The article in the url below reports that, today, the United Nations estimates that the world’s population will surpass seven billion people (probably somewhere in India). See the World Population Clock for confirmation: http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/. The shock is not the number itself, but the speed at which the total has grown exponentially in recent years:
“The first billion people accumulated over a leisurely interval, from the origins of humans hundreds of thousands of years ago to the early 1800s. Adding the second took another 120 or so years. Then, in the last 50 years, humanity more than doubled, surging from three billion in 1959 to four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987 and six billion in 1998.”
The article goes on to question whether the planet can support this many people. The author reports plenty of good news to suggest, in theory, that the Earth can easily support its current population and even a much larger one:
“Between 1820, at the dawn of the industrial age, and 2008, when the world economy entered recession, economic output per person increased elevenfold. Life expectancy tripled in the last few thousand years, to a global average of nearly 70 years. The average number of children per woman fell worldwide to about 2.5 now from 5 in 1950. The world’s population is growing at 1.1 percent per year, half the peak rate in the 1960s. The slowing growth rate enables families and societies to focus on the well-being of their children rather than the quantity.”
In practice, however, there is also cause for concern:
“Nearly half the world lives on $2 a day, or less. In China, the figure is 36 percent; in India, 76 percent. More than 800 million people live in slums. A similar number, mostly women, are illiterate. Some 850 million to 925 million people experience food insecurity or chronic undernourishment. … While the world produced 2.3 billion metric tons of cereal grains in 2009-10 — enough calories to sustain 9 to 11 billion people — only 46 percent of the grain went into human mouths. Domestic animals got 34 percent of the crop, and 19 percent went to industrial uses like biofuels, starches and plastics. … Already, more than a billion people live without an adequate, renewable supply of fresh water.”
And, the future prospects are daunting:
“The United Nations Population Division anticipates 8 billion people by 2025, 9 billion by 2043 and 10 billion by 2083. India will have more people than China shortly after 2020, and sub-Saharan Africa will have more people than India before 2040.”
The conclusion, which is hardly news, is that we are growing at an unsustainable rate—not only in terms of numbers, but the amount of resources being consumed by those numbers and, more importantly, the way those resources are being consumed:
“Human demands on the earth have grown enormously, though the atmosphere, the oceans and the continents are no bigger now than they were when humans evolved. … The mismatch between the short-term incentives that guide our political and economic institutions and even our families, on one hand, and our long-term aspirations, on the other, is severe.”
The upshot is that, while we should be able to manage the world’s population growth; the reality is that we are shooting ourselves in the foot (or, I suppose, our 14 billion feet).
Take care
David
Instructor Teaching Site: http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr/
The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: http://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/
7 Billion
By Joel E. Cohen
The New York Times
October 24, 2011
pA19
