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New Study Projects World Population of 11B by 2100
vinces99 (2792707) writes Using modern statistical tools, a new study led by the University of Washington and the United Nations finds that world population is likely to keep growing throughout the 21st century. The number of people on Earth is likely to reach 11 billion by 2100, the study concludes, about 2 billion higher than widely cited previous estimates. The paper published online Sept. 18 in the journal Science includes the most up-to-date numbers for future world population, and describes a new method for creating such estimates. "The consensus over the past 20 years or so was that world population, which is currently around 7 billion, would go up to 9 billion and level off or probably decline," said corresponding author Adrian Raftery, a UW professor of statistics and of sociology. ... The paper explains the most recent United Nations population data released in July. This is the first U.N. population report to use modern statistics, known as Bayesian statistics, that combines all available information to generate better predictions.
Most of the anticipated growth is in Africa, where population is projected to quadruple from around 1 billion today to 4 billion by the end of the century. The main reason is that birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa have not been going down as fast as had been expected. There is an 80 percent chance that the population in Africa at the end of the century will be between 3.5 billion and 5.1 billion people.
Most of the anticipated growth is in Africa, where population is projected to quadruple from around 1 billion today to 4 billion by the end of the century. The main reason is that birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa have not been going down as fast as had been expected. There is an 80 percent chance that the population in Africa at the end of the century will be between 3.5 billion and 5.1 billion people.
Ebola or some other virus doesn't wipe out a third of the world population.
The number of people on Earth is likely to reach 11 billion by 2100
Nope; before then we'll have a good solid pandemic, or war, or famine, or hey - maybe all three! That will make a significant dent in the existing population.
At least, one could hope :)
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
...all the comments about "Bayesianism is better than Frequentism" or "Why didn't the authors use this Frequentist analysis?" start popping up. Not that I'm advocating for one over the other, just arguing that they're both tools that are often used for the same nail without realizing that you need to hold them slightly differently for them to actually work the way they're supposed to.
I hope a carpentry analogy is acceptable in lieu of a car analogy.
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
Vast areas of Earth remain unpopulated. In no particular order:
Sure, some of the above would require some work to make comfortable, but it can be done even with today's technology — by 2100 even an individual (or a family) would convert surroundings to their tastes. And it would certainly be easier, than moving an appreciable quantity of people off-Earth...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The article mentions it vaguely but I predict this growth will be limited more by major outbreak of some disease or diseases.
Possibly some form of influenza or other nasty bug like airborne ebola should wipe medium portion of the population at some point in the future.
Alternatively, or should I say additionally rising pollution levels at highly populated areas will cause health problems at increasing rate.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Maybe its time to stop shipping food aid to Africa. That and the lack of sanitation (Ebola anyone?) should keep the population down there. 11-3=8 billion.
Oh boy, that'll make for a lot of zombies.
You just know that we will either wipe ourselves out with nukes or there will be an epidemic that will kill off a good bit of the population.
The portion of the population which breeds under given circumstances will come to dominate the population.
It might be expressed as a particular religion, simple horniness combined with resistance to using birth control, or myriad other ways.
But that part of the population will be a larger percentage over time and finally come to dominate the population.
There is an exception-- a universe 133 scenario. The population in those experiments collapsed and did not recover.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Who's the Malthusian now, bitches?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Just turn off the movie or put the book down and get back to reality.
Most of the anticipated growth is in Africa, where population is projected to quadruple from around 1 billion today to 4 billion by the end of the century.
You mean, the continent that can barely feed itself and is the source of deadly plagues (Ebola, etc.) is somehow going to support four times it's current population? I'd like to see how that is feasible...
It's not finding places for people to live, it is finding land to grow the food necessary to feed people in the style to which they have become/are becoming/will become accustomed to. Basic food prices have been spiking for the last several years, although it hasn't shown up in significant changes in the super market yet because most of the cost of processed food comes from the processing not the ingredients. (If the price of corn doubles it adds only 11 cents to the cost of a quarter pound hamburger: http://www.g-feed.com/2012/08/...) After years of stability, the rate at which virgin forest land is being converted to agricultural production has also started to increase again, likely because increases in crop productivity has slowed to a crawl in many of the most productive agricultural regions of the world: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2...
Go to Bangladesh, they are like 20 Billion already scaled to size...
I come to Slashdot only to read sigs. One you are reading is mine.
The Stardate is 5423.4. The Federation starship Enterprise arrives at the planet Gideon to begin diplomatic relations and invite the inhabitants to join the Federation. Gideon is reported to be a virtual paradise where the people live incredibly long lives in a nearly germ-free environment, but they refuse to allow anyone but Captain James Kirk from the Enterprise, to beam down. Upon beaming down, however, Kirk learns that the population has exploded to the point where the planet can barely contain the populace. Gideon's leaders plan is to infect the people with a human virus in an attempt to "control" the overpopulation problem caused by the people's long lifespans in a germ-free environment. So, as I see it, the problem is easily solved. Find a alien with a virus for which we have no cure.
Do tell how "the west" is responsible for most of Africa's ills. Last I checked they've mostly been governing themselves for a few generations (exception SA). Shall we blame the Brits for Sunni and Shiia slaughtering each other for hundreds of years too?
The problem isn't land for people to live. It is a problem of living cultural and also food.
Or else we'll wish we were.
No wonder world leaders make such short sighted decisions.
Plus the fact that nobody has perfected the crystal ball technology yet.
There's no way we can estimate the margin of error on this study until another study debunks this one, just as this one has debunked a previous one.
I cannot imagine what a horrific mess the world would be with that many people. War and disease I think will make that unlikely.
It's a shame the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement just didn't catch on. www.vhemt.org
According to my calculations, (do your own) world poulation is increasing between 130k and 180k humans per day. That means the great 2012 tsunami in Indonesia that killed an estimated 230 thousand only flattened the growth curve for two days.
Now imagine what it will take to flatten or reduce population growth over several years.
One that's as cheap, energy dense and as easy to handle at room temperature as oil, coal, natural gas and so on.
If we *don't* do this, then I'm fairly sure that after we hit 11 billion by 2100, we'll be lucky to hit 50 million by 2200. Fewer, if we try and solve our resource problems by throwing nukes at one another, which sounds likely.
Like all species, we simply consume resources until the population crashes. What we've been so far with technology is "lucky." There's always been another *cheap* and *easy* resource to exploit. Short of a breakthrough in battery technology and thorium reactors (or fusion) that's not going to happen again.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Famine, plague, war, or birth control. Choose. I guess you have. -Malthus.
Too late. Game over.
The West will begin mining the harbors and cratering the airports so nothing can leave. They will landmine the jungle. Anything that leaves is sunk or shot. Snipers sans Frontieres. Quarantine with extreme
prejudice.
Civilization is a choice. Make it. Soon.
Or don't, and the population goes back to the under-billion level before the West started feeding everyone...
Decreasing excess human population. That's what is good for.
And we have quite a few potential human population decreases being set up right now - ISIS and Russia are just waiting to decrease some extra human population.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Don't you love these crazy twisted leftist narratives so many have been taught! There is no denying "the west" did some monstrously abusive things in Africa but as you say its been mostly self governing for several generations. Its also true they were given more in terms of technology and knowledge than wealth that "the west" ever took out of there.
Umm, exactly where did you get that 250 million number from? It LOOKS like it might be the number killed by the various totalitarian regimes of the the 20th Century, but that cannot be correct because those regimes were allied with the Democrats (until political exigencies forced the Democrats to turn on them), not with the Republicans.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
so -as an atheist no less- i am *not* my brother's keeper ? ? ?
A rough graph
Assuming there is not a big plague or natural disaster, then I think their number is very conservative. I think it will be much higher.
Most of the anticipated growth is in Africa, where population is projected to quadruple from around 1 billion today to 4 billion by the end of the century.
You mean, the continent that can barely feed itself and is the source of deadly plagues (Ebola, etc.) is somehow going to support four times it's current population? I'd like to see how that is feasible...
Bono.
To save the World, we need to ban U2 music.
He always posted this schizoid stuff. Just ignore him.
When was Africa ever not a mess?
Why are you supporting the Shurbs by quoting too low of a number? They killed way more than 60M with their war of hate on Islam. Why protect them like this unless you are one of their kind?
We have meddled in those countries for over 100 years, mostly for the natural resources. Outside of emergency relief, constantly providing food to Africa decimates the native producers when they cannot compete with cheap products provided by governments and charities. It becomes a cycle, forcing farmers into poverty, furthering the market share of the large producers from the US and Europe.
Countries do not provide foreign aid out of kindness, there are always strings attached.
West, just by the fact of existing, messed up Africa.
Before white men's ships arrived, Africans were living in their tribal villages leading simple agricultural or hunter/gatherer lives. Just as people all over the world have been doing for ten thousand years. It was no paradise, but they had a balance with natural forces where the population wouldn't grow faster than the food supply.
Then comes the white man with his antibiotics and high-yielding maize (which he got from the New World Indians, but that's another story). Suddenly infant mortality went down and crop yields went up and population could grow like crazy. But Africans never developed the institutions and social structures necessary to support a densely populated society that the Europeans and East Asians did. African nations today still run pretty much like they did thousands of years ago, local warlords taking power. Except now it's millions of people instead of a few villages.
Africans would've been infinitely better off left completely to their own devices. Would they still be living in stone age primitive societies? Yes. Would it be preferable to what they have now? Yes.
I'm probably being a bit ignorant, but how much would this affect CO2 emissions? I know we're trying to reduce it where possible, however, where the population increases (by this much) I imagine that there's a lot more CO2 being produced simply by new people living. Or does it get offset by increased agriculture (or something like this)?
I'll be long gone and I've made sure that I created no annoying descendants too. I've done my part for population control. It's partially how a rationalize my 16MPG Mustang GT, hour long hot showers, and keeping my thermostat at 60 degrees all summer long. I'm bad but I've made sure that I'm the last of my line. Now get off my lawn!
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Not really. Western countries (in particular France) have interfered a lot with a lot of their governments during these few generations, and not for the best (I mean not for their best, obviously it was in the best interest of the French politicians who did it). Even just some years ago, the "international community" (meaning the Nato, China and Russia never agreed), deposited the president of Ivory Coast (officially, because he had democratically lost an election, but if things were so simple, his request to recount would not have been answered by bombs).
Ohhh fancy! :)
Of course given global warm... or climate change or whatever, that would make much more of Canada hospitable, like North Bay or even Sudbury!
Though given that much of the non-populated near arctic is tundra on top of granite I am not sure how feasible that really is. Also much of the northern parts are only accessible by ice bridges really in winter, which would actually mean that less of the area is actually available for settlement.
Shall we blame the Brits for Sunni and Shiia slaughtering each other for hundreds of years too?
Mainly yes.
Ever looked at a 'natural' map, like Europe, Asia etc?
And ever looked at an 'artificial' map, like USA, Africa?
Do you notice a difference? Most borders in Africa are artificial. Straight lines going through old 'tribes' territories, splitting up stuff that 'belongs together' and add 'random' areas to now existing countries.
E.g Texas in the USA, several straight borders, same for Libya, Algeria, Sudan etc. in Africa.
Basically everything that is running bad in Africa is a direct result of european imperialism.
The whole continent was still 'sone age' or early 'iron age' when the occupiers finally left.
But now a tribe had tanks, the other had not. The guys ruling there usually do one thing: 'cleanse' the previous ruling cohorts and replace every post with family members and far relatives. Regardless if they win an election or become rulers by a coupe. The idea that law is above everything, that corruption is bad etc. etc. is a strange concept to them. How should it not, during the occupation by europeans they experienced that the laws are not protecting them, they are only to the benefit of the imperialists.
There is plenty of literature about Africa around 1900 ... good movies, too. Even random 'novels' which made it to movies give good back ground knowledge, or at least an impression.
In roman times, and even when the british conquered half of it, Africa was full with empires, striving huge empires.
But the British did it like the Romans: befriend one tribe, give him 'modern' weapons and let him lose on the 'enemies' of that tribe. With the promise to support that tribe with houses, more weapons, schools, and most important: churches.
They did the same in India and New Zealand ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Exactly.
Ignoring peak oil, global warming and assuming widespread incest, my model predicts a world population 120B in 2100!
Dude! You are awesome. You have to tell me though. Do you actually believe the things you just said or are you just in it for the lols and the altruistic aim of entertaining everyone around you?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
(posting to undo errant mod)
and now we get to the fun part of the roller coaster ride.
With what energy and what resource are they supposed to do that ? And how would america midwest react to a few dozen million people from subsahara coming to live ? It is difficult to say with internet but I have the strong feeling that your post were a joke posted in sarcasm really.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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Carpet-nuke Russia, China (Including North Korea and Vietnam), India (Including Pakistan) and Africa. That, right there, will chop out 4 billion people, cutting the world population in half.
we need global encouragement for people to not have more than 2 children. I nice slow draw down to 3 billion over many decades.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Looking at the population over time it looks like 11 biliion in 80+ years seems low. Considering that it's now close to 1 billion every decade added to the population , we are soon going to reach a doubling, and more than likely will see closer to 15 billion by 2100.
How is he incorrect, though?
Disease is a significant problem in Africa and India. Neither are exactly nice places to live for most of their inhabitants, which is why so many of them try to move to Western nations. Overpopulation is a huge problem in both areas.
We, as Westerners, need to stop hiding behind political correctness. It's the only way the problems in those areas will ever get dealt with properly.
Africans and Indians do need to stop reproducing if there just aren't enough resources to sustain the population that already exists, never mind any new people. It's just common sense. Adding more people when there aren't enough resources to go around is just going to make a bad situation even worse.
If they can't figure this out on their own, then it is up to Westerners to inform them of the situation and how to deal with it.
Much if not most Midwest land seems devoted to wall to wall food production, hardly what I'd consider to be unpopulated free space. Have you ever seen it from a plane? There's also the issue of aquifer reserves.
Before the white man came with his ships....
those tribes were continually at war with each other, slavery and there was terror and violence all the time. Even in the times of Egypt and Rome it was so.
I think the people living happily in cities like Lagos would like to disagree with you. Its not a continent populated with mud huts or crazed dictators, its a lot more 'ordinary' than that. You might visit an African city and find its not much different to one of your own.
Considering how quickly the planet went from under a billion during the Roman empire (that we know of) to 7 billion in 2014, and the increased birthrate and better mortality rate, I wouldn't be surprised if it comes faster than 2100.
I also fully expect it to not even be 9 billion by that time unless there are several paradigm shifts in every aspect of humanity. Considering we can't even feed, house, or employ a gigantic amount of those 7 billion right now, if things don't improve, that number will stay 7 billion. You say "Oh we just need advancements." We haven't advanced much since 1918, have we? Still have one of the same pistols in active duty. Still using the same design principles in machine guns. Still have people making and using the same chemical weapons. Still have the same governments in charge. Same banks in charge. A lot of the same medicine, but some improved medical procedures.
Install a big solar hot water heater, put reflective polyisocyanurate panels on all your windows, have some more insulation blown into your roof. If you have the money, buy a Tesla Roadster. High performance electric cars are still energy efficient. Don't feel guilty about the Mustang if you can't.
While you're at it, replace your water guzzling lawn with artificial turf. It will get real hot in the summer, and it will not need to be mowed.
The thing is, population will continue to grow even long after the resources collapse, because it has some delay between the behavior changes and the economic situation. This just makes things even more likely to end with the nuke option.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Loss of agriculture due to increasingly unstable climate change, loss of petroleum, large events triggered by the redistribution of cold, heat, drought, storms, winds, snows, loss of icecaps, franking, nuclear accidents and ramping radioactive pollution. war over OS 3 on moon and expanding China, Pakistani, North Korean and Russian Axis in conflict with Indian, Japanese, US and British Allies; past peak agriculture. Past peak clean water, past peak oil production, pre peak nuclear failures and the resistance of nuclear accidents to any solutions what so ever, loss of aquifers to fracking chemical brews, resurgence of resistant diseases, loss of food value to genetic engineering. All leads to a sustainable population of between 0 to a 3 billion my estimate.
Humanity will have been extinct for at least 50 or more years by then..so the population will never get there. Once ebola gets out of Africa and goes airborne the population will ne dropping like a stone. Whoever remains will end up at war over what remains and that'll be all she wrote.
and Germany. And the Netherlands. And a tonne of other countries where Socialism works just fine thank you very much. What _doesn't_ work is mixing American Style right-wing Reagan-Thatcher politics in. See the UK's collapsing economy for that, or wealth inequality in the U.S. that's gone back to pre-Black Tuesday leves.
/. article on that one too) what the _heck_ do we do with 'em all. The world _doesn't_ need ditch diggers....
Also, there's this little think called progress. I'm too lazy to google for the Robert Reich infographic that show that productivity is up 80% since 1979 but wages are only up 8% (and that proves wages stopped growing in America in 1979). Forget all that. We're rapidly automating away just about every job. Even _China_ is replacing workers with robots. When robots are cheaper than Chinese slave labor you know you have a problem.
So, when we don't need people to work 20 hours a week let alone the 50 they're doing now (you can google the
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One that's as cheap, energy dense and as easy to handle at room temperature as oil, coal, natural gas and so on.
Well, there is coal. That's not going away by 2100 despite your assertion.
Like all species, we simply consume resources until the population crashes.
Which is incorrect. As the paper notes, most of the population growth comes from Africa and Asia. The developed world actually is a population sink - the overpopulation problem has been fixed there. What responsibility am I supposed to have for population growth elsewhere in the world? And what power am I supposed to have to fix that?
They weren't really even 'countries' until the west came in, drew borders, and told the nomadic populations they were now citizens of a country.
It isn't cutting them down to say this. Probably the old nomdic ways of life on the arabian penensula, to focus on one area, were very rewarding for those who lived it. If the west would butt out, which might be the only solution to the problem, then let the local peoples settle their differences and then reach out for what they want, not what outsiders say they need, many problems might be resolved.
Too true. We could be the heroes of mankind, or at least heroes of a proud and healthy nation: so doable, yet so not done. It hurts.
-kgj
Basically everything that is running bad in Africa is a direct result of european imperialism.
And how long is that excuse valid for? It's not like Europe has been very peaceful and tripped Africa up on purpose, we've started two world wars in the last 100 years on our own turf. Yes, I realize problems don't go away in a day or a year or even a decade but look how far Europe has come in the last 70 years. How far has Africa come? How much aid money, emergency relief, how many education and healthcare programs have they gotten for free?
Still trotting out that old excuse and blaming the white man for all their woes is probably going to backfire. It only nourishes the people who think Africa is the way it is because they're primitive deadbeats who can't get anything done on their own. It's not that there's anything wrong with the people as such, take a black man and put him in a different environment and he might end up as President and a Harvard magna cum laude graduate.
My impression is that most of Africa's problems are cultural, like for example the response to Ebola. If they'd just stop touching their dead and seek medical help they'd do fine, but through ignorance and indifference and working against those trying to help them they'll just let it spread. Like HIV, there's a reason it's a huge problem south of Sahara and practically nowhere else and it's because for some cultural reason they just don't seem to value safe sex.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So with oil projected to run out in 2038-2042 we'll will just keep growing when there is no way to grow or move food!
I think this is a great thing because the current population has eaten almost all the large fish in the sea and is busy building dead spots growing stuff on land. So dead ocean helps our population grow!
Man, all this doom and gloom about "Road Warrior days" coming up as fuel runs out*.. Good news, we'll be at 11 billion in 2100! Breed away kids, there is a great future!
Also good to know that climate change is not happening and will not affect humanity!
*alternate energy? Have you seen the stories the Kochs buy? Yeah, not big wind while it kills eagles, solar cooks eagles too! OMG, off shore wind messes with seals! Breeder reactors? OMG TERRARISTS!
Best stick to coal and oil until 2100!
That theory assumes that growth can be virtually unlimited, when it's not. At this point in time, the only energy source we have that can deal with providing the transportation, food growing, and energy needs of the population is fossil fuels. If we continue using fossil fuels at an ever increasing rate, global warming is going to decimate food production. And millions upon billions are going to starve to death, if we aren't killed off by some plague or a nuclear war first.
Still, it does bother me that the biggest population growth centers are those least capable of supporting an increasing population. That makes the likelihood of wars that much greater.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
As Hans Rosling has been explaining it for years...
The problems with Africa are directly born from the west's meddling. Redrawing borders, destroying institutions, creating new ones bent on serving the west, stealing minerals & raw materials, working the native people in to the ground or stealing them. The list goes on. It's massive. Pretending the repercussions of that aren't still being felt - and being felt hard - is pathetic.
Your impression about Africa is nothing but a bunch of racist nonsense. It's not cultural, but educational. Just go look at places in Africa where education is being made available, and you'll mysteriously notice your "cultural" shortcomings disappearing. Weird, huh?
I used to think you were pretty cool, but apparently I was wrong. You're either intellectually lazy or a racist - neither is particularly becoming.
Why are so many people dismissive of the alleged fusion generators coming in a few years? Is there no truth to many researchers claiming fusion is only a few years away? 2022 for commercial ones according to Lockheed Martin? Are they not to be trusted?
... I'm old enough that I won't be around to see it.
So we've given them lower infant mortality and more regular food availability, while they continued to kill and enslave each other at roughly the same rate as before. And you think that "messed them up"?
How so?
Seems to me at worst we've made things slightly better for them. I'm pretty sure the women, at least, are happy to see more of their children surviving to adulthood. Plus we've given them the tools and knowledge to build better societies, even if it hasn't happened yet. How is that a bad thing?
Not to mention that you whole comment stinks of condescension. "Should have left those poor dumb Negroes to their own devices; they'd be much happier running around naked chucking spears at the local wildlife".
Ever looked at a 'natural' map, like Europe, Asia etc?
And ever looked at an 'artificial' map, like USA, Africa?
There's no such thing as a natural map, unless you're talking about the geological outlines without any political boundaries. You know why your "natural" maps look so chaotic as opposed to your "artificial" ones? Because the former are a result of centuries of conflict carved out according to what each tribe could hold, whereas the latter are carved out arbitrarily by one tribe (ie. the British) which can hold everything. The latter is no more "artificial" than the former; it merely ceases to have any meaning once the all-powerful tribe packs up and goes home. The power vacuum gets filled by the old tribes all going back to their original squabbles.
The British didn't create conflict by putting up new borders; they put a stop to ongoing conflicts which resumed once the British left.
The guys ruling there usually do one thing: 'cleanse' the previous ruling cohorts and replace every post with family members and far relatives. Regardless if they win an election or become rulers by a coupe. The idea that law is above everything, that corruption is bad etc. etc. is a strange concept to them. How should it not, during the occupation by europeans they experienced that the laws are not protecting them, they are only to the benefit of the imperialists.
While there's a small bit of truth to your conclusion, it creates the false impression that "cleansing" is a modern invention. That's bullshit. These tribes were destroying and enslaving each other long before the white man ever set foot on their continent.
No. Coal is not going away. Oil isn't going away. Natural gas isn't going away. There's never been an issue with the total quantity of hydrocarbons. What we're running out of are hydrocarbons that are:
1) Inexpensive enough to run an interdependent web of supply chains utterly dependent on *cheap* transportation fuel.
2) Have a high enough net energy return to justify both their production AND enough left over to run an industrial scale civilization of the current size.
Capitalism dictates that you go for the resource that gives you the most bang for the buck first in order to maximize profit. We've done that. It's downhill from here. I suggest you google "oil" and "EROEI" to get the figures.
The fact that population growth isn't local doesn't invalidate anything. If African countries can manage resource diversion to their population, they will. Your lack of control and/or responsibility also changes nothing. This looks unlikely today due to the military power imbalance. After 20 to 50 years of Chinese occupation and development, however, I wouldn't make that bet at all.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
>> Africans would've been infinitely better off left completely to their own devices. Would they still be living in stone age primitive societies? Yes. Would it be preferable to what they have now? Yes. Cute. You speak for all of Africa. Change your nic to Shakazulu Ghost or something.
Why don't you travel to Africa and advise them to turn their back on all Western things because, y'know, they'll always be incapable of self governance without whitey. Call the movement something catchy.. Boko Haram maybe.
>My impression is that most of Africa's problems are cultural, like for example the response to Ebola.
That's more education than culture. Heck, it was a tradition for a while in the West to take dead relatives, dress them up, and pose for photos with them.
That's the estimate I've heard for a few years, not 9 billion. 10-11 billion followed by a decline. If it was 12+ then I'd be taking note.
You better eat your GMO veggies.
Capitalism dictates that you go for the resource that gives you the most bang for the buck first in order to maximize profit. We've done that. It's downhill from here. I suggest you google "oil" and "EROEI" to get the figures.
Capitalism is merely private ownership of capital. It doesn't "dictate" that you go for anything in particular. Nor does it dictate that things have to go "downhill" merely because the absolutely cheapest resource is no longer present.
There's also this thing called "invention" which tends to change the game. I think by 2100 we'll have figured out adequate replacements for cheap petroleum while retaining our vast transportation network. And I think we'll find out then that we've had those alternatives around for a number of decades now.
These projections are not prophecy.
Please watch these videos from Hans Rosling. They are very informative about this particular subject. Africa is making progress and it should not be assumed that their population growth rate will continue as it is.
http://www.ted.com/speakers/hans_rosling
This one in particular: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth