. Our planet is in a moral crisis. It is this crisis that will be the one that will kill our planet. But Jesus promised that before that happens, He would return to save those who, despite this crisis, were not indifferent to His words.

From an evolutionary point of view, homo sapiens reached the great success. It took a man only 120 thousand years to increase his population to a billion individuals. And after 206 years, six more were added to this billion. And although the birth rate in most countries has begun to decline, by the middle of the twenty-first century there will be nine people, and by 2100 - ten billion. How will growth affect human population on the "well-being" of the Earth? Here are five scenarios for the development of events.

Population migration

That China is by far the most populous country peace, known fact. But Africa, despite the fact that the birth rate there is one of the highest on the planet, is by no means an overpopulated continent. And this is also an indisputable fact. However, things will change relatively soon. The one-child policy in China has markedly curbed the growth of the population of the Middle Kingdom, while the average African woman now gives birth to seven children. According to Joel Coen, a population biologist at Columbia University in New York, by 2020 the population of India will surpass that of China, and by 2040 Africa will hold the palm. “If in 1950 there were three times more Europeans than the inhabitants of the Black Continent, then by 2100 there will be five Africans for every European. This is a 15-fold change in the ratio,” Cohen notes. “What impact do you think this will have on geopolitics and international migration? Jean-Marie Guennot, former UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations and Director of the Center international permission of the School of Foreign and Home Affairs at Columbia University, says that population migration from Africa to Europe will represent serious problem in the very near future: “This can be seen as a huge potential or a threat, given that 15 percent of the African population has never gone to school and never goes to school. How to manage migration so that it benefits an aging Europe? This is a difficult question.”

Urbanization

According to the site www.lifeslittlemysteries.com, in the past two years, the number of urban residents first equaled the number of rural residents, and then exceeded it. And this trend will continue in the future. According to Cohen, in four decades the number of people living in cities will grow from today's 3.5 billion to 6.3 billion - that is, 70 percent of the estimated population of the planet. "The pace will be as if with today every five days, a city with a million inhabitants appeared on Earth, ”Cohen explains on his fingers. Of course, already existing cities no need to build - they will simply swell. Genno says that megacities are becoming chaotic: "Urbanization will greatly change the nature of the confrontation between the city and the countryside. If you live in small town or rural area, you have traditional conflict resolution mechanisms. Not all of them are good, but they create a stable balance. In African megacities, such as Monrovia (the capital of Liberia) and Kinshasa (the capital of the Congo), the dynamics of development are out of control. We are moving towards new types of conflict - exclusively urban - and we have not yet thought through their consequences."

water wars

With the growth of the world's population, the consumption of resources has also increased, especially in industrial developed countries. The planet is not bottomless, so over the course of a century there will be more conflicts over resources, but familiar scale"poor - rich" will turn into a scale of "those who have access to resources - those who do not have access." There is no resource more valuable and vital than water, says economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. In some places, because of climate change, the situation has become blatantly disastrous. “Take the Horn of Africa region, for example: the population of Somalia has grown fivefold since the mid-twentieth century. last quarter century has decreased by 25 percent. After two years of drought, famine set in there - and this is just the beginning of a period of long-term climate change," Sachs cites statistics. Conflicts over water will resemble class struggle, adds Upmanu Lall, director of the university's Water Center: "Income disparities tend to increase with population growth, and per capita resource consumption increases accordingly. Just compare income disparity and water availability." And the picture is terrible. Every year there will be less and less water per capita. Having increased demands, supported by financial opportunities, the rich will "pull" all the water for themselves. As a result, Lall believes, this will develop first into discontent, and then into class conflicts.

Energy of the future

The amount of energy that is extracted from fossil sources is not enough today to meet the needs of 10 billion people. This means that before the end of the century, whether you like it or not, humanity will have to find a new source of energy. What exactly it will be is still unknown. "Energy - main resource, underlying all the others, says Klaus Lackner, director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy. - But the technology for solving the energy problem is not yet ready. We know that the sun has a lot of energy, atoms, fossil carbon, at least, for 200 years it will definitely be enough. But none of these technologies is fully developed. Getting energy from sunlight has its drawbacks and is still too expensive. We need technology to help us out. I am optimistic that such a technology can be developed and pessimistic that we lack public structures that would allow the use of these technologies."

Mass extinction of species

As there are more and more people, everything remains for other species less space and resources. "Now the sixth mass extinction species in the history of the planet due to the incredible amount of resources that go into supporting the lives of seven billion people, "says Jeffrey Sachs. In addition to the land and food that humanity takes from many species, it also provoked global climate change, with which many species just can't keep up.Some biologists believe that at the current rate of extinction, 75 percent of the fauna will become extinct in the next 3 to 20 centuries.

Forecasting the development of the problem of overpopulation .

COMPLETED:

Chichkanov Nikolai 11 B

G. Yekaterinburg

2001

Introduction.

Now, at the turn of two centuries, mankind has come close to the most acute global problems of our time, threatening the very existence of civilization and even life itself on our planet. The term "global" itself is derived from the Latin word "globe", that is, the Earth. For the planetary problems of the present era, affecting humanity as a whole.

Failure to foresee and prevent the negative consequences of the scientific and technological revolution threatens to plunge humanity into an ecological or social catastrophe.

The concept of global problems.

The term "Global Problems" is now generally accepted.

The global nature of these problems follows, therefore, not from their "ubiquity" and, all the more, not from " biological nature person."

The global problems of our era are a natural consequence of the entire modern global situation that has developed on the globe. For correct understanding origin, essence and possibility of their solution, it is necessary to see in them the result of the previous world- historical process in all its objective inconsistency. This provision, however, should not be understood tritely and superficially, considering modern global problems as simply local or regional contradictions, crises or disasters traditional in the history of mankind that have simply grown to a planetary scale. The global problems of modernity are generated, in the final analysis, precisely by the all-penetrating unevenness of the development of world civilization.

The problem of overpopulation of the planet.

The number of earthlings is growing rapidly. 35-40 thousand years ago on Earth, according to scientists, there were only about 1 million representatives Homo sapiens.In 1900, the population exceeded 1.6 billion people, and by 1960 it reached 3 billion people. This means that it took more than 60 years for the world population to double. But the next doubling (6 billion) occurred just 39 years later (1999).

The rate of annual population growth (in ‰ )

years	The whole world	The developed countries	developing countries
1960-1965 1975-1980 2000 2025 (forecast)

But each person consumes a large number of various natural resources. Moreover, this growth is primarily in the underdeveloped or underdeveloped countries. However, they are guided by the development of the state, where the level of well-being is very high, and the amount of resources consumed by each inhabitant is huge. If we imagine that the entire population of the Earth (the main part of which today lives in poverty, or even starves) will have a standard of living as in Western Europe or the US, our planet just can't take it. But to believe that the majority of earthlings will always vegetate in poverty, ignorance and squalor is unfair, inhumane and unfair. Rapid economic development China, India, Mexico and a number of other populous countries refute this assumption.

Consequently, there is only one way out - birth control with a simultaneous decrease in mortality and an increase in the quality of life.

However, birth control runs into many obstacles. Among them are reactionary public relations, huge role religion encouraging large families; primitive communal forms of management in which large families benefit; illiteracy and ignorance underdevelopment medicine, etc. Consequently, the backward countries have, in front of them, a tight knot the toughest problems. However, very often in backward countries those who put their own or tribal interests above the state ones rule, they use the ignorance of the masses for their own selfish purposes (including wars, repressions and other things), the growth of armaments and similar things.

The problem of ecology, overpopulation and backwardness are directly related to the threat of possible food shortages in the near future. Today at in large numbers countries due to rapid population growth and insufficient agricultural development modern methods. However, the possibility of increasing its productivity, apparently, are not unlimited. After all, an increase in the use of mineral fertilizers, pesticides, etc. leads to a deterioration environmental situation and an increasing concentration of substances harmful to humans in food. On the other hand, the development of cities and technology takes a lot of fertile land out of circulation. Especially harmful is the lack of good drinking water.

Possible Solution.

AT this moment efficient and possible way is tough population policy(a system of measures taken by the state in order to solve the country-specific problems of the population).

China can serve as an example. The goal of the most populous country was to halt population growth. From administrative measures (up to sterilization), the PRC moved to propaganda and economic measures. As a result, the annual population growth decreased from 28‰ (1968) to 10-11‰ (90s), i.e. fell below the global average.

The same policy is pursued by India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and others. However, here the demographic policy is less successful.

The relationship of global problems.

All global problems of our time are closely related to each other and are mutually conditioned, so that their isolated solution is practically impossible. per capita would have declined by now. Up to 1:8 and could be in comparable sizes per capita twice as high as now. However, this "population explosion" in developing countries, according to scientists, is due to their continuing economic, social and cultural backwardness. The inability of mankind to develop at least one of the global problems will most negatively affect the possibility of solving all the others.

In the view of some Western scientists, the interconnection and interdependence of global problems form a kind of “vicious circle” of disasters insoluble for humanity, from which there is either no way out at all, or the only salvation lies in the immediate cessation of ecological growth and population growth. Such an approach to global problems is accompanied by various pessimistic forecasts of the future of mankind.

Conclusion

On the present stage The development of mankind has faced, perhaps, with the hottest problem - how to preserve nature and oneself, since no one knows when and in what form an ecological catastrophe can occur. But this time is already close, and mankind has not even come close to creating a global mechanism for regulating the nature user, but continues to destroy the colossal gifts of nature. There is no doubt that the inventive human mind will eventually find a replacement for them. But here human body, will he survive, will he be able to adapt to the abnormal conditions of life?.

Why main problem humanity should recognize the problem of overpopulation, and not the problem of wars and atomic weapons, not the problem of ecology, not technology, not social problems? Because overpopulation is the prerequisite for all other problems. Overpopulation is partly to blame for the problems, partly for their transformation from local to global. Those who do not want to notice the problem of overpopulation are trying to reduce it to a certain number of the human race, moreover, they claim that the Earth can feed even 10 billion, we have not reached the limit, and given the current demographic dynamics, we will never reach it. But things are completely different. Overpopulation is not waiting for us in the future, it has been taking place for a long time, affecting everything social processes. First of all, overpopulation is not the achievement of some absolute value, any overpopulation is relative. Such recognition does not weaken, but strengthens the position of attaching the most important importance to the demographic factor.
Overpopulation is already affecting primitive society, perhaps even earlier than the Neolithic time, when individual groups begin to exceed natural abundance. Population growth leads to progress, social differentiation, the emergence and development of agriculture. Environmental problems can be considered a product of demographic problems. Overpopulation - almost constant companion mankind in the last thousand years. In the 20th century, the process entered its final phase, when local overpopulation was replaced by planetary overpopulation. "Limits to Growth" is, first of all, an indication of the inadmissibility of the infinite growth of mankind.

First, overpopulation is, as ethologists have shown, a problem in itself. Habitual social connections and orders, tension and hostility are growing, the society from a small unity becomes a large arbitrary conglomerate, the unity of which is ensured by the structure of vertical power and power structures. Man (as well as animals) cannot live fully in a large community that has outgrown natural boundaries. But the problems do not end there. Overpopulation is one of the main causes of wars. Overpopulation increases the intensification of land cultivation and leads to soil depletion. From what would not die ancient civilizations, overpopulation lay at the heart. By the way, in the Babylonian version of the flood myth there is a clear indication of the multiplication of people, which caused the flood, angering the gods. Since the Paleolithic era, man began to conflict with the environment, but his pressure on nature began to lead to serious destruction only after the overpopulation process entered into new stage and states began to form. Without overpopulation, civilization could never have arisen. All the individual problems that we now consider global are also mediated by population growth.
But is it enough to calculate how many people lived in a certain state or in a certain territory? Not at all. important in equally the absolute number of people living, population density and population density. Plus, you need to remember and take into account the possibility of moving people. And that is not all. Economic and social factors are added to purely demographic factors. Even if demographic factors are not considered comprehensively, what can we say about other factors. The opponents of "neo-Malthusianism" (I put it in quotation marks, because any sane researcher comes to the conclusion about the danger of overpopulation, regardless of his acquaintance and agreement with the ideas of Malthus and his supporters) have only two possible strategies to defend their position: declare overpopulation an illusion, or try show that overpopulation is a temporary and solvable problem. However, the facts do not confirm either the first or the second version of the logical constructions of the "conservatives". As soon as silenced and bypassed factors and parameters are introduced into consideration, all constructions collapse.
Total population population individual countries and the earth as a whole. Overcrowding can be identified by some obvious signs, without even resorting to scientific analysis. Crowds of people on the street, traffic jams, the loss of any social significance by an ordinary individual, the emergence of a nutrition problem. Often the consequences of overpopulation in some countries are solved by exploiting the nature (and population) of other countries, colonialism was the first form of such robbery. If we have figures for the population of each country and its parts, data for total inhabitants, population density, geographical distribution population, we can draw preliminary conclusions about overcrowding. But the full picture will be revealed only after taking into account the production and consumption in each country per individual (or groups of people). pressure on nature is not strictly proportional to the number of people. A city with a population of, say, 200,000 may be more overcrowded than a city with a million inhabitants. On the other hand, when we are talking on food security and agriculture, one cannot simply take and expect that the area of ​​all free land will be sown and bring food. If two sides are taken into account - calculating the pressure on the Earth (and social pressure) is not purely arithmetic, and the calculation of the possible food production is not based on the total data on free area, we will already get a picture for today that leaves no room for optimism. Let's look briefly at current position and trends.
The earth is already overpopulated, prospects are opening up before us ecological disaster, food crisis, depletion of non-renewable and even renewable resources. But demographers say growth is slowing. It would seem that you just need to wait for stabilization, and even a decrease in the population. But do we have time for this expectation and can we even wait for positive changes in the future? Stabilization would not mean the end of problems, but the end of the growth of the source of problems. But as the problems pile up, stopping growth will not prevent the catastrophe, but only postpone it a little - no more than a couple of decades. In the future, a drop in the birth rate is also dangerous, but this danger does not threaten us, since we still have to live to this stage of development. Mankind can best case and live, but civilization - definitely not. At the moment, with the stabilization of the population in some countries and some decrease in others, total number population of the planet continues to grow. We haven't even reached the stabilization point yet. Suppose everything goes well and in ten years we will achieve it. Will this solve the problem of overpopulation at least to some extent? Could at least weaken a little if it was only a matter of numbers. But! Defenders of progress sometimes trump that in highly developed countries population growth has stopped and the number is declining.
Let's look at other options. How much does it consume individual person in developed countries and underdeveloped? How much trash does it leave behind? To what extent does it poison the environment and destroy living things? I am sure that the pressure on the nature of one European exceeds the pressure on the nature of ten Africans. Exact numbers no one will give, but the difference is not even 2 or 3 times, but an order of magnitude - at least. The inclusion of new countries in the orbit of civilization, accelerated urbanization and the development of industry make the problem of overpopulation not just relevant, but a priority. Even with a gradual decline in population pressure on nature, resource depletion and other global problems dependent on overpopulation will accelerate. We conclude: overpopulation is growing, population explosion is one side of overpopulation, consumer explosion is the other side of overpopulation. Every year the problems grow like a snowball, and it seems impossible to stop the process. Reducing the population by half in about 30-40 years could give some chance, but no one will heed sound advice. In the end, the problem of overpopulation was seriously discussed in the middle of the 20th century, when about 2.5 billion people lived on Earth, now there are about 7 billion, and the consciousness of people and their intentions have not undergone significant change. Obviously, appeals will continue to be ignored, despite any evidence base. As long as civilization exists, overpopulation will increase. As long as overpopulation continues, civilization will deepen its dominance and increase its control over each individual.

Let me pose a speculative question - what number could express the maximum allowable population of the Earth? Some consider a billion to be the limit. I am convinced that a billion is more than permissible and 100 million should be considered the limit. The solution is abstract, but the gap between the present position and the proper position clearly shows the scale of the problem.

If we look at the statistics, we see that the rate of population growth has been declining for several decades.

text: Pavel Ilyin

Crowd

How many people is our planet able to provide with everything necessary, at what level of well-being and for how long?

One of the answers was the sensational work of employees of the Massachusetts technological university- Limits to Growth. Dennis Donnel Meadows, a member of the international Club of Rome, a community of famous and influential people dealing with globalization issues. The authors of the work predicted that "humanity is confidently moving towards a global catastrophe."

According to Meadows, population growth requires an increase in industrial capacity and, as a result, resource requirements. With the depletion of sources of raw materials, prices rise, less and less money is left for development and financing. various areas the life of society. There will come a time when the cost of depreciation of production will exceed the possible investment. As a result, industry, services and Agriculture will go into decline. The inhabitants of the earth will face a lack of food, a sharp reduction in available medicine.

But if we look at the statistics, we see that the rate of population growth has been declining for several decades. It peaked in 1970 at 2.07%. In 1998 the growth rate was about 1.33%. It is expected to fall below 1% by 2016. (UN Report 1998). The doomsday predictions made by the Club of Rome in the early 1970s inevitably turned out to be wrong.

Of the 77 million people who increase the world's population every year, the majority are born in poorest countries world, concentrated in Africa and Asia. While in developed countries, population growth has stabilized. This means that in order for the population to stabilize, it is necessary to raise the standard of living throughout the world.

According to the UN, we live in an era of the most intensive growth of cleanliness. This may seem surprising, because in our country and many others this peak took place in the middle of the 20th century. And right now, when the level of urbanization is already high enough, the remnants rural population the planets rushed towards the cities. But it is known that it is the urban lifestyle that contributes to the reduction of the birth rate to a sub-threshold level. That is, no sharp jump either up or down is expected.

Also, due to the development of medicine, life expectancy is increasing. At first glance, this should exacerbate the problem of overpopulation and lack of resources. But when we say that we want to increase life expectancy, we mean a healthy and active life. This means that the additional man-years will be productive and bring economic benefits to society. Besides, if people can count on more long life they will have a vested interest in the future and will be more concerned with the long-term consequences of their actions. And if you look quite simply than more population, topics more hands and minds will work on new ideas and solutions.

The number of people that our home planet can feed and support sufficient level life and without harm to the environment, depends on the level technological development. New technologies, from simple improvements in land reclamation and management to modern breakthroughs in genetic engineering continue to increase food production. Many radical greens are suggesting that we turn back time and return to an idyllic pre-industrial age when people supposedly lived in "harmony with nature." The problem is that they wishful thinking.

The pre-industrial age was anything but idyllic.
Poverty, suffering, sickness, severe physical work from dawn to dusk, superstitious fear and cultural narrow-mindedness (and it was not environmentally friendly either - just look at the deforestation of Europe and the Mediterranean, the desertification of much of the Middle East). In addition, it is difficult to imagine how more than a few hundred million people can be supported at an acceptable standard of living using pre-industrial production methods. Environmental problems that are caused by technology are problems of inefficient intermediate technology. For example, less developed industry in the countries of the former socialist bloc pollutes environment much stronger than similar Western enterprises. High-tech industry is quite safe for nature.

Our civilization, realizing that the problem of overpopulation will sooner or later have to be taken on, has developed many projects for the super-cities of the future. So, for example, the architect Eloy Silaya developed the Eco-City-Experimental Tower project and suggests "leaving huge green spaces free from any type of buildings", but inscribing colony-towers occupying land on the ground into these expanses minimal amount square meters Never more than 10,000. Up to 100 thousand people can comfortably live in each such tower. Japanese engineers are developing a project for the Mega City Pyramid, which will accommodate 750,000 inhabitants.

BUT why people not start exploring the ocean? Freedom Ship is the name of the floating city-state that wants to build Freedom Ship International. It will be 120 meters high and almost two kilometers long, the ship will move slowly and go around Earth and accommodate 100 thousand people.

Then you can go down under the water, because more than two-thirds of our planet is covered with water, and only 5% of the sea territory is well studied. There's plenty of space down there and an abundance of untouched natural resources. By technical means for development sea ​​spaces we basically already have.

Now let's look at the sky. If there is not enough space under water, then there is boundless space. After all, on a cosmic scale, the Earth is an insignificant, completely tiny grain of sand, and there are countless such grains of sand up there. Ancestor Russian cosmonautics Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky invented rockets and spaceships for development outer space precisely in order to settle people throughout the universe. We have already gone into space and built in Earth orbit constantly operating station. The plans of the leading space powers include the creation of a permanent habitable base, and in the future the use of the Moon (fortunately, there are mineral deposits there, including water, you won’t have to bring it from Earth) as a springboard for development solar system and flying to the stars.

Do not believe all sorts of terrible forecasts of pseudo-futurologists who scare us with stories about how bad and scary everything will be. If rational use of the fruits scientific and technological progress, then the answer to the question "Are we in danger of overpopulation" will be a categorical "No"!