Island Civilization and Overpopulation

                In Roderick Fraser Nash’s essay “Island Civilization”, he proposes a somewhat unbelievable situation that would solve many environmental issues in modern society by the turn of the next millennium. Overpopulation is one of these issues, and Nash proposes we instate some form of birth control or selection to limit the planet’s human population to only 1.5 billion. I believe overpopulation is an overblown issue in many cases, although not a non-existent one.

                 Overpopulation is a multi-faceted issue which reflects humans’ many needs to survive. The primary concern many have in regards to overpopulation is the amount of food we have available to us and the space we need in order to produce this food. Humans are able to produce food almost anywhere now that we have the technology of greenhouses, which could be placed on top f any given building to produce food for the residents. Quick-growing plants such as kudzu and bamboo can easily be grown and eaten. Animals such as cows and chickens are largely space-inefficient to raise for slaughter. In a world with several more billion people, it would be an economically better decision to instead use the space to raise beetle larvae- you could raise many more beetles in the same space you could raise the livestock of today, and they provide more protein than either chicken or beef.

                Aside from space for food, humans also need space to live. There are many unexplored or unpopulated areas on earth right now, mostly under the sea. There is also lots of room both above and below current cities that isn’t used. Takenaka Corporation’s Sky City 1000 concept may be the reality of future urban development. The science-fictive Geofronts or Space Colonies may also become a reality in exploiting the near-endless area humans have to work with.

                A more prevalent or serious concern in my mind is providing enough energy for the processes of the future. Nuclear power, especially in the United States, is an underutilized source of energy production. Renewable energy is not currently a viable method of supporting a large human population, but the technology is hopeful and, with more research, may eventually become humanity’s primary form of energy generation.

                Overpopulation is only a true issue once the entire planet suffers from it, although large cities such as New York and Tokyo suffer the problem on a much smaller scale. Both cities built up- they house some of the world’s tallest buildings and make use of nuclear power and clean or hybrid energy. However, neither has any sort of special dietary adjustment due to the ability to import food from other places (although this does make food their marginally more expensive), so it’s not a perfect example of human population beating the odds.

Another thing to consider is how cities such as Tokyo and New York are considered to be at the forefront of human development. Some of the greatest technologies come from large cities such as these, and as more brilliant minds are able to connect in epicenters of human dwelling, quality of human life around the world will improve.  Their capability to house millions in such a relatively small space must be duplicated in order to support a higher population lest we need to implement the inhumane practices of population control.

http://www.learnliberty.org/content/are-we-running-out-resources