Today's the day we're supposed to reach a global population of 7 billion.

It took about 120,000 years to reach the first billion (estimated at 1805). In the late 1920's, the second billion. Thirty years later, the third billion. Fifteen years later, the fourth billion (1974). 1987, 5 billion. 1999, 6 billion. Any time now, 7 billion.

The world population has DOUBLED since the mid-60's

Crowded Planet: 7 (Billion) Population Milestones

By the end of the century we'll be at 10 billion people.

Some impacts of that are pretty scary:

5 Ways the World Will Change Radically This Century

Notably:

Shifting People - "In 1950, there were three times as many Europeans as sub-Saharan Africans. By 2100, there will be five sub-Saharan Africans for every European."

Urbanization - "The number of people living in cities will climb from 3.5 billion today to 6.3 billion by 2050"

Water Wars - "As the population grows, there is less water per person. Meanwhile, the gap between the rich and the poor widens, and the rich demand more resources to accommodate their lifestyles."

Future Energy - "Either some new, superior form of energy extraction (such as highly efficient solar panels) will be widespread, or the technology, or its implementation, will fail, and humanity will face a major energy crisis." [With the current money being made in fossil fuels, there is no real incentive to replace that source, which will run out in 100-200 years]

Mass Extinctions - "Some biologists believe that with the current rate of extinction, 75 percent of the planet's species will disappear within the next 300 to 2,000 years."

Pretty scary stuff. 7 billion. "...all that expansion means more mouths to feed, which requires more space and energy, which increases the demand on resources and the environment, perhaps too large a demand for Earth to support."

Should the world adopt a 'one-child' policy?

Probably not. But if there's going to be a future for our kids, the world governments need to start preparing NOW, not just talking about it and hoping it goes away.

I don't want to sound too bleak, though... there is some hope. Hopefully it'll be in time.

http://7billionactions.org/

Brings to mind Paul Erlich's The population Bomb and Alvin Toffler's Future Shock.

Or this...

Thanks for the facts/figures Geoff. Some predictions are pretty scary aren't they? Water wars, extinction?

Btw, I remember way way back the term "population explosion". Sounds like we are here.



TIS

How about "In the year 2525 ...."?

Anyone remember that song? Here's the lyrics link:

http://www.elyrics.net/read/z/zager-evans-lyrics/in-the-year-2525-lyrics.html

I encourage you to surf over to it. The lyrics from 1969 are kind of profound and somewhat predictive.

Oli,

I just happened to hear that song when I was out for my run the other day. "Some machine doing it for you" stuck in my mind. Computers (machines) do everything.


TIS

Oh, no... it's already started!

Ha ha ha!! That was a very popular movie.

I suppose we should really really worry when the apes start talking right?


TIS

I've read a interesting article on the bbc, the UN cant predict the correct amount of people on Earth.

We should hit 7 billion by around 2012 as there is a 1-2% error..

Are there really 7 billion of us??

The extinction of other species really bothers me as they aren't smart enough or strong enough to prevent humans killing them for fun, food, or taking over their environments.

That said I'm not sure it's the world that couldn't support 9 billion people so much as it is our current religious and economic systems couldn't support 9 billion people. There's more food than ever; the problem is distribution.

Absent some sort of mass extinction event (Black Death) human population isn't shrinking so we're going to have to get used to it....

It would be very controversial but I think this huge growing population is a real issue and in the future perhaps they would have to curb how many children people have, better and better health care will mean people will live longer so it can only increase unless measures are taken.

Sometimes I think it's a little hypocritical to complain about a Subsaharan woman having more than two kids when the average US American household has 2.3 cars.

I feel the same about a family in Germany, the same country that produced Adolf Hitler, having ANY children.

You haven't been to my part of Brooklyn lately, have you?

Signor V.

Surely though when we start having more world waters over water, fossil fuels and the like, that will thin the population back down again??

Wow! What a good analogy. I see the similarities.

Ha ha ha!! They walk among us hu?


TIS

Probably the most ignorant thing I have ever read.

You should read the rest of his posts on the American way of life .

Yes D, we Americans have 2+ cars per household because we possess the most powerful and dynamic economy in the world. That's the same economy that produced all the planes, and tanks, and ships, that kept Germany from becoming mired forever in the filth that was Nazi Germany and kept the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact from turning the rest of Germany into a walled institution. Thank your lucky stars for that kind of hypocrisy.

Adolf Hitler was produced by Austria, not Germany. But some wouldn't consider that to be much of a difference though.

To be fair and sidestep any excessive nationalism this is precisely why the issue will be so difficult to solve.

The countries with large or growing populations -ie China, India, Brazil, some African nations will be highly resistant to any idea that they need to stop their numbers or their economy from growing because they will point out that countries in the West, although they have lower numbers, have much higher impacts on the biosphere.

Then, perhaps feeling aggrieved, people in the West will point out that they are further ahead in trying to reduce these impacts and aren't doing anything as culturally retarded as sawing off shark fins or rhinoceros horns for increased sexual potency. And people should not look at the past but look at the future in terms of stopping exploitation of Brazilian rain forest or coal burning in China/India etc.

This is exactly why the initial climate change talks broke down.

There has to be a way to get everyone on the same page and line up incentives so that everyone gains. I'm not sure there is right now.

Amen to that!

It's disgusting that the Brazilians just introduced a new law which makes it even easier to destroy rainforest so they could produce more soybeans.

It's horrifying, Sonny.

"It's all about the dollars, always about the dollars."

Where have all the long term thinkers gone?

There are no proper words for explaining how bad it is. The rainforests are the lungs of the earth, and, besides that, also one of the most beautiful things the earth has ever produced. They have already destroyed most of the rainforest in the state of Mato Grosso. And that state is as big as the state of Texas.

And I'm not even going to begin about India.

They're busy draining the Everglades .

Has McDonalds sold seven billion burgers?

Peak oil! I bang on about this at every given chance, but I think it's worth it.

Say there are 100 years of oil left. (Oil companies come out with this sort of number all the time, and it's a nice reassuring number because we all expect to be dead by then).

Peak oil means that we actually have a lot less time to get our shit together than those supposed 100 years of oil implies.

Peak oil is the moment when we reach maximum oil production. It means we've used about half of the oil in the ground. Because it was easier, we also probably used all the easy to reach oil first. So what we have left are a lot of dregs. Oil at the bottom of the ocean (remember the Gulf of Mexico spill?), oil extracted from tarsands (requires billions of gallons of freshwater to unmix - another delpeting commodity), oil in ecologically sensitive areas (big row over Alaska, for example).

All of this adds up to one outcome: there's always going to be less and less oil from now on, and it's always going to be harder and harder to get. Which means oil costs a shitload more than than it used to. We don't have to wait for that to happen, everyone already feels it in their wallet.

Before long, a barrel of oil costs more to produce than most people can afford to pay to fill up their cars. Even with say 90 "years worth" left in the ground, that's the real crisis point. There's already plenty of people who can't afford to fill up their cars anymore. Eventually, that will be all but the most priveleged.

(By the way, oil isn't just energy, it's also all plastics, resins, paints, fertilisers, cosmetics, modern medicines - it's industrial civilisation, and there is no alternative.)

What I'm trying to say is, we're even more screwed than that article implies.

Good points, Nilsson (and welcome to the BB). But it's not "reassuring because we all expect to be dead by then" when there are future generations coming. THEY'RE even more screwed.


According to this they've sold over 100 billion (containing 1.2 billion total pounds of fat)