Population Growth and Its Stress on Land, Water, and Fuel

Introduction: Population Growth and Environmental Strain

The world population has increased exponentially over the last 100 years, as technology and development have outstripped the ability of a fragile planet to absorb a massive influx of polluting and resource-demanding people. To survive, people must have land, water, and fuel — and yet on earth such elements are finite, unless technology can meet the demand for sustainable or human-created substitutes.

Economic growth, rising living standards, and increased consumption levels have brought dramatic increases in per capita demand for land, energy, food, and fresh water, along with increases of similar magnitude in the production of wastes and pollutants. With the rapid loss of agricultural land and natural habitats — around 2% per decade in Western Europe — induced by low-density suburban sprawl, strong metropolitan decentralization trends, and the rise of the automobile, concern has focused on the global significance of increasing per capita energy consumption and carbon emissions (Jenks & Burgess, 2000, p. 12).

The difficulty of this development is that the balance of the environment can be thrown off — unknowingly — through the depletion of resources or through the development of new resources intended to sustain human populations at exponentially growing levels.

The rapid increase in consumption levels in wealthy regions of the world, and the rapid growth in world population — with the haves eager to preserve what they have gained, and the have-nots, with all good reason, claiming an equal share in the rising standard of living — have, over recent decades, made it clear to almost everyone that natural resources are fragile and the resilience of the world's ecosystems is limited (Lindahl-Kiessling & Landberg, 1997, p. v).

Lindahl-Kiessling and Landberg point out that the challenges of developing sustainable population growth are not only numerous but are exacerbated by the fact that massive population growth often emerges from the desire of those living in poverty to secure enough manpower to build a better future. Economic deprivation, in other words, challenges the environment: in striving to survive economically, communities can create conditions in which the planet cannot survive environmentally. The resources of given regions are depleted to such a degree that large families seeking a piece of the good life succeed only in undermining their own environment and growing poorer in the process.

Land Depletion, Resources, and Sprawl

The limited capacity of basic socioeconomic systems to absorb change, combined with continued population growth, creates a real threat to humankind and to nature itself. It is not a case of "us" and "them" — time is running short for all of us. The environmental impact of high consumption levels in the industrialized world gives wealthy countries a problem of no less importance than fast population growth in the Global South. For scientists and politicians alike, the message is clear: the issues of population, development, natural resources, and environment must be considered together (Lindahl-Kiessling & Landberg, 1997, p. v).

The conclusion of this group of experts is that wealthy nations retaining resources for themselves, rather than sharing equitably with poorer nations, have fueled a global population explosion that taxes the very resources — land, water, and fuel — that sustain human life. This strain on environmental balance may be contributing to global climate change, which many view as an existential threat to our ecosystems and our planet.

The value of land on which we build our homes continues to rise as less and less remains available for traditional construction, while at the same time the resources upon that land are being depleted to meet the demand for economic sustainability and growth. "The bigger the city, and the higher its levels of consumption, the greater would be its ecological footprint" (Jenks & Burgess, 2000, p. 20). The farther one travels from the city in search of the values expressed in an idealized rural life, the more resources are consumed, and the less the new regions resemble the rural ideal they were meant to recapture.

Others point out that, in the long term, urban sprawl is counterproductive. Many of the benefits of the automobile are short-lived, as rising levels of ownership and use soon lead to congestion and paralysis, undermining the urban structures that the car helped to create. Although low-density living has many supporters — not least among those who enjoy the environmental attractions of suburbia — there is a widespread view that the physical expansion of cities needs to be checked (Clark, 2003, p. 207).

Early conservation, contrary to the modern idea of resource conservation, had the goal of developing resources exclusively for human use (Worster, 2002, p. 527). In so doing, many regions were altered by development to such a degree that significant effort has since been required to restore some semblance of balance to the ecosystems in which we build our homes, businesses, and roads. "Despite growing knowledge of its impacts and an array of development alternatives, sprawl continues to spread, leaving polluted resources and more sedentary populations in its wake" (Schmidt, 2004, p. 620).

There are countless examples of the "manifest destiny" mentality of the colonial period — damming rivers, moving mountains, and stripping land of minerals and fuel — all undertaken to create the conditions for population growth, often without regard for long-term ecological impact or the land's capacity to sustain its flora, fauna, and the delicate balance of water and soil. As the land reformer William Gilpin expressed, "The Colorado Plateau, like other parts of the West, had been 'prepared and equipped by nature in all departments at every point, and throughout its whole length, for the immediate entrance and occupation of organized society, and the densest population'" (Worster, 2002, p. 111). The bottom line is simple: the more people inhabit the land, the fewer land and resources remain to sustain them.

Conclusion

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Schmidt, C. W. (2004). Sprawl: The new manifest destiny? Environmental Health Perspectives, 112(11), 620.

Worster, D. (2002). A river running west: The life of John Wesley Powell. Oxford University Press.