Overpopulation

Problems:
Overpopulation is a major cause of most of the world’s
problems. Whether it is a question of food shortage, lack of
drinking water or energy shortages, every country in the world
is affected by it – or will be.

Partly thanks to the import of goods from abroad, any

particular country is able to maintain its own welfare. But this
cannot go on in an unlimited way. In fact, the number of
inhabitants is rising in every country. The world population is
threatening to rise in the next few decades to 8 or 10 billion.
There is a good chance that more and more countries will
need their own products themselves.

Our planet can offer a quality of life comparable to that

enjoyed in the European Union to no more than 2 billion
people. With a population of 8 to 10 billion, welfare per person
on a world scale will drop to that of a poor farmer who can
scarcely provide sufficient food for himself and knows nothing
of welfare. And thus we will have to share everything fairly in
order to avoid disputes or war.

The climate is changing – and it matters little whether this can

be blamed on human activity or on changes in the solar
system. The sea level only has to rise slightly in order to
cause a great deal of valuable agricultural land to disappear.
At present we seem to think that we can keep ahead of famine
with the use of artificial fertilisers, by the inhumane breeding of
animals and other survival strategies.

Human beings have a tendency to want more and more

welfare. World-wide the numbers of cars and refrigerators are
increasing before our very eyes. But there will come a time
when population growth and welfare collide. There is a
reasonably good chance that floods of people will trek all over
the world searching for more food and welfare.

Technicians are only too happy to point to technology that has

solutions to all our problems up its sleeve. Unfortunately
technical solutions have not as yet been able to combat world
hunger in any significant way. Wherever there is no
recognition or solving of the problems on a worldwide scale,
war and violence would seem to be inevitable: everyone wants
to survive.

The only solution is a population policy applied on a worldwide

scale. This site provides you – per language and, where
possible, per country – with articles, films and images from all
over the world showing what overpopulation is and why a
population policy is important. Unfortunately too often any
discussion of overpopulation or of population policies is taboo.

The business world and the religions are generally only

interested in population growth. Allowing welfare to shrink is
often just as difficult for the rich as fleeing from poverty is for
the poor. In addition the growth scenario continues to
dominate worldwide thinking about solutions for the problems
set out here.