Practice you think that overpopulation is a big problem? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share cognition, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the earth.

Answer by Chelsea Follett, Managing Editor of HumanProgress.org, on Quora:

Unwarranted panic about overpopulation is a big problem that has led to homo rights abuses and much pointless suffering.

Consider the long history of overpopulation alarmism, and how the doomsayers' fears accept failed to materialize once again and once again. Ii centuries ago, Thomas Malthus'southward Essay on Population warned that out-of-control population growth would deplete resources and bring about widespread dearth. His preferred solution was to decrease the birth rate by delaying marriage, but if that didn't piece of work he endorsed some rather extreme measures to slash the population. To preclude dearth, he thought it was morally permissible to "court the return of the plague" by making the poor live in swamps and even to ban "specific remedies for ravaging diseases." Subsequently Malthus died, the Industrial Revolution brought virtually unprecedented prosperity that funded the construction of safe h2o supplies and sewage systems at a scale never before achieved. Living standards were transformed and lifespans lengthened. As farms mechanized, nutrient became more plentiful even as the population grew. Dearth became rarer. Yet Malthus'south ideas proved enduringly pop.

By the 1970s, overpopulation hysteria came fully back into faddy. Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968, which opened with the lines, "The boxing to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to expiry in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Soon thereafter, in 1972, the Guild of Rome issued a report called The Limits to Growth. It bolstered the old argument that population growth would deplete resources and lead to a collapse of society with evidence from computer simulations based on dubious assumptions. Those jeremiads led to man rights abuses including millions of forced sterilizations in Mexico, Republic of bolivia, Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India, as well every bit Cathay's draconian one-child (now 2-child) policy. In 1975, officials sterilized 8 million men and women in India lonely. Were these human rights abuses necessary? No. Instead of facing widespread starvation and resource shortages, humanity managed to brand resources more plentiful past using them more efficiently, increasing the supply and developing substitutes.

Today the population is at a record high, and famines accept all but vanished outside of war zones. Even in Sub Saharan Africa, the poorest expanse on the planet, the food supply now exceeds the recommended 2,000 calories per person per 24-hour interval. Yet overpopulation fears nevertheless exert a powerful concur on the public imagination. Earlier this yr, a survey by Negative Population Growth institute that "American high school students are very worried well-nigh overpopulation." Many prominent environmentalists — from Johns Hopkins University bioethicist Travis Rieder to entertainer Nib Nye "The Scientific discipline Guy" — back up revenue enhancement penalties or other state-imposed punishments for having "too many" children. Bowdoin College's Sarah Conly published a book in 2016 through Oxford University Printing advocating a "one-kid" policy, claiming it is "morally permissible" for the authorities to limit family sizes through force to prevent overpopulation.

Even if overpopulation were to show to be a problem, it is one with an expiration date: due to falling global nativity rates, demographers approximate the world population will decrease in the long run, afterwards peaking around the twelvemonth 2070. It is now well-documented that as countries abound richer, and people escape poverty, they opt for smaller families — a phenomenon called the fertility transition. It is almost unheard of for a country to maintain a high fertility rate subsequently it passes well-nigh $5,000 in per-person annual income. Alarmism and farthermost measures to combat "overpopulation" are entirely unnecessary.

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