The world’s population has always been increasing, because two people become 2 or 3 (often). By that I mean that when two people have kids, they often have 2 or 3 which means that the number of people in theory would be the same, or increase by 0.5 pr. human. But some people have no children, some people have 1 and some people have 8. – Anyway:

Earlier, the increasing population was no problem, because people died in an early age, many died from diseases, many died when giving birth, or when being born. People died from war, people died from starvation and people died from famines. There was always something happening, to “control” the population. But today, we live longer, we have overthrown many diseases, and we continue to treat people with diseases like cancer, so many of them can either get rid of the disease, or live with it throughout their lives.

This year, the human population has increased by approximately 71 million (human population clock here)  and there is currently about 7.5 billion people on this planet.  These numbers do not only create long lines when shopping, it also brings a lot of problems to our earth:

• There is only so many resources on Earth, and with more and more people, they are running short.
• More people, means more electricity, cars and more trash – an overpopulation is very bad for the environment and is causing a lot of problems, one of the main ones being air pollution.
• With more people and less resources pr. person, more wars and conflicts are accruing. Especially the fight for water.
• The prices for food and materials are rising, because of the increasing shortage of it. [1]

As the human population is increasing and we use more and more of the earth’s recourses we are destroying parts of our own planet. And while taking up more and more of the nature, we are resulting in an increasing extinction of animals and plant species:

Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson estimates that 30,000 species per year (or three species per hour) are being driven to extinction. Compared to the natural background rate of one extinction per million species pr year, you can see why this is a big issue. [2]

On the graph you can see the correlation between the human population growth and increasing Extinctions and how rapidly both the parables are rising, and how the extinctions are affected by the human population.

Endangered species condoms – a project of the center of Biological Diversity.

This is a group that are trying to stop people from having unplanned children in order to stop the rapid increasing of human population, by making condoms that remind you of the animals that will possibly be extinct. Each condom package has a drawing of an endangered animal, along with a catchy slogan such as: “For the sake of the horned lizard… slow down love wizard”.

“Every day, 227,000 humans are added to the planet and in the United States alone, nearly half of all pregnancies are unplanned.” – Leigh Moyer, Center for Biological Diversity. If this campaign will make more people think about the other consequences than those who affect themselves from having unprotected sex, we would be able to slow down the population growth and save more animals. I think this a really cool and fun way to influence the youth, not only because a potential baby in your teens makes you life really hard, but also because it might be able to actually slow down the population growth, because people would only get planned babies.

You can see some of the condom packages and slogans, and read more about their project here.

1. http://www.conserve-energy-future.com/causes-effects-solutions-of-overpopulation.php
2. http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainability/extinction/