The Myth of Over Population

The general idea about over population is that the earth has a set number of life forms whose survival it can support and is currently over limit. This assumption is, quite frankly, incorrect as it draws on the number of suffering people in the world today without taking in to account the genuine reasons for the deprivation. The common opinion seems to be that the earth simply does not have the resources to support our current population resulting in wide spread famine and disease. The reality is that those pictures of Ethiopian children with bellies blown up to the size of beach balls from malnutrition are snapshots of the losers in the never ending battle between the haves and the have nots. These people are not suffering from an unavoidable lack of food due to an overtaxed planet. They are starving to protect our right to waste as much as we want to.

Do you remember your grandmother telling you to eat your eggs because there were starving children in Africa? Grandma was right. According to the EPA the United States alone wastes 96 billion pounds of food every year. The sources of this food waste vary. They start from the field (where much food is wasted simply from not being harvested) and continue in restaurants and private homes. The total is enough food to feed 80 million people a day if it were not so thoughtlessly wasted. Food is the major concern of the suffering masses but their need for medical care, shelter, and clothing run close behind. The fix for the problems of lack of shelter, medicine, and clothing is not as simple or apparent as curbing waste and will require more creative solutions to be remedied. The shortages of these necessities are not due to the planet being unable to produce the materials required. The Earth is quite able to produce the materials it is humanity that has proved incapable in how it mines the earth for resources and how it distributes these resources.