The word population comes from the Latin word “Populus” meaning people. The human population of the whole world is growing by more than 90 million per year. 93% of this growth rate is in developing and less developed countries. Singapore, Hong Kong, Bahrain and Bangladesh are the countries with very high population densities in the world.
Population growth of different countries depends on the resources, education, religious thinking and economic condition of a country. It also depends on the policies of Governments in different countries.
The population of the world started increasing in 1700 due to the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution gave employment and other facilities to people. This increased the growth rate of the population.
In the first half of the 1900s, the population was growing very fast in most developing countries including India and China. The growth rate was very high for African countries. In developing countries, the literacy rate is poor. People are not aware of the problems caused by population growth. Better medical treatment and agricultural production rapidly increased the world population in the 1960s. Soon, Governments and local agencies of different countries started taking steps to decrease the population growth. As a result, the population of developed countries slowed down.
The world population increased from 250 crores in 1950 to 480 crores in 1984 and 600 crores in 2000 in just 50 years.
When the population is more, we need more resources. We need more food. To get more food, we will need more land for growing crops. More population will need more employment, transportation, health, shelter and educational facilities etc. Thus, natural resources will be used more to get these. As a result, they may not be easily available in future. When we use more resources, then there will be another problem - and that is pollution. Air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, nuclear pollution etc will be increased. Global warming, acid rain and other man-made disasters are all caused due to pollution.
So, overpopulation is a Serious environmental concern. Let’s take a look 70 greatest quotes about overpopulation and associated problems.
Famous Quotes On Overpopulation
- “Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage.” - Jacques Yves Cousteau
- “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.” - Thomas Malthus
- “Our human population continues to expand at such a scary rate.” - Bindi Irwin
- “Population growth and development place additional stress on the Nation’s water infrastructure and its ability to sustain hard-won water quality gains.” - Jerry Costello
- “Rapid population growth and technological innovation, combined with our lack of understanding about how the natural systems of which we are a part work, have creed a mess.” - David Suzuki
- “Europe is overpopulated, the world will soon be in the same condition, and if the self-reproduction of man is not rationalized... We shall have war.” - Henri Bergson
- “Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence.” - A.P. J. Abdul Kalam
- “Futurists don’t consider overpopulation one of the issues of the future. They consider it the issue of the future.” - Dan Brown
- “By improving health, empowering women, population growth comes down.” - Bill Gates
- “We need to recognize that slowing population growth is one of the most cost-effective and reliable ways of easing pressure on our environment and securing a sustainable future for us all.” - Lionel Shriver
- “When we can treat all existing persons as humans, it will be time enough to think about having more.” - Athelstan Spilhaus
- “Population growth puts increased pressure on everything else... Girls and women must be educated. Even a few years’ basic education leads to smaller families.” - Baroness Valerie Amos.
- “Our numbers expand, but Earth’s natural systems do not.” - Lester R. Brown
- “We must…guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions.” - Henry Way Kendall.
- “The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease in the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.” - Arne Ness.
- “Because of human pollution and overpopulation, the birth of a human being, like the death of a tree, is, to planet Earth, a tragedy.” - Mokokoma Mokhonoana
- “Some of these (Asian) countries, like India, far from needing a bigger population, would be better off with fewer people.” - Jawaharlal Nehru
- “The one real remedy is birth control - that is getting the people of the world to limit themselves to those numbers which they can keep upon their own soil.” - Bertrand Russell
- “One always returns to the fact that there are just too many of us, the population continues to rise and it’s unsustainable. - Jeremy Irons.
- “Population growth is straining the Earth’s resources to the breaking point, and educating girls is the single most important factor in stabilizing that. That, plus helping women gain political and economic power and safeguarding their reproductive rights. - Al Gore( Former US Vice President)
- “The ultimate measure of human success is not production but reproduction. Economic productivity and profit are means to reproductive ends, not ends in themselves.” - Pierre L.van den Berghe.
- “The world is finite. For everybody in the world to have the same lifestyle that we have now, at only six billion people, would take four additional Earths” - Margaret Atwood.
- “(Population is) an important issue… most greens will not discuss. Is this sensitivity or is it cowardice? Perhaps a bit of both,” - George Monbiot
- “Making love instead of war is likely to lead to an even bigger population, which is likely to lead to wars.” - Mokokoma Mokhonoana
- “We have a finite environment - the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.” - David Attenborough
- “A crowded society is a restrictive society; an overcrowded society becomes an authoritarian, repressive and murderous society.” - Edward Abbey
- “When it comes to tackling climate change and extreme weather, we ignore the population at our peril.” - Emma Woods
- “The principle of contraction and convergence with a population base year should provide the basic framework for global greenhouse gas emission reductions.” - Kofi Annan
- “The overpopulation of this small island nation, already stricken with a mountain of debt that could blight generations, is the gravest crisis we face.” - George Carey, Former Archbishop of Canterbury
- “In the last 200 years, the population of our planet has grown exponentially, at a rate of 1.9% per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years, by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder.” - Stephen Hawking
- “The idea that population growth guarantees a better life - financially or otherwise - is a myth that only those who sell nappies, prams and the like have any right to believe.” - Kofi Annan
- “Overpopulation is by far the worst kind of pollution.” - Mokokoma Mokhonoana
- “Reducing the population growth rate should be our first priority as no other program, policy or initiative will produce results without managing the numbers” - Aisha Khan-Chief Executive, Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change
- “Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it’s time we controlled the population to allow the survival of the environment.” - Sir David Attenborough
- “The human population can no longer be allowed to grow in the same old uncontrolled way. If we do not take charge of our population size, then nature will do it for us.” - Sir David Attenborough.
- “Environmental degradation, overpopulation, refugees, narcotics, terrorism, world crime movements, and organized crime are worldwide problems that don’t stop at a nation's borders.” - Warren Christopher
- “This growing poverty in the midst of a growing population constitutes a permanent menace to peace and not only to peace but also to democratic institutions and personal liberty for overpopulation is not compatible with freedom.” - Aldous Huxley
- “I do not want to speak about overpopulation or birth control but I think education is the way to give new impetus to the poverty question.” - Harri Holkeri
- “The human overpopulation issue is the topic I see as the most vital to solve if our children and grandchildren are to have a good quality of life.” - Alexandra Paul
- “Think of the Earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every 40 years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.” - Gore Vidal writer
- “Overpopulation is a serious issue. The human race will soon have to get used to 12 in a room.” - Spike Milligan
- “We’ve come to use all the resources that are available for our use on the planet..we have to do something about population control, if possible, by birth control.” - Christian de Duve.
- “We must alert and organize the world’s people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.” - Jacques Yves Cousteau
- “Overpopulation in the United States will become the single greatest issue facing Americans in the 21st century. We either solve it proactively or nature will solve it brutally for us via water shortages, energy crisis, air pollution, gridlock, species extinction and worse.” - Frosty Wooldridge
- “Cannibalism is a radical but realistic solution to the problem of overpopulation.” - Prince Philip
- “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” - Kenneth E. Boulding
- “I believe that human overpopulation is the fundamental problem on Earth today and We humans have become a disease, the Humanpox.” - David Foreman
- “We already have the statics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place.” - Gunter Grass
- “Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill.” - Stephen Hawking
- “Must we wait for the selection to solve the problems of overpopulation, and exhaustion of resources? Pollution of the environment and a nuclear holocaust, or can we take explicit steps to make our future more secure? In the latter case, must we not transcend selection? - Burrhus Frederic Skinner
- “Overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organize peace on this planet.” - Albert Einstein
- “Once it was necessary that the people should multiply and be fruitful if the race was to survive. But now to preserve the race it is necessary that people hold back the power of propagation.” - Helen Keller
- “The point of population stabilization is to reduce or minimize misery.” - Roger Bengston- Founding board member, World Population Balance
- “Anyone who believes in indefinite growth of anything physical on a physically finite planet is either a madman or an economist.” - Kenneth Boulding- Economist and President Kennedy’s Environmental Advisor
- “The key problem facing humanity in the coming century is how to bring a better quality of life - for 8 billion or more people - without wracking the environment entirely in the attempt.” - Edward O. Wilson
- “The strongest witness is the vast population of the earth to which we are a burden and she scarcely can provide for our needs.” - Tertullian
- “Excessive (Population) growth may reduce output per worker, repress levels of living for the masses and engender strife.” - Confucius
- “The biggest obstacle was mixing abortion with overpopulation. These are two things that have nothing to do with each other.” - Jacques Yves Cousteau
- “Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn’t matter if someone dies.” - Isaac Asimov
- “The hungry world cannot be fed until and unless the growth of its resources and the growth of its population come into balance. Each man and woman and each nation must make decisions of conscience and policy in the face of this great problem.” - Lyndon B. Johnson
- “Ozone depletion, lack of water, and pollution are not the disease they are the symptoms. The disease is overpopulation and unless we face the world population head-on. We are doing nothing more than sticking a band-aid on a fast-growing cancerous tumour.” - Dan Brown
- “Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of that problem. It has to be addressed.” - David R. Brower
- “The biggest obstacle was mixing abortion with overpopulation. These are two things that have nothing to do with each other.” -Jacques Yves Cousteau
- “Either we reduce the world’s population voluntarily or nature will do this for us, but brutally.” - Maurice Strong
- “.....if human numbers increase, the rate of infection also increases.” - William H. McNeill
- “Rapid population growth is the major driving force behind the vicious circle of environmental scarcities and rural poverty. In Rwanda it induced the use of marginal lands on steep hillsides, shortening of fallow, deforestation, and soil degradation -and resulted in severe shortages of food.” -James Gasana
- “If the human population of the world continues to increase at its current rate, there will soon be no room for either wildlife or wild places… But I believe that sooner or later man will learn to limit his overpopulation. Then he will be much more concerned with optimum rather than maximum, quality rather than quantity, and will recover the need within himself for contact with wilderness and wild nature.” - Sir Peter Scott- Founder WWF
- “Those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational.” - James Lovelock.
- “The population problem must be recognized by the government as a principal element in long-range planning.” - John D. Rockefeller
- “One of the most serious challenges to human destiny in the last third of this century will be the growth of the population.” - Richard M.Nixon - Former US President
You may also read - 45 Inspiring Quotes on Waste Management- Stop littering and start recycle