Is human overpopulation alarmist hype with disturbing consequences?

Oxford data scientist Hannah Ritchie challenges the myths and fears about overpopulation and how to address it with facts and data we have to hand.

A widespread concern with overpopulation became prominent in the 1960s and the 1970s, when scholars wondered how we could produce enough food for a rapidly growing global population. Brought to the fore with the publication of the book, “The Population Bomb,” by Paul R. Ehrlich in 1968, it seemed that the only way to solve this problem was to discourage people from having more children. This concern hinged on the assumption that the world population would continue to grow exponentially, but it hasn’t. While the global population is still growing, in fact it’s growing at a much slower rate, as global population growth rates peaked decades ago and have halved since then. So is this concern unfounded? What can future population projections tell us? Data scientist Hannah Ritchie explains why.

00:00: The overpopulation concern 02:01: Global population growth rates 02:28: The fall in global fertility rates 03:06: Amount of food produced per person 03:50: Per capita CO2 emissions 04:17: The underpopulation concern

Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/series/devils-ad…

David Attenborough on Overpopulation

The Knowledge Exchange

In this video, David Attenborough discusses overpopulation. He points out that our human population is clearly one of the drivers that underlies all global problems. Currently we are adding an additional 230,000 people every day to the planet. Everyone of them needing food, space, water etc. The sooner we stabilise our numbers, the sooner we stop running up the down escalator. Our destiny is in our hands.

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