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August 17, 2004
BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY EXPONENTIALLY, APPARENTLY
A new world population study suggests that by 2050, there will be 9 billion human beings on this planet. For perspective, there were only 2.5 billion in 1950, 3.558 billion in 1968 (the year I added to the total), and 6.377 billion today, according to the US Census Bureau.
The report says the world population should rise 45 percent to nearly 9.3 billion by mid-century, on par with similar projections from the United Nations and the U.S. Census Bureau.
While the population of developed countries would rise 4 percent to over 1.2 billion, the population in developing nations would surge by 55 percent to over 8 billion. Countries in Africa and south Asia would see the largest increases.
You know, I may be a morbid bastard, and my curmudgeonly self doesn't really like people all that much, so I may be biased. But I have to think we're heading for a dangerous crash here.
In the first 10,000 years of human existence, we homo sapiens went from zero to 2.5 billion. In the last 50 years, we've gone from 2.5 billion to 6.377 billion, and will be up to 9 billion before the next 50 are up. That means we have added more people in the last 50 years than in the 10,000 that came before it.
Most of those people are crowded into areas and in conditions that make sanitation and health care difficult... disease and famine are just waiting to happen. I have to think that we're on the edge of a crisis of virtually Biblical proportions - an epidemic of pestilence that will make the black death plague of the Middle Ages look like child's play, and famine (and the resulting wars over resources) that will make Ethiopia of the 1980s look like a schmorgasboard. I don't think the Earth was built to sustain such an overwhelming number -- and if it was, it certainly isn't meant to absorb this much growth this fast.
Would it be that hard to start improving birth control and teaching restraint? All I can say is this: if we don't limit our population by ourselves, nature will do it for us.
