Dear President of the United States,

My name is Yona Lim. I am a 7th grader at Quimby Oak Middle School, and I am writing to you today because I am concerned that the Earth is slowly reaching its maximum capacity of 9 to 10 billion people. When overpopulation occurs, there will be many dire consequences. Each and every time a new person is born, they are one more person that will have to use the resources provided or made on this planet.

The effects of overpopulation are quite severe. CNN news  http://www.cnn.com/(April 8, 2008) stated that many environmentalists have long been concerned with the rapid growth of the human race. One of the main issues is the depletion of Earth’s resources. Our planet can only produce a limited amount of food and drinkable water. With the current world population of 7 billion, we are already experiencing some difficulties. More people living on this planet means that there will be less resources available, and people may even start fighting for these limited resources. Even if most of these resources are renewable, they cannot be renewed fast enough. People are consuming resources faster than they are renewed.

Degradation of the environment is another big problem. People will start cutting down more and more trees to make way for construction of new communities. Overpopulation leads to more trash and more land being taken from the forests and natural environment to build houses on. According to CNN news on http://www.cnn.com  (October 14, 2013), deforestation means taking a forest and destroying it for the land and natural resources it provides. Trees and wildlife will be in jeopardy. More people also means more use of oil and natural gas, and this is already causing serious problems in our environment. The increase in the number of cars used has affected the quality of the air in a bad way. There is also the rising amount of carbon dioxide emissions that lead to global warming to think about. These problems occur because our world has too many people on it, and so we overuse some materials such as fossil fuels, oil, and even wood. Overpopulation is primarily caused by too many people having children. In fact, just in the the United States, a child is born every 8 seconds.

Overpopulation also leads to poverty, unemployment, and hunger. According to http://www.ecology.com, 360,000 babies are born every day. There are people in other countries who give birth to many children, but do not have enough money to feed their family. As a result, there is a huge number of children who are suffering from hunger. Also, if there are too many people, there will also be a high rate of unemployment because there are not enough jobs for everyone. Unfortunately, this is a cycle that goes on and on.

There seems to be little advantage of overpopulation according to my research. However, there are some countries that do need to increase their birth rate because they have very few young people in their country. Some of these countries include Japan, Monaco, and Singapore (http://www.aneki.com). Even though some countries could use a higher birth rate to have a good balance, overall, the additional births still add to the world population. On the other hand, there are some other countries that need to lower their birth rate because the population is expanding too quickly. Even though countries with a low population need to increase their birth rate, they also need to plan the increase properly because it will still add to the total world population.

A challenge that we face as keepers of this planet is making sure that the earth is livable on for when we grow older, and also for future generations. What should we do to continue life as we know it here on Earth? Overpopulation is causing the depletion of natural resources. The pollutants we release in the environment because of too much people existing is causing unnatural poisoning of the the oceans and the forests. As a result, many living things tend to die or even become extinct! Our parents, us, and our community need to do something now to help control the surge of the population. Otherwise, we will be faced with a world that is inhabitable for future generations.

People who are living on Earth now need to have better education on the harsh effects of overpopulation. Couples need to be more aware of family planning. Governments of some countries can even help by coming up with policies or incentives related to having less children per family. Everyone needs to make good choices because if they do not, the Earth as we know it may no longer be there for us. Even though we might not be affected by this as much with us being in a richer society of America, many other countries still suffer from the lack of resources and overpopulation.

                                                                                                                                 From a concerned student,

                                                                                                                                                                 Yona L.