The extensive agriculture and the wasting of the water, the raw materials, the fossil fuels as well as the plunder of seas, the destruction of the animal and vegetable species are not they going eventually exhaust the planet? In 1798, Thomas Malthus notices that the alive sorts tend to have an exponential growth while the resources cannot grow in the same way. He deducts that from it a demographic disaster is inevitable unless preventing the population from growing.
NB: the overpopulation is a demographic state characterized by an incapacity of the available resources to assure the perpetuity of a population and its descent, on a local, regional, national, continental or global territory. It is for it that China adopted from the beginning 1970s a politics of regulation and birth control to end in 1979 in the politics of the unique child. With an annual growth rate of only 1 %, a single couple gives birth to more than 40 000 descendants in a millennium, about a billion descendants in two millenniums and about 20 000 billion individuals in only three millenniums. We notice today that the demand of global resources is superior to the renewable offer. | | We are thus in this phase where it is necessary to find a reasonable level of balanced growth to allow the nature to renew its resources with the same rhythm as we consume them. Malthusian disasters were already observed and studied in animal populations. In 1944, 29 Rennes were introduced on the island of offshore St Matthew of Bering. The food resources were plentiful and Rennes had no predator, thus the population exploded, reaching 6000 individuals in summer, 1963, that is a 30 % growth a year. Some months after this peak, all the population of Rennes declined and there were only 42 females, Rennes starved because the vegetation had been seriously and durably degraded. Certain observers of the human societies consider that the notion of accommodation facilities on Earth, must be also applied to the human populations and that an uncontrolled growth of the population can pull a Malthusian disaster. World Wildlife Fund (world organization of environmental protection) in a report dated 2006, based on the notion of ecological footprint, the respect that the biological resources of the planet are exploited 25 % beyond their capacity of renewal. | | Image: In 2050, with a rate of fertility of 2,7 children by woman, the world population would reach the 11,8 billion inhabitants. The "high" scenario, 10,7 billions (fertility of 2,35), the "average" scenario 9,1 billions (fertility 2,1 - necessary for the replacement of the generations), the "low" scenario, 7,7 billions (fertility 1,85 - rate restraint by United Nations). Source(spring): United Nations. |