World population to hit 7 billion by 2012

[losthills]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/19/world-population-to-hit-7_n_108143.html

WASHINGTON — The world's population will reach 7 billion in 2012, even as the global community struggles to satisfy its appetite for natural resources, according to a new government projection.

There are 6.7 billion people in the world today. The United States ranks third, with 304 million, behind China and India, according to projections released Thursday by the Census Bureau.

The world's population surpassed 6 billion in 1999, meaning it will take only 13 years to add a billion people.

By comparison, the number of people didn't reach 1 billion until 1800, said Carl Haub, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau. It didn't reach 2 billion until 130 years later.

"You can easily see the effect of rapid population growth in developing countries," Haub said.

Haub said that medical and nutritional advances in developing countries led to a population explosion following World War II. Cultural changes are slowly catching up, with more women in developing countries going to school and joining the work force.

That is slowing the growth rate, though it is still high in many countries.

The global population is growing by about 1.2 percent per year. The Census Bureau projects the growth rate will decline to 0.5 percent by 2050.

By then, India will have surpassed China as the most populous country.

The Census Bureau updates projections each year on a variety of global demographic trends, including fertility and mortality rates and life expectancy. U.S. life expectancy has surpassed 78 years for the first time, the National Center for Health Statistics announced last week.

The new Census report comes amid record high oil and gasoline prices, fueled in part by growing demand from expanding economies in China and India.

There is no consensus on how many people the Earth can sustain, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. He said it depends on how well people manage the Earth's resources.

Today, industrialized nations use a disproportionate share of oil and other resources, while developing countries are fueling population growth.

There are countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East where the average woman has more than six children in her lifetime. In Mali and Niger, two African nations, women average more than seven children.

"There's still a long way to go in the developing world," Frey said. "A lot of it does have to do with the education of women and the movement of women into the labor force."

In the U.S., women have an average of about two children, which essentially replaces the population. Much of the U.S. population growth comes from immigration.

[Squatch]

1. We have 2 kids, and that's all we're ever going to have

2 people into this world, 2 people out of it. Zero sum.

[stuntcat]

2. how anyone..

How anyone can give a fresh little thing the rest of this nasty century is beyond me. There are so many ethical reasons for not having more and nothing but selfish reasons for having them from now on.

[Kolesar]

4. Hey, little honey - love, you will live to see a global war over resources

G'nite, sleep tite :hug:

[stuntcat]

6. I do not sleep tite

just thank goodness every day that I'm a day older. I have until 2040 probably, but babes made now have until 2080.

[tom_paine]

8. You've got that right. It is a sin to have children these days.

living as Bushie Slaves, noi matter how comfortable the cage, in a Peak Oil and Climate Change world.

The Constitution and Bill of Rights ALREADY nullified and meaningless. Our Congressional "opposition" broken or complicit as 1933 German Social Democrats.

I pity anyone younger than me, I envy anyone older.

[Mugweed]

11. 3 reasons

I've found only 3 reasons for people to have children:

1) ego (I need to continue the bloodline, blah blah blah)
2) selfishness (I want to have a....)
3) accident (abortion was out of the question)

Think about the all reasons you or others can give for having children and see if you can find one that doesn't fit into one of these categories. If you answer "biological imperitive", thank you for reducing the most complex beings on the planet to mere dogs and cats.

[Kolesar]

12. God's will put this boy on this planet

Apparently God thought the planet needed another pessimist.

[bhikkhu]

26. LOL

and in my case, god thought the planet required one more agnostic. An interesting way of looking at things.

but, on edit, there's not much about this that's funny at all...looking at the projections for crop production and reserves, and the raw materials used for fertilizer driving yields (oil), it is hard to see how we reach 7 billion. And if progress and expansion must "hit the brakes", it is hard to imagine what those brakes will look like.

[The2ndWheel]

13. Corporations and governments need more people

Neither form of organization survives too long with fewer and fewer people.

[Kolesar]

18. Growth without bounds is the philosophy of a cancer

I'm grumpy. I'm not apologizing.

[funflower]

27. If educated, sane folk don't have children, only fundies and people in third world countries will.

Yes, progressives DO have a responsibility to either raise (a couple of) their own sane, thinking offspring or support the efforts of those who do.

Demographics already favor the growth of backward cultures that will lead the planet to ruin. Enlightenment stops one generation after we allow all future human beings to be raised by medieval nuts who oppose science, women's rights and democracy itself.





Edited to fix a typo

[Kolesar]

3. What's wrong with India?

How can a country be so ignorant? Cannot people comprehend the simple concept of limited resources?

[Hannah Bell]

17. must be why the us uses 24% of the world's oil (& most things), while

india uses 3.3%.

yeah, ignorance is funny.

[The2ndWheel]

5. Within the context of civilization, the only way we'll stop growth in either

population or consumption is when everyone has everything they ever need, and not an ounce less, ever. Nobody can ever want more than they need either. There also can be no additional people, or any other species really(since they would be essentially stealing, like pests...you know, what we call other life being hungry before we attempt to eradicate it). We will need a completely static existence. Since life doesn't seem to work that way, we might have some issues.

[GliderGuider]

7. I agree with 7 billion by 2012. It's what happens after that that has me a little worried.

From World Energy and Population - Trends to 2100 by yrs trly.

The new and permanent regime of limitations (in global carrying capacity, energy supplies, social complexity, economics and geopolitics) that we are now entering will change our world beyond recognition over the next hundred years.

[Terry in Austin]

9. Bingo!

A question that's been making the rounds, and I'll echo it here: "http://overshoot.tv/node/47">Are we not smarter than yeasts?"

(Uhh... want some http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeast">disaccharides with that?)

[tom_paine]

16. No, we are not smarter than yeast in a beer barrel.

OTOH, can yeast make stereos?

If tool-using equalled intelligence and foresightedness, then we would be Masters of the Universe.

But it doesn't. Thus, we are no smarter, for all our tool-using and inventive capacity, than yeast in a beer barrel.

[Kolesar]

14. Looks like the roads will be less congested if I can just hang in there

[philb]

20. That graph isn't consistent with other data or projections- I saw proj. of 9 billion by 2050

for example

and see the data in the original article here, which likewise shows growth through 2050, not decline.
Decline would only happen if there is major environmental/health crunch, causing widespread starvation, plagues, etc.

[GliderGuider]

21. That's correct.

IMO the published projections from the usual sources are massively wrong, because they fail to factor in the full range and degree of influences on population growth, specifically the converging ecological/energy/economic crisis that is now under way.

As a result I don't think the world population will ever reach 9 billion. I expect population growth to slow "faster than expected" starting in about 5 years and to begin an outright decline in about 10 years. And yes, the decline will be due to a "major environmental/health crunch, causing widespread starvation, plagues, etc."

[XemaSab]

10. It's like getting people to turn the AC up to 80, or the heat down to 60

Or like telling people to ride bikes, or telling people to go on a diet.

The physical organism does what it wants, and the mind doesn't really have as much control over that as we think we do.

Having babies is part of that. :shrug:

[NNadir]

15. Not to worry. I'm sure that 6 billion of them will volunteer to die so we can live in

a renewable energy utopia.

Maybe "volunteer" is the wrong word.

In spite of much illiterate representation that solar and wind are new ideas, they are actually thousands of years old. The population of the planet is a direct consequence of the unanalyzed decision to abandon these strategies, decisions that were made about 2 centuries ago.

The ethical approach to population reduction - by birth rate control as opposed to catastrophe - is now a dead issue.

Heckuva job.

[philb]

19. Over 9 billion projected by 2050

[phantom power]

22. I think we'll make 7 billion. I predict we won't see 8.

9 is right out.

[stuntcat]

23. .

The sooner we crash the more chance the other animals will have :D (apologies to anyone who's offended by that!)

[phantom power]

24. It isn't a line of thinking personally I prefer...

but human behavior sure isn't proving it wrong so far.

[Boomer]

25. It's a difficult instinct and tradition to extinguish

People have babies because family groups have been the foundation of our social/emotional environment and the basis for our success as a species. Between hard wiring and cultural immersion, it's near impossible to get people to see this issue rationally. What worked for millions of years is now our single biggest threat to survival, but it's not realistic to expect humans to turn on a dime and shrug off instinct.

I missed out on both aspects of baby worship, and it makes me feel like a freak in this culture. But I've resigned myself to braying like Cassandra about population issues while people all around me keep popping out new spawn.