Overpopulation: The Human Crisis

The author of this article, James Hopkins, begins by discussing a literal way of expressing exponential growth. By cutting a piece of a paper in half and stacking it on-top of the original 100 times over, the stack will become higher and higher at a quicker rate.
This is the exact problem with overpopulation, it took thousands of years for the number of humans on earth to reach 1 billion in 1804, and then only 123 years later in 1927 this number had doubled to 2 billion. Today the population has reached 6.8 billion people and if the current growth rate proceeds, we are expected to surpass 8 billion within the next 18 years.

Something needs to be done to curb the growth rate or human beings and all other forms of life will not survive. The problem is just as much about the resources individuals consume as it is the number of humans on the planet. This is because the faster the resources are consumed the less humans earths carry capacity can sustain. Americans account for only 5% of the total population but consume 26% of the worlds total energy. Therefore even though our population size remains stable, we are still individually destroying this planet as much as almost 28 third world people do annually.