7 Billion People

Later this month (Oct 2011) we are estimated to reach a total population of 7 billion people on this planet. It took until the early 1800s to reach the first billion. We reached 2 billion a little over 100 years later. Now, we add a billion people every 12 years. A long, drawn out world recession could slow the population growth to something like 15 years until we reach 8 billion.

7 billion people. Good or bad. What do you think?

7 still some how managble, needs more attention how we treat the planet, past 50 years we have been doing it wrong. so i think 8 is pushing it over the limit.

i imagine the earth will finish several billion of us (if we havent done it ourselves by then) after we exceed the 8, especially if we continue doing things the same as we do now. wasting resources with no worry of tomorrow. some day world will collapse or clense it.. and new cycle of life begins anew.. (dinosaurs-mammals-humans-cockroaches and rats..)

A lot of it depends upon how we live. I've heard using things like vertical farming powered by atomic energy, recycling virtually everything, plus living in high density developments, the planet can support about 1 trillion humans (beyond that we just plain run out of room). Living as we do now on average, the long-term sustainable figure is closer to about 2 billion. If everyone lived like we do in highly developed countries, I'd put the figure at well under 1 billion. The good news is with birth rates going down as countries become developed, the population is projected to stabilize somewhere around the 10 billion mark. Earth can sustain this many people in comfort provided we change how we do things. More recycling, more efficient use of energy, renewable energy sources, growing food locally, traveling less, and denser living at this stage are pretty much necessities if humanity is to survive past the 21st century. Remember if we don't change, nature has a long history of reducing surplus populations. Unlike other creatures, humans are aware of this fact. They can thwart nature's will with careful planning.

What really scares me most in the short term are developing countries like China and India trying to emulate the USA of the 1950s. Earth just doesn't have the resources for about 2.5 billion people to have a house in the suburbs, a car, and roads everywhere. China has built a nice high-speed rail network and local rail transit. Unfortunately, they also chose to build a highway network. The irony here is if everyone there drove, these new roads would be so packed you wouldn't get anywhere. China had a great opportunity to bypass the automobile era, with its attendant problems, entirely but instead decided to ignore reality. Hopefully India won't make the same mistake.

In a nutshell then, I'd say the single biggest solution to any population problem is to redefine at a societal level what success means. If we can get past the notion that success equals ever more material things, then humanity has a good chance.

Nonsence is right, but my moneys on collapse rather than clense, after we have finished destroying the forests and hunting animals to extinction we will turn on ourselfs, before long the earth will be a lifeless ball of corpses. Maybe all those zombie films were made for entertainment but I'm scared that they are showing our future.

At a minimum, I would suggest the following as recommended reading:

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7

That's a good primer for some of the background philosophy.

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I wondered why I kept getting 7 billion hits every time I Googled something.


Each one has an opinion ....... and they ALL think they are right !

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Some biologists use a common term to describe human population growth since 1859: Overshoot.

One can only grow so many plants in a flower pot.
How many can our flowerpot support?

Overpopulation and its consequences has been one of my greatest fears since I was very young. Euthanasia and eugenics... Birth control and regulation! One child! No really though, it's going to suck.

I've always feared that I would end up sitting at a table one day, eating a piece of lettuce on a plate like Charleton Heston, marveling over the taste and texture of fresh, non-processed food... REAL lettuce... Ugh...

Just be thankfull that we are going to be dead by time people are forced to live in cities and eat ersatz food.

Personally I think 7billion isn't big for the size of the planet. My issue is the over population of cities and certain countries. I understand that some parts of the world cannot be lived in for obvious reasons. I live in the UK (Glasgow, Scotland) and the influx of migrant workers is very noticeable around the city. Before anyone thinks I'm xenophobic or racist I'm not at all. My issue is we can't even house people from the city without having to try and make more room for more people. Homelessness in Glasgow isn't the worst in the world but it is evident. The UK seem to just add more people to an ever decreasing landmass.

So yeah 7 billion isn't the issue, the distribution of the population is an issue.

JacobJones said:

Just be thankfull that we are going to be dead by time people are forced to live in cities and eat ersatz food.

Click to expand...

SOYLENT GREEN IS .... uhhhh

Launch Mini said:

One can only grow so many plants in a flower pot.
How many can our flowerpot support?

Click to expand...

You get extra points if you can rewrite that as a haiku!

LEDAdd1ct said:

You get extra points if you can rewrite that as a haiku!

Click to expand...

One may only grow
So many plants in a pot
I am the greatest

(Can our pot survive?)

there will have been many moments on the path from 2billion to 7 billion where many would have proclaimed ' this is too many disaster is imminent' but here we are.
eventually it will be 'too many' and disaster will be upon us.
human density in the cities is far greater than human density outside the cities.
food production capacity is nowhere near any limit. food in the western world is abundant and cheap most of the price of an item of food goes to the distribution network not the primary producer. i think this indicates no capacity constraints on primary production.
mayber we can go 70 billion. and i guess we are going to find out cos thats the road we are on.

people spend a lot of time worrying about environmental constraints and capacity constraints, but the biggest threat to our opulent way of life going forward will always be political.



interesting fact - 7 000 000 000 people weigh (at 60 kg each) -420 000 000 tonnes . (7 000 000 000 americans would be more because they are weighed in pounds) if everyone jumps at the same time would we feel it ?

cheers

beerwax said:

....if everyone jumps at the same time would we feel it ?

cheers

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No, due to the strategic distribution of the population who, if all jumped at once, would all cancel each others' impact out.

beerwax said:

there will have been many moments on the path from 2billion to 7 billion where many would have proclaimed ' this is too many disaster is imminent' but here we are.
eventually it will be 'too many' and disaster will be upon us.
human density in the cities is far greater than human density outside the cities.
food production capacity is nowhere near any limit. food in the western world is abundant and cheap most of the price of an item of food goes to the distribution network not the primary producer. i think this indicates no capacity constraints on primary production.
mayber we can go 70 billion. and i guess we are going to find out cos thats the road we are on.

people spend a lot of time worrying about environmental constraints and capacity constraints, but the biggest threat to our opulent way of life going forward will always be political.

Click to expand...

congrats to all for maintaining a civilized discussion... I was betting it would get locked down within a day.

It's an interesting problem to think about. Certainly, you can feed more people if they are willing to tolerate a lower standard of living. Technology can go a long way to improving our capability to grow more food, but there are limits to this too. We are very dependent on cheap fossil fuel both for the mechanized farming equipment that has improved productivity, as well as for the creation of fertilizers that increase the crop yield. The tendency to become heavily dependent on one or two crop species is also a risk. Add to this the depletion of water aquifers (at least in the USA) and the increasing competition between cities and agriculture for water resources. It's not hard to imagine scenarios where things could get very unpleasant over the span of a few years.

It would be nice to think that people all over the world could sit down and say "let's put together a plan to reduce population by 10% over the next 10 years" or such. I would guess that the odds of this happening are in the single digits. China was able to have some success with population control, but it required an authoritarian state to do it. Hard to see that being implemented on a global scale.

Someone made a statement along the lines of "A person is smart. 'People' are stupid". I tend to think that we'll resolve it in a way similar to what is theorized to have happened on Easter Island. The various tribes will battle over increasingly scarce resources until the people are gone.

....or.... a new super-virus will wipe out 90% of humanity. Problem solved!

yeah, I don't see a pleasant end to this.


Steve K.

My daughter just advised me that,
The combined weight of all the ants on earth, exceed that of the human race.
I'm just saying.

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Philippines represents the 7th billion baby. .