World Population Expected To Hit 7 Billion In Late October

kkleiner writes "A new report documents the prodigious rate at which the world's population is growing. It was just 1999 when we reached 6 billion. And now within the next month or two we will have surpassed 7 billion. What does the continued increase in world population mean for humanity and for the the planet?"

Comments

In related news

[phantomfive]

Around 40% of the corn produced in the US goes to ethanol.

It's obviously not a question of whether we can support 7 billion people, since we basically are, but whether we can support the increasing growth rate. If you look at this graph, you can see the population is projected to level off around 10billion or so. And if you look even closer, you can see it's really a question for India (and to a lesser degree, Africa): can India handle its massive population growth? If so, then the world can handle it, too. If not, then they are going to suffer a lot.

Re:In related news

[CrimsonAvenger]

It's obviously not a question of whether we can support 7 billion people, since we basically are, but whether we can support the increasing growth rate.

Increasing growth rate?

Growth rate over this last billion was 1.3% per year.

Growth rate over the immediately previous billion was 1.5% per year.

When we went from three billion to four billion, population growth rate was 2.1% per year.

Looks like a steadily declining growth rate to me....

Alarmism

[Enderandrew]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb

Back in 1968, this book was published talking about how there was going to mass starvation across the globe and everyone would die because the globe couldn't handle the population of the 1970s. Obviously, there is always hunger around the globe and that shouldn't be discounted, but the UN report notes that the percentage of the world's population who qualify as "undernourished" has fallen by more than half, from 33 percent to about 16 percent, since Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. That was when the population was around 3.5 billion, or half of what we're about to hit.

So I'm skeptical of alarmism.

The Texas Myth

[Dr. Manhattan]

I know you were kidding, but I got tired of people talking about 'unused land' back when the world population hit six billion, and I did the math to show how stupid an idea it is.

Re:7 Billion Zombies

[TheRaven64]

Non-chlorinated pools are also bacteria farms

Not necessarily. Pools can also use UV or oxygen to kill bacteria. Being non-chlorinated doesn't mean not using anything to kill bacteria, it just means not using something that's also pretty hostile to humans. Chlorine isn't the best way of killing bacteria in pools, it's just the cheapest.

Note: This post in no way endorses the trolling of Dr Bob.

Re:7 Billion Zombies

[interkin3tic]

7 BILLION PEOPLE. That's an insane amount of people putting an extreme burden on our delicate ecosystem. Earth is already at the brink of death, it's been estimated that when we hit 10 billion, there's no turning back.

While Dr. Bob is clearly a troll, it's amazing to me the number of non-trolls that accept this part as absolutely true without need for proof. High population isn't killing the environment, inefficient consumption of resources is killing the environment. Per capita, US citizens use far more energy, and put out far more CO2 than the average for the world. We have 4.5% of the world's population, but contribute 18.5% of the CO2 emissions.

The only way more people = environmental destruction is if we refuse to tighten our belts and the rest of the world decides they want to live as wastefully as we do. We need to stop feeling entitled to use and abuse resources however we feel like at the moment simply because previous generations could get away with it.

Re:So let's make fossil fuels MORE expensive!

[cusco]

If you did this and eventually rose to a position of power (where you could implement the program on a national scale) you would have been assassinated or had a coup carried out against you. The people who are sucking the wealth out of the Third World countries know that they're responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents, removing one more obstruction to their accumulation of ever-more-grotesque levels of wealth wouldn't cause them a moment's lost sleep.

This is not to excuse leaders like Alan Garcia from doing more, but I was told of a particularly intransigent highland Peruvian politician who received a cell phone call saying, "Look at your daughter's chest, and vote the right way" on a mining concession. He was appalled to see her playing with the red dot of a laser gun sight aimed at her. He retired early from politics.