As the population continues to grow the carrying capacity is reaching unsustainble levels. Discuss the negative short and long t - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages The rapid population growth in the U.S. has ultimately led to unsustainable levels of population (National Audubon Society, 2013). With the increase in population, the carrying capacity has reached unsustainable levels and is likely to cause immense negative consequences in the United States. This paper will discuss the negative long term and short term effects of unsustainable population growth in the United States. The negative short and long term impacts of an unsustainable population (in the US) The unsustainable level of population has both short term and long term negative effects. With the increase in population, the diminishing carrying capacity of the United States will affect the country, in the long term and short term. One short term effect of unsustainable population is that it will lead to poor economic growth. High population growth will hinder the economic growth of the United States. This is because the available resources are not likely to sustain the population. The government will have to deal with challenges regarding equal distribution of resources in the entire country. The rate of economic growth has to be high in order to sustain the population and ensure that all people have access to basic services. However, this will be in the short term since in the long run the government will come up with measures to ensure that the available resources are equally distributed throughout the country (National Audubon Society, 2013). Another negative impact of high population growth in the short term is that the U.S. government will be faced by the challenge of providing amenities. High population may exceed the number of facilities, which the government has set aside for the provision of basic amenities. High population also means that the number of facilities have to be increased. The burden to increase the facilities lies on the government. The provision of some services such as healthcare, education, as well as sanitation services largely depends on the population. When the population is high, it becomes challenging to provide quality services to all people. Consequently, the quality of services provided may be poor because the human resources needed to provide such services may not match the needs of the entire population. This may hinder people’s access to some crucial services such as healthcare. Education may also be compromised since the teacher to student ration will be lower. As a result, the quality of U.S. education may become poor before the government rectifies the situation by employing more teachers. There will also be a shortage of some amenities such as water due to high population growth. This emanates from the fact that water sources can be depleted by high population. Scarcity of water will also emanate from the destruction of water sources due to human activity (Robertson, 2012). The other negative short term impact of high population growth is that the unsustainable population may lead to rural-urban migration. This is also precipitated by the aspect of urbanisation, which motivates people to move to urban centres in search of jobs. As a result, the population of the rural areas will decrease while the urban population will undergo a dramatic increase. The overall impact is that there will be insecurity in urban centres due to the high population of unemployed youths. High population ...Download file to see next pagesRead More