Kevin T.

Mordovanec
Ms. Manzione
InfoTech/Mobile App Design/Period 2A
3 December 2015
The Most Popular Problem in the World: Overpopulation
Do you remember 2011, when the global population hit seven
billion? The growth of the world population has accelerated rapidly
over the past two centuries, starting in 1800 when it hit one billion.
Never in the history of the world has the human population developed
this quickly, which also means that the evolution of the human race
has not adapted to handle these changes. Overpopulation is a serious
concern facing all of us, and the Earth is already not able to handle it.
There will definitely be difficult times ahead of us, but we can avoid the
collapse of modern civilization and extinction if we find a way to take
up less space. One way to do this is to build have more people live in
taller buildings and so that the Earth has more room for those animals
and people yet to be born. Another method we could use is to clone
food, so that we have enough to feed everyone. There are three
reasons these innovation are necessary: The human race cannot
continue with the status quo for long, living in taller buildings will
reduce the space we take up, and we already have the technology to
clone. Therefore, it is imperative that this idea becomes well known,
and then we may finally defeat overpopulation.

Can you imagine a world with one hundred billion people? It may
be a bit of a stretch, but our population will reach those milestones in a
few centuries if the population keeps growing as it is right now. The
world population was one billion in 1800, rising to two billion in 1927,
then to three in 1960, four in 1975, five in 1987, and then to six billion
people on our planet in 1999.
Therefore, for about the past two hundred years, the net growth
of the human population has been about fifty million people per year.
This rate has been increasing by an average of one-hundred forty
thousand people per year. At that rate, we will have reached the
milestone of one hundred billion people around the year 2600, and it
isnt going to be a happy day. On the other hand, the Earth has a
limited amount of space to support our species. It is estimated that the
world has 24,642,757 square miles of habitable land. If the population
were to reach one hundred billion people, that would be about 4,000
people per square mile. This also does not take into account the land
beyond living space necessary to support a person, such as roads,
schools, and hospitals.
You still probably don't think it's very likely that the world population is
going to reach one hundred billion people. Yes, that's what the
statistics derived earlier say, but it simply wouldn't be feasible.
Scientists say that the human species has a carrying capacity, which is
the biological maximum amount of organisms of a particular group that

the environment and our planet can sustain. Estimates vary, but many
believe that we are already past this limit. What does this tell us about
the future? Who knows, but living in taller buildings will prepare us for
these challenges.
I assure you that living in taller buildings will give us many of the
resources we need to combat overpopulation. If everyone lived in
buildings the size of the Empire State Building, only about 0.0003% of
the Earth's habitable land would be used up. Clearly, this is an option
that should be considered. In addition, this would free up much other
space for other animals to live. It would also leave the land not taken
up by anything else to human use, such as schools, farms, and
hospitals. This would give us a safer and more secure world with little
to fear about overpopulation. Many might say that this doesn't
necessarily solve all problems related to overpopulation. This is true,
as this solution does not completely address the problem of food
shortage. However, I am sure that this is a challenge that we can solve.
Do you think of cloning as something out of science fiction? Well,
it turns out that we have the technology to clone right now, and we
had the ability to do so since 1996. That was the year when we first
cloned an animal, and the name of that animal was Dolly the sheep.
Dolly is already very well-known, but the reason she was brought up
here is that she shows that cloning is feasible. How can we use it to
combat overpopulation? It's simple: clone our food. It doesn't seem

very probable to me that we could clone already butchered animals the

way we would normally clone a live animal, so I see two alternatives:
Either clone as many live animals as possible, and use those as food,
or produce artificial meat from stem cells. The latter idea has actually
already been conceived of and tested. In 2013, scientists in London
created the world's first in vitro meat, a burger which costed $400,000.
This shows that we have the power to make this technology and defeat
overpopulation. We can do it.
In conclusion, those are some of the methods I would suggest to
defeat overpopulation: cloning of food, and living closer together.
These solutions are of vital importance to all of us, for we must ensure
not only our survival, but that of our descendants. I call upon the
engineers and scientists who can make these changes to listen to
these ideas, for that might be the only way we could not only survive,
but prosper in the coming centuries.

Works Cited
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"U.S. and World Population Clock." United States Census Bureau. United States Census
Bureau, n.d. Web. 15 Dec. 2015.
"Land." School of Biological Sciences. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Dec. 2015.
"Carrying Capacity." Sustainable Scale. The Sustainable Scale Project, n.d. Web. 15 Dec.
2015.
"Cloning Dolly the Sheep." AnimalResearch.info. Animal Research Info, n.d. Web. 15
Dec. 2015.

"Synthetic Meat: How the World's Costliest Burger Made It on to the Plate." The
Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, n.d. Web. 15 Dec. 2015.
"A Life of Dolly." The Roslin Institute. University of Edinburgh, 07 Apr. 2015. Web. 17
Dec. 2015.
"World's First Lab-grown Burger Is Eaten in London." BBC News. British Broadcasting
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Fountain, Henry. "A Lab-Grown Burger Gets a Taste Test." The New York Times. The
New York Times, 05 Aug. 2013. Web. 17 Dec. 2015.