Human Population

The population of China, the world’s most populated country has slowly levelled off due to their birth control policies. However, in other places, such policies do not exist. In Africa, with omnipresent AIDS looming, the birth rates are soaring. Human population is a problem of increasing magnitude to the world. The results of human population include deforestation and poverty.

Deforestation is one of the most consequential effects of human population. Over 1.6 billion hectares of forest land has already been deforested, and more is sure to follow. Deforestation occurs primarily because of two reasons: expansion of settlements or need for wood. The first is a more direct consequence of the drastic population rise. As the population increases, so does the area necessary to contain them. Dozens of species have been driven to extinction as a result of expanded needs for housing. The first problem also interrelates to the first, because as more housing is needed, more timber is needed to build it. It is statistically proven that 2% or one out of every fifty people practices reforestation. Deforestation has many main effects, like being conducive to global warming. As trees are lost, there are less and less green plants to reconvert carbon dioxide into oxygen and the deadly greenhouse gas accumulates. Deforestation has only been a major trend since midway through the nineteenth century; before then, it only occurred sparingly. Deforestation also has the effect of destroying uncountable types of wildlife. Already, many species of the rainforests have ceased to exist, their habitats destroyed. There is a place in Brazil, once a forest, now a desert, that proves that human population also leads to desertification. Deserts are growing at an alarming rate, more so than ever before. When an area is cleared of trees, the rainfall to that area also decreases.

Use of fossil fuels hurts the environment in two ways: contributing to the greenhouse layer and destroying ecosystems by the extraction methods needed to produce them.  If a car uses petrol, then it is burning fossil fuels to give dangerous carbon and sulphur compounds. Many a marine animal has met its death at the hands of an invasive lake of oil. Fossil fuels have been burnt since the early twentieth century. The invention of the motor engine did not aid this process, as cars have become some of our most used assets today.