Never mind going to see the latest horror flick at the cineplex - if you want to scare yourself, check out the U.S. Census Bureau’s U.S. and World Population Clocks website.
The U.S. adds a new person every 11 seconds. The world adds a new person every 2.5 seconds. My grandfather was born nearly a century ago into a world with about 1.5 billion people. He’s still alive. I was born nearly half a century ago into a world with a little more than three billion people. My daughter was born in 2003, into a world with just over six billion people. That’s about a four-fold increase in a bit less than a century - a long human lifetime.
The good news is, our rate of growth is already slowing down. Whereas the period 1960-2000 saw us double our numbers, the period 2000-2050 is likely to see “only” about a 50% increase, to nine billion. This slowdown is happening mainly because people are having fewer kids.
If we’re lucky, then that will continue to be the main reason that our population growth rate slows. If we’re unlucky, then environmental factors will take over. The combination of climate change and increasing numbers packs much potential for human misery in the decades ahead.
… and like always, there’s more potential for more misery if you’re poor.
Eleanor
Dear David and Eleanor,
Unfortunately, “the good news” about the slowing rate of growth of the human population worldwide may turn out to be not such good news after all. What if the small planet God has blessed us to inhabit simply cannot sustain the fully anticipated 9.2 billion people in the human community in 2050?
Consider the scale and growth rate of economic globalization and per human resource consumption during the next 43 years. How is a planet the size of Earth to sustain either the infinite growth of human enterprise in a finite world or the increasing and unrestrained per capita consumption of limited natural resources…… much less the unregulated addition of 2.5 billion more people than live on Earth today?
Within the first half of the twenty-first century, humankind could be presented with an unannounced and abhorrent predicament produced by the gigantic scale of certain global human activities, ones that are occurring synergistically in our time. Massive loss of wildlife and wilderness, reckless dissipation of scarce resources and the pernicious destabilization of the global ecosystems are probable results of these human overgrowth activities.
Huge and leviathan-like are the potential threats posed to humanity by certain unregulated, distinctly human consumption, production and propagation activities now overspreading our planetary home. Even so, we can take the measure of whatsoever the looming global challenges and find solutions to our problems that are consonant with universally shared values.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steve:
Every one of us is going to have to cut back. Basically, we’ll need to raise the standard of living for people all around the world while reducing our overall impact. That’s going to be tough. We’re going to have to make strategic investments (mass transit both within and between cities, for example) and, if education doesn’t work, we’re going to need to pass laws that limit consumption. We also need to wholeheartedly develop new technologies and make it possible for people to adopt them.
For me, cutting back amounts to retaining as far as possible the style of life I had in graduate school and learning everything I can about making further cuts. It’s possible to have a satisfying life without burying oneself under a tidal wave of debt and junk. In fact, life is more satisfying if one focuses on the most significant things. I think that that’s the message we need to get across - in the developed world, anyway. We also need to make it clear that, if we don’t get smart fast, our kids are going to suffer the consequences.
David
Global problems are thought of by many as a future problem, and I think people too easily disregard things they can do to make help the future because they don’t think it will matter right now. I think that the population growth rate slowing due to people having fewer kids is a good thing to ensure a proper amount of resources for the population. Whether or not this is a conscious decision, it gives us a ray of hope that people are helping the future and diminishing the problems their descendants will face. Its good to see that this positive thing is happening in an unregulated society.
Unfortunately, the main root to the problem of overpopulation and all sustainability issues previously mentioned will forever be present in this world, poverty. As we all know population growth is greater in uderdeveloped countries and in these countries people have more immediate concerns of existence than the world’s sustainability issues we constantly analize in the United States. It is a depressing reality thet does not seem to have a solution.
Dear David, S. Glasson and Erika,
The global challenges before humanity are here and now… and they appear to be formidable. Because I am a member of the elder generation, I may not be directly impacted by the huge, approaching problems that are visible and, even now, loom ominously on the far horizon. Even so, my children will likely come face to face with daunting problems. The children are the source of my concern and sense of urgency.
Perhaps it will be helpful to have great scientists like Gretchen D., Peter V. and Paul E. put the distinctly human predicament in perspective for us, with hope that people, as David put it, “are going to have to cut back” on the rate of unbridled growth at which we now conspicuously consume limited resources, endlessly expand economic globalization and rapidly propagate our species.
Please find at the link below a video entitled “CALL OF LIFE” and answer the call to think in new ways, make adaptive behavior changes, share resources, protect biodiversity and preserve the integrity of Earth.
http://www.speciesalliance.org/video.php
With thanks to Dr. Daily, Dr. Vitousek, Dr. P. Ehrlich, Dr. Melissa K. Nelson and other colleagues,
Steve