Overpopulation or overabundance happens when the reproductive capacity of the species exceeds its carrying capacity and has to be actively intervention to preserve the existing population. It may result from a rise in births (males) or a decline in deaths (fatal rate). It may also result from a rise in migration, where a city’s population grows rapidly to fill available lands and the remaining residents are forced to move into cities with better facilities or out of the country. It may be caused by a change in quality of life due to the advancement in technology. Overpopulation is often associated with pressures on natural resources, like land and water, which could lead to severe famine.
Some people think that the overpopulation debate is a waste of time because there is no real solution to the problem. They argue that the resources are simply exhausted and we should just let nature take its course. There is another side of the overpopulation debate that thinks that human enhancement is the answer. This group argues that as long as we do not interfere with nature, human population will stabilize or even fall below what it should be, leaving all the problems behind.
Although the first argument is correct in some ways, this is not necessarily the case for all cases. The resources that we are talking about here are all aspects of a quality of life. Life itself cannot be removed from its environment; it always involves interacting with the physical environment, with other people, and with the forces of nature. If the quality of life that people experience is reduced because of overpopulation, then they are not experiencing quality of life – they are experiencing reduced quality of existence.
Another argument advanced in the overpopulation debate is that since quality of life depends on the overall condition of the earth, if human numbers increase, then the quality of the world’s population will also increase. This argument assumes that there is some relationship between the rate of population growth and the quality of life on earth. In most cases, it turns out that the quality of life is much more tied to overall well-being than is the quality of life that is associated with population growth. This means that although a society with higher overpopulation may have more people living in it, their overall quality of life will be much lower than a society with lower overpopulation.
A third argument advanced against overpopulation assumes that humans are basically aggressive organisms. Overpopulation pushes out its competition, causing individuals to act in a way that benefits that species rather than the human race as a whole. The result is that overpopulation tends to push down the overall quality of life, pushing it down even further. One side of this argument points out that many of the conflicts and social disharmony that lead to violence and war truly stem from the low quality of life prevalent in societies with high overpopulation.
A fourth argument advanced against overpopulation assumes that human beings are psychologically oriented as a group, and that a value system based upon survival of the fittest must be adopted by members of any population. If the fittest get the best of the other members of a population, then that society will fail, leading to the continued degradation of its quality of life. To counter this, the proponents of overpopulation argue that individual members of a population will come to see their own lives as worthless and that there is no need to pursue anything beyond minimalistic pleasures if that society is going to survive. Again, this argument is flawed on a number of different levels.
The first problem with this value system is that overpopulation will always bring with it problems. Even if a society has a low overpopulation level, over time such a society could still face problems arising from overcrowded conditions. This is especially true if the values of the society are not ones that were set for optimal survival of the species. If there are no values governing what the members of a population consider important to their lives, then these individuals will simply look to other individuals to fill the void left behind by the overpopulation.
A fifth problem with the overpopulation debate centers on the assumption that a society’s survival rate is directly proportional to the size of its population. If a society has a low survival rate but an exceptionally high population count, it would be able to overcome its overpopulation problem by simply having more children. However, if the same society has a high rate of mortality but very low population numbers, then it would be unable to overcome its overpopulation problem. The overpopulation argument then basically argues that a society’s values should determine the rate of its reproduction while its current and future survival rates are irrelevant.