In the past 250 years since the Industrial Revolution, the world population has increased by 6 billion people, with a 400 percent increase in population during the 20th century alone. This population explosion aggravates all the other pressing environmental problems: more people means more waste, energy usage, deforestation, resource wars, habitat fragmentation, and pollution, to name a few.
Solutions to this ever-expanding problem are often very controversial since they usually involve limiting basic human rights. Some approaches to population control include sex education, access to family planning resources, government taxes, and in extreme cases, limiting the number of children a family can have. Although these strategies are important, they don’t solve the whole problem: along with an increase in birth rates, there are also decreased death rates that contribute to the overall population growth.
While working on solutions for the population boom, we also need to take action and find ways that the existing 7 billion people can fit on this planet while making as small an impact as possible. City planners will need to start thinking more about designing high-density cities that grow up instead of out, reducing urban sprawl. This would result in closer amenities, which would decrease transportation time and carbon emissions.