Seven Billion Or Bust!

It's a great time to be alive. We can say without fear of contradiction that Homo sapiens has been an unqualified success. Make no mistake about it, the future looks bright. 2011 promises to be another bumper year for humanity, for this is the year our astonishingly fertile species will reach 7 billion individuals (Science Daily, July 28).

Global population is expected to hit 7 billion later this year, up from 6 billion in 1999. Between now and 2050, an estimated 2.3 billion more people will be added — nearly as many as inhabited the planet as recently as 1950. New estimates from the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations also project that the population will reach 10.1 billion in 2100.

These sizable increases represent an unprecedented global demographic upheaval, according to David Bloom, Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography at the Harvard School of Public Health, in a review article published July 29, 2011 in Science.

Over the next forty years, nearly all (97%) of the 2.3 billion projected increase will be in the less developed regions, with nearly half (49%) in Africa. By contrast, the populations of more developed countries will remain flat, but will age, with fewer working-age adults to support retirees living on social pensions...

The world's population has grown slowly for most of human history. It took until 1800 for the population to hit 1 billion. However, in the past half-century, population jumped from 3 to 7 billion. In 2011, approximately 135 million people will be born and 57 million will die, a net increase of 78 million people [graph above, source].

Considerable uncertainty about these projections remains, Bloom writes. Depending on whether the number of births per woman continues to decline, the ranges for 2050 vary from 8.1 to 10.6 billion, and the 2100 projections vary from 6.2 to 15.8 billion.

Ah! — the magical properties of the exponential function. But it won't necessarily be smooth sailing, adding those additional 2.3 billion people. It would all be so much easier if there were some unexplored "nice" neighborhoods with breathable atmospheres, liquid water and abundant, edible flora & fauna where we could park all those extra humans. Sadly, we lack those, there's just this one Earth. When God made the solar system, He forgot to give us more room in which to be fruitful & multiply. There are thus "challenges" to meet.

"The demographic picture is indeed complex, and poses some formidable challenges," Bloom said. "Those challenges are not insurmountable, but we cannot deal with them by sticking our heads in the sand.

We have to tackle some tough issues ranging from the unmet need for contraception among hundreds of millions of women and the huge knowledge-action gaps we see in the area of child survival, to the reform of retirement policy and the development of global immigration policy. It's just plain irresponsible to sit by idly while humankind experiences full force the perils of demographic change."

I'll have more to say about later. In the meantime, as you ponder this wonderful development, you can watch two videos, one from National Geographic, which has done a series of articles on the human population lately, and a second one from Monty Python.

Yes, every sperm is sacred, but the best part is that humans are under no particular obligation to treat children as anything other than worthless garbage from the moment they are born. For each new child brought into this world, it's still a roll of the dice. Hey, kid! — you're on your own.

 

  

Comments

[sharonsj]

First you need to have a "chat" with the religious nuts who want to make sure that every child is forced to be born but then don't want to pony up any taxes (or charity) to keep it alive.

Then you need to have another chat with the deniers of global warming (so that they prepare for the migration and death of millions) and the financial and agricultural planners that demand/encourage people to institute damaging practices (that may increase food yields initially but actually deplete the soil). Between the extreme weather and the desertification of land, we cannot support this burgeoning population. Oh, and did I mention the possibility of new plagues?

More reasons why I live in the middle of nowhere U.S.A. and have a garden....