In some places it is. It is not currently a world wide problem but it will be if we don't do a better job taking care of and distributing our resources.

Sure doesn't help

I live in NJ, the most densely populated state. We are doing just fine. =) (and noo... half those people are NOT bodies in the hudson.)

You are damned right, excuse me if i sound blunt. More people means more resources consumed meaning more industry polluting the air, thus making the people and environment sick causing us to spend more on repairing ourselves and our surroundings, eating up fuels to create these medicines and burning fossil fuel to move product from place to place, which reduces the sickness by a factor of 10 but adding to the pollutants by a factor of 10 thus adding back to the sickness by a fraction of 3 over 110. I believe that at the rate we are multiplying, which is not unlike rabbits, the entire world will be put into a situation like china, whose exports include infant girls to cut back on reproduction. This is an endless snake that eventually swallows itself up until the planet is plunged into a chilling but cleansing ice-age for a few thousand years until life crawls out of the oceans once again. When will this happen? It's hard to speculate but here's something you can do to help. Use condoms, wait until marrage until you have children, limit your amount of children, educate your children about safe sex practices. with these small actions, we can slow this poisonous cycle. Edit: Another problem is that the elderly are living longer. This may sound terrible but in the 1800's the average life span was about 60 years old. Now we have our elders living upwards of 80 years. To counter-act this figure though, we have disease. Cancer and heart disease are the leading causes of preventable death in today's world. In the 1800's these things were far less common, the people ate more healthy (without even thinking) and worked much harder during their lifetimes. Now we have consultants that weigh 400 pounds that talk on a phone all day, sitting in their cubicle making $20 an hour then ending the day with a quadruple whopper in front of their televisions as opposed to cooking their own food which they grew or went to the market to buy freshly. I will add more to this later, i am slightly busy at the moment.

On a global scale, it certainly is, we only have so many resources, and the more people using them the less long they will last. Although, you cannot exactly advocate population reduction in any kind of ethical manner - so I guess we just have to live smarter.

Overpopulation, per se, is not the problem. The bigger problem is that our current population level cannot be sustained. The only reason we aren't dying off in masses is that we are rapidly depleting non-renewable resources and filling available "sinks" with our waste. At some point, the resources will run out and the 'garbage dumps' will fill up. Some scientists and policy makers are trying to determine what a sustainable 'carrying capacity' population of the Earth is. Here's one long-winded treatise on the subject: http://dieoff.org/page112.htm

It's a big problem. We have more people then the earth can support. And none of them can get along with each other either. It's awful.

Not the real or only problem. I have heard it said that the world's population could fit into Texas. The problem is more that the world's resources are not evenly distributed. It has been proven in practical experiments in India, that most women would be content with 2 children, if they could be fairly well guaranteed that the 2 would live and grow up...while there is hunger, lack of hygeine and medical help, the poor will have more children, in the hope that one or two will live to look after them in their old age.

It is a problem when the majority of the population is unemployed.

The world is beyond its carrying capacity for the standard of living we enjoy at the moment. We are living on a credit card now as we consume the world's non-replaceable resources. Even if we keep the population at the level we have now, within a hundred years we'll be seeing plague, famine, war and death.

Ask the pope.

Yes. The population is going to grow at an exponential rate. Look at India. Once it reaches an unacceptable level, the human race will suffer some great disaster that will wipe out at least half of them (and this disaster will be indirectly caused by the massive overpopulation of the world). Then society starts all over again...

ofcourse

i think it is a problem?

In my opinion, it's the BIGGEST problem for humans. Most of my morals are based on the fact that people overbreed.

we need a national disater

Yes overpopulation is a great problem for the economic development of a country.It leads to 1) Scarcity of resources 2)Unemployment 3) poverty 4) Pollution 5) Lack of medical facilities 6) Lack of proper education facilities and Housing facilities.

Yes, it is a major problem and we are losing most of the species on this planet because of the over-population of our own species.

yes its a big problem

Why is Che asking the question? Seem like Malthus would be more appropriate. Overpopulation a problem? For who? Only for those poor souls left when things run out. Earth is Billions with a "b" of years old, humanity millions, and civilization thousands. Now if the real estate has been here, but civilization hasn't we can deduce that mankind tends to destroy itself regularly and will probably do so again. If we don't destroy ourselves the universe will, it's the way things work. Creation/destruction 2 sides of one coin. Without destruction no creation, without creation no destruction. Try to enjoy life while your here and don't worry about the inevitable, it will take care of itself. Find some one or something to love and try to leave the world better than you found it. now where are the fun questions? You know like "What's the biggest thing you've ever eaten while driving?" or "What is the stupidest thing you've ever heard George Bush say?" Where are those questions?

No, not at all - anyone who argues otherwise is wrong

i am. i've often wondered if that was one reason behind governments not doing more about situations like darfur?

Back in 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote "The Population Bomb". In this book he predicted that we were headed for disaster because of over population. He said that we were going to run out of natural resourced and would not be able to produce enough food to feed ourselves. He predicted that these and related problems would cause mass starvation through out the world (even in the U.S.A.) and that the UK would cease to exist as a nation. He predicted that all of these things would happen by the end of the 20th century. Well, as I am sure you are all aware, we are well into the 21st century and not one of these thing has happened. The fact of the matter is that Earth is not overpopulated. We have more than enough resources to sustain our population. Want in this world is not caused by a lack of resources. It is primarily caused by political strife in which despots refuse to allow necessary resources to get to those that need them. Additionally, as more nations become industrialized, population growth decreases. In undeveloped nations, children are a resource that helps to bring increased income to the family. They help out with the intense manual labor that is required in such societies to make a living. So, the more children there is in the family, the more wealth they can bring in. On the other hand, as machines take over these jobs, fewer people are needed to do the work. So, large numbers of children are not needed to bring wealth to the family. So, under these circumstances, large numbers of children actually become an economic burden on the family. So, couple in such families have fewer children. )This is not to say that parents don't love their children, but an ability to support children has to be a consideration when a couple decided how many to have.) So, after the large population boom of the 20th century, population growth rates are actually leveling off. They will continue to do so as more countries industrialize. There real concern should not be for population growth, but for population decrease. Statistics show that the native populations of industrialized nations are NOT having enough children to replace themselves. Too many couples in these society are choosing to have less than three children. With a child mortality rate of anything over 0%, couples limiting themselves to only producing two children are not producing enough to replace the population. So, we get negative population growth. The only thing that is keeping the populations of these nations from declining is the influx of immigrants from other nations that are still producing excess populations. As these other nations become industrialized, expect to see their population growth rates decline. If that goes far enough, then we will stop producing enough children to replace ourselves. Then we really will be in trouble as a species.

Yes, I think it is the problem that humans should really be focused on now. I'm have a strong fervor for the environment, and recycle, and I'm a vegan. The earth has so many problems, but really, we can't make any progress in solving any of these problems until we maintain a stable population. If we get anywhere with managing all our negative effects on the globe, all our efforts will become undone by the rapidly growing population. I really wish overpopulation had more global attention and that there could be a way that I could contribute more besides adopting children and trying to spread awareness.

In some area's it is.

no, it has ways of working itself out

yes it is a problem. im thinking we need a 2 child rule like china's 1 rule. abortion would be the on the third. start recycling if you arent already. don't pollute, hybrid cars are a great thing. theyre on the right track. if we focus on problems like overpopulation, pollution, and AIDS we can have effective solutions for them in the next 5-10 years. the only problem is no one is willing to start taking responsibility for it. and you might think "o im just one person it wont make a difference." well i wanna say more and i can go on this rant forever but i gotta move on.

It will be, because it has been taking less years to add one more billion people to the earth's population since the first billion...and it keeps growing and growing....

yes especially in British prisons. Theyre too over crowded so they are going to have to release non serious offenders 14 days before their release date. Scary stuff.

For nature no, it is only a matter of time before the planet comes up with a pandemic virus that we will have no defense against. The bird flu virus of a few years ago gave the world population a good scare, if it would have broken out into a full blown airborn virus people would be dropping like flies. Even if our great scientist did come up with a vaccine in time there would not be enough to vaccinate everybody on the globe, and by the time they did billions would have perished. Yep, don't you folks worry about over population, the world has ways to shake us off like a bad case of fleas... a surface nuisance.

We are a mass extinction in progress whether or not we have even noticed

Yes, thanks to people who are the opposite of me.