Population growth affects almost every aspect of everyday life. This is baecause a continual growth in the earth’s population
forces us to change the ways we use the land. For example, an expanding population needs more land for housing, shops
and industry. An expanding population also means that we need to grow more food and build more hospitals, schools and roads.
But the area of land available for human use is fixed. In fact, only about one third of the earth’s surface is land, and only one
third of that is suitable to live on. For example, there are large areas of the earth such as deserts and polar icecaps that cannot
at present support human life. Of course there are low population densities in some parts of the world, but in most cases the
land resources in such areas are already stretched to the limit. One immediate answer to our population growth is to make deserts and swamplands habitable. But the long-term answer is to stabilize the earth’s population.