Humans have a greater impact on their environment than any other species in the world. It is estimated by footprintnetwork.org that at the rate at which we are consuming resources we would need about a little more than one and a half earths. We are also steadily growing in population toward earth’s carrying capacity. There are approximately seven billion people on the planet, and according to livescience.com it is estimated by many scientists that our planet can only hold about nine to ten billion. Throughout my travels in Spain I continued to notice the impact that such a great number of people in a singular overly condensed area had on the environment as well as the people themselves. There are approximately forty six and a half million people in Spain alone according to worldpopulationreview.com. This means that Spain has about twenty million fewer people living in their country than France does. While in Spain I noticed many more cars than I was used to seeing in Angers. In fact, according to Wikipedia.org there are five hundred ninety-three cars for every thousand people living in Spain, and only five hundred seventy-three cars for every thousand people living in in France, but it is important to keep in mind the fact that France also has a larger population than Spain. Two of the three cities I visited were major cities as well as tourist traps, and the third was a bit smaller, but still a decent sized city. The first city I visited was Barcelona, a major tourist city, which according to data.un.org had a population of about one million six hundred thousand people as of 2013. It was clear that environment had taken a hit from such a great mass of people. Littering was plentiful and the air stank of diesel and cigarettes. In some places the ground was even sticky presumably from spilled carbonated drinks or food. Spain is home to the Camp Nou stadium where the FC Barcelona soccer team plays. Every time FC Barcelona plays there just under one hundred thousand people, the stadiums capacity, come pouring in to watch the game. These people all contribute to the abundance of litter that can be found in Barcelona. Barcelona has implemented a rather recent set of recycling policies. They have different bins for organic waste, paper, plastic, electronics, etc. hopefully to dispose of each different type of waste responsibly. I saw a women and her child throw several trash bags all into the plastic waste bin, which was the closest to the street and thus the shortest walk for her, which I doubt were all full of plastic. With such a large number of people it is safe to assume laziness takes over others as well and they just throw everything into one bin when they take out the trash. When people see others adopt this attitude of just throwing waste wherever you feel like throwing it they are more likely to do so themselves and justify it by the fact that others do it. After leaving Barcelona I made my way to Madrid. I hadn’t seen as many cars as I did in Madrid since I was in New York a few years ago. In fact Madrid has so many cars that according to an article on citylab.com Madrid to stop using cars in favor of other means of transport. The plan would favor other forms of transportation. The article states that a certain “hierarchy” will be put in place that would have pedestrians be the top priority, followed by public transport, after that would come bikes, and cars would be the lowest. Public transportation is available in Madrid and we were able to make use of the metro system quite easily and often. According to an article on metromadrid.es the Madrid metro system will be implementing a new “energy recovery system” that will allow them “to save the equivalent to the consumption of 1000 people a year,” by installing regenerated energy systems that allow more energy to be recovered from the overhead contact line of the Madrid metro system. According to expatica.com that around three million people use the metro in Madrid every day, and according to metromadrid.es three hundred thousand of those people use the lifts within the Madrid metro. Using the metro system is much better for the environment than using a car, but it does still use up energy that could be saved by walking or traveling by bike. We never made use of the bus system as it was confusing, and of course in Spanish, so we opted to use the taxi system when a metro station was too far away or we were not exactly sure which stop we needed to get off at to get where we wanted to go. Surprisingly, and unlike what I have seen in the United States, taxis in Spain have designated waiting zones where they are supposed to stay and wait for customers who desire to make use of the taxi. This may be due to their primarily socialist economic system that allows them to be lazier, the fact that tipping taxi drivers is not expected or even common in Spain, or hopefully this is done because at the waiting zone the car is stationary and the engine is not running which would reduce greenhouse gas emissions from taxis in Madrid. The final and probably most environmentally friendly city I visited was Sevilla, or Seville, I was never really sure which one was the name of the city and which was the name of the area around the city that included the city, but I will go with Seville for the purposes of this blog entry. Seville was smaller than the other two cities that I visited with a population of only a little under seven hundred thousand people, which is by no means small, but is smaller than the other two cities that I visited. Most of these people got around by walking, as my friends and I did, or they used a bike. There were cars in Seville, but nowhere near the amount that were in Barcelona or Madrid. I believe this was due to the fact that Seville has a much smaller population than Barcelona or Madrid and thus is smaller in size which allows people to use more ecofriendly means of transportation such as walking or biking. This shows that overpopulation does have a negative effect on our environment, and perhaps is one of the main, if not the main, reason we use so many natural resources and produce so much pollution.
References
http://www.labkultur.tv/en/blog/recycling-barcelona
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/world_footprint/
http://www.livescience.com/16493-people-planet-earth-support.html
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/spain-population/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita
http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=POP&f=tableCode%3A240
http://www.stadiumguide.com/noucamp/
http://www.citylab.com/commute/2013/12/madrids-big-plan-swear-cars/7744/
https://www.metromadrid.es/en/comunicacion/prensa/2015/September/noticia08.html
http://www.expatica.com/es/about/practicalities/Spain-transportation-Trains-metro-and-buses-in-Spain_101423.html
