Throughout the past two and a half months, I’ve written about a handful of issues that pose serious threats to our environment.  These include things like pollution, deforestation, and climate change.  However, all of these can be traced back to one thing: overpopulation.  Overpopulation is such a big problem because of the wastefulness of humans and our tendency to consume more and more.  And as our population continues to grow, I’m afraid that we’ll need to make some serious lifestyle changes if we’re to protect our environment.

The world population currently sits at around 7.5 billion, and it is expected to increase to 9.2 billion in the next twenty years.  Although this increase isn’t as rapid as those we have seen in the past half century, this will still put an enormous strain on resources and will create excessive pollution.

Fig. 1. Our World in Data. World Population Growth.

Many people wonder what causes overpopulation, and the answer is simpler than you might think.  It means that the death rate is lower than the birth rate.  While this is easy enough to understand, there are several things that factor into the lowering of the death rate over time.  The birth rate is actually declining too, just at a much slower pace than the death rate.  Although the lowering of the death rate isn’t due to just one thing, the easiest aspect to pinpoint is the greatly improved medical care developed in the past 50 to 60 years.  Since we’re able to keep people alive longer, life expectancy rises, and less people are dying each day.

Obviously, it’s not a bad thing that we’re able to keep people healthy, and it would be immoral to intentionally raise the death rate.  This means that we instead need to focus on lowering the birth rate.  Although this sounds easy, regulating the population is harder than you might think.  This is primarily due to the fact that the birth rate is highest in developing countries, which are logically the same places where overpopulation is the biggest problem.  This is because poverty rates are high in these countries, so women have more children to be able to help out the family by working.  They also have limited access to contraceptives, so there’s not much help in preventing unplanned pregnancy.

Fig. 2. WordPress. Overpopulation in Bangladesh.

Obviously, the easiest way to limit population in developing countries would be to invest in birth control or other contraceptives for these citizens.  However, this strategy may not work for couples who feel it advantageous to have more children.  To combat this, we must work on educating the developing world and making them aware that reproducing more is not always the best option.  For those who are still holding out, it also may be effective to offer tax breaks or other concessions to women who give birth to fewer kids.

Although the population continues to grow (and will for the next several decades), many researchers estimate that the world population will hit a maximum sometime in the mid to late 21^st century, while others see it continuing to grow into the 22^nd century.  This is mostly because of the increasing global per capita GDP, also known as income.  Studies have shown that as average income increases, the number of children born per woman decreases.  This scenario will be a win-win for humanity, as it will curb overpopulation while indicating a higher standard of living for people all around the world.

Despite the fact that population growth will come to a halt sometime in the future, unfortunately it is still a problem in today’s day and age.  There are a couple ways in which overpopulation negatively affects the environment, one of which being depletion of natural resources.  There’s only so much that can go around, and with more people competing for resources, many individuals will be left out.  The easiest examples of these are water and food, which are often hard to come by in some parts of the developing world.  For food, the increased demand leads to increased production, which ends up causing widespread deforestation, something we’ve talked about at length in past weeks.  If we’re going to protect our vital resources, we must first start with controlling the things that consume them: humans.

Another effect of overpopulation is the overall degradation of the environment.  With more people living on the planet, more people are driving cars, using electricity, and performing other actions that increase our carbon footprint.  This leads to things like pollution and global warming, which we know bring about rising sea levels, worse air quality, and other adverse effects.  And although not entirely environmental, overpopulation will increase competition for things like jobs and other basic necessities such as clothing and shelter.

Clearly, overpopulation seems to be the driving force behind several concerns we have for our environment.  And worst of all, there’s really nothing that you or I can do about it.  I believe that the best approach to this problem is to focus on cutting back our individual consumption, so that as the world population continues to rise we can refrain from increasing our carbon footprint.  This may sound hard, but it’s one of the only options we have if we are to save our environment from the threat of too much humanity.

Out of all the environmental threats to planet Earth, carbon emissions are one of the ones that people are most familiar with.  Everywhere we go, it seems like we’re always being instructed on ways to reduce our carbon footprint, whether that be through spending less time driving, taking it easy on the air conditioning, or eating less meat.  This is for good reason, too.  Scientists predict that staying at our current emissions levels will bring dire consequences to the environment by as soon as 2030.  This could include large-scale extinction of aquatic organisms and frequent flooding of coastal cities, caused by warmer water temperatures and rising sea levels.

Obviously, carbon emissions are a big problem because they fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, thus trapping heat inside and causing the global temperature to steadily increase.  Nearly everyone agrees that we need to cut down on these emissions to reduce the possibility of environmental disaster, but unfortunately this is not currently happening.  After holding steady for 2014 through 2016, carbon emissions rose in 2017 by 1.6 percent and then again in 2018 by a whopping 2.7 percent.

Fig. 1. Global Carbon Project. Carbon Dioxide Emissions.

This all comes in spite of the Paris Climate Agreement, which was signed in 2015 and currently has close to 200 participating countries.  The United States made news on this front when President Trump announced last year that America would be pulling out of this agreement.  Although the Paris Agreement does not include any rigid emissions limits, it represents a collective effort to lower carbon output worldwide.  By withdrawing from this agreement, the U.S. is essentially saying that we don’t care about reducing our country’s carbon footprint.  What’s concerning about this is that other countries may follow in our footsteps and discard the agreement as well.  The Paris Agreement has already had problems with countries not meeting their self-defined carbon goals, so many people believe this accord to be largely ineffective.

Whether or not the Paris Agreement is a waste of resources is up for debate.  But there’s no denying that we can’t survive on our current levels of carbon emissions.  We would have to cut our emissions levels nearly in half by 2030 to prevent the global temperature from rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius, the threshold where most scientists agree that we would start to see catastrophic environmental effects.  After this, we would have to be at “net zero” emissions by 2050, which would only be accomplished by planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide or implementing other ways to remove it from the atmosphere.  And remember, our emissions are currently rising.  At this point, it seems like it would take a miracle to save us from certain disaster.

Although hope may seem bleak, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t at least attempt to rectify our current situation.  Despite many regulations being rolled back, the EPA still has several guidelines that must be met by corporations.  They are even in the process of implementing the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule, a regulation that would improve the technology and efficiency of coal-fired power plants.  This action alone would reduce power sector emissions by 1 percent, which account for 28 percent of all nationwide emissions.  This may seem like a small number, but every little bit matters in this race against time.

Fig. 2. EPA. Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

I truly believe that the solution to this problem lies in the development of new technologies and clean energy sources like solar and wind.  Switching to wind power or manufacturing more fuel-efficient cars would have a great effect on the overall carbon emissions of our country.  However, I’m pessimistic about the willingness of companies to pursue these advances without some sort of outside pressure.  The reason is that undertaking these developments would be costly in the short run, and frankly, CEOs seem to be a lot more concerned about their bottom lines than the future of the environment.

This theme is common across the world, as economic pressure has forced a lot of countries to soften up on carbon regulations and forgo pursuing new technology.  For example, China, who’s emissions levels spiked in recent years, is currently in a recession and has had to ramp up industry to try to climb out of it.  Yang Fuqiang, an energy adviser to the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council, said of China, “Under pressure of the current economic downturn, some local governments might have loosened supervision on air pollution and carbon emissions.”  Although China is currently in a bit of an emissions rough patch, they are still greatly dedicated toward having a more positive impact on the environment.  They’ve pledged to drop coal to 10 percent of their total energy consumption by 2050 (coal is currently at 60%) and are actually ahead of pace in dropping their carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP.

I understand that carbon emissions are a lot to comprehend, but I implore you not to take them lightly.  Unless drastic changes are made, I’m afraid that we’ll be in for a world of environmental hurt sometime in the near future.  But it’s not too late for you to make a difference.  Cut back on excessive use of electricity, consider driving a more fuel-efficient car, or choose to walk or bike places instead.  We may have a tall mountain to climb, but we can overcome this through a great effort from people all around the world just like you and me.

Although beef production sounds relatively harmless compared to other environmental issues, unfortunately it is the driving force behind many of them.  Beef production is one of the most wasteful industries on the face of the planet, and this drastic misuse of resources doesn’t seem to be nearing an end anytime soon.

Many of you may be asking, “Why is beef production so bad? Isn’t it just like any other industry?”  Although it is similar to other markets, unfortunately beef uses a lot more resources than those other industries.  Beef production is so terrible because it uses excess amounts of land, water, and creates greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide.

First off, the amount of farmland required for livestock ranching is so large that it’s almost ridiculous.  Worldwide, beef only amounts to 5% of protein consumed and only 2% of calories consumed.  Meanwhile, a whopping 60% of the world’s farmland is used for beef production, which is entirely disproportional considering the nutritional value provided by this industry.

Logically, since a lot of the world’s land is used for beef, a lot of the world’s deforestation is be caused by beef.  This holds true especially in the Amazon rainforest, where 91% of deforestation is caused by animal agriculture.  Brazil, the country where most of the Amazon is located, is one of the world’s top beef exporters, hence the excessive livestock ranching.  Beef production uses so much land because ranchers constantly need to clear more land to provide food for their cattle.  Pasture land is also more valuable than forest land, so many speculators choose to clear tracts of land and sell them to ranchers.

Fig. 1. OneGreenPlanet. Livestock Deforestation.

If you recall, in one of my previous blog posts I discussed deforestation’s negative effects on global warming.  Due to the removal of carbon absorbing trees, more greenhouse gases escape to wreak havoc in the atmosphere and accelerate global warming.  Overall, the beef industry accounts for 14.5% of all deforestation worldwide, which is approximately equal to that of the entire transportation sector, meaning that cow meat is just as harmful to the environment as every car, train, and airplane on Earth.  This is partly due to the carbon emissions caused by related deforestation and other factors in beef production.  However, it is also due to methane, a greenhouse gas produced by cattle that has 23 times the destructive power of carbon dioxide.  When accounting for this, animal agriculture and all its byproducts make up 51% of worldwide carbon emissions.

If emissions from the meat industry don’t significantly decrease sometime in the near future, it will be very hard to keep global temperatures from rising to catastrophic levels within our lifetime.

Another negative of beef production is the excessive amount of water is uses.  If you take a look at this graph, you will see that it takes more than triple the amount of water to produce 1 kilogram of beef compared to other animal products and more natural foods.

Fig. 2. Water Footprint Network. Beef Water Use.

This disparity is concerning and is even more pronounced when you consider the fact that is takes 660 gallons of water to produce one hamburger.  This is equivalent to the amount of water you use in the shower over the course of two whole months.  In total, beef production uses 66.5 trillion gallons of water annually, which is equal to the yearly consumption of 750 million households.  This means that the beef industry uses more water than every single American combined.  With so many parts of the developing world (and even our own country) lacking access to clean water, this drastic overuse must be carefully taken into consideration by governments and consumers around the world.

Without a doubt, animal agriculture is one of the driving forces of environmental problems our country is facing.  And unfortunately, this issue isn’t disappearing anytime soon.  Americans consumed a record amount of meat in 2018, an unbelievable 222.2 pounds per person.  As if this isn’t bad enough, global consumption of meat is expected to rise another 76 percent by 2050.

With this outlook, the future of our environment may seem bleak.  However, there are some ways that you can help improve this problem.  The simplest one: give up eating meat, at least in large quantities.  Experts say that this action will reduce your carbon footprint more so than giving up cars.  I realize that giving up meat is a hard sell, and it’s something that I’ll probably never be able to do.  But if we all cut our meat consumption in half, we could possibly avoid a lot of negative environmental impacts in the future.  I realize that this still seems hard, but there are a lot of imitation meats out there that actually taste quite similar to the real thing.  Cutting back on meat consumption would also make us a lot healthier.  At this point, beef production seems to be one of the more serious environmental issues we are facing.  And unless preventive measures are taken, we may be asking “Where’s the beef?” sooner rather than later.