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Humans Taking Over The World

Imagine it’s the year 1750. The world population is about 500 million (Stanton 1). The human species’ population has been growing slowly for approximately 15,000 years, but now the population is about to thrive. The new inventions of the Industrial Revolution are dramatically improving and transforming the lives of humans as never seen before. Now jump ahead to the year 1900. The world population has grown to one billion (Lomborg 91). That means the planet’s population has doubled in just 150 years. Now it is present time. The year is 2007 and the human species’ population has accelerated to 6.5 billion (U.S. Census Bureau)! The fact that the human species has increased by 650 percent in just one century is astounding. Some people look at these facts and do not see a problem. The reason is they have no idea human overpopulation is the primary source of many major problems occurring today. In Robin Cote’s website, “Overpopulation Equals Disaster,” he wrote, “Overpopulation is the single most pressing problem facing humanity today. It’s also one of the most completely ignored problems.” Solutions such as world population restrictions must be enforced because human overpopulation is causing severe environmental destruction, the extinction and endangerment of countless species, and catastrophic social issues. Action must be taken so the future can look bright for generations to come.
Indeed, severe environmental destruction is occurring because humans are overpopulating the planet. One key component of the environment that has been dramatically altered is the Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists in the late 20th century monitoring the Antarctic atmosphere found that the ozone layer was losing its ability to protect the earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation (Stanton 91). Ozone holes, which are constantly expanding, can now be found over both Poles (Stanton 91). The reason that these holes are appearing is because man-made chemicals such as fluorine,...