Two days ago, it was announced that our world had reached a new milestone - 7 billion people. That is an unfathomable number. Of course 3 billion in 1959, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987 and 6 billion in 1999 were equally incomprehensible..
In the year Napoleon assumed the title of Emperor (1804), the world population hit one billion. It then took another 123 years to climb to 2 billion in 1927. Recently, only twelve to fifteen years have been needed to add another billion human beings to the planet. While global fertility has declined since its peak from 1965-70, the world population has continued to expand due to technological advances in health care and food production. It is expected to peak at about 9 billion in 2050. Although the production of people is indeed slowing down, our numbers are placing an unprecedented stress on key resources.
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Water and Oil
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The planet is largely covered in water, yet only 3% is fresh, drinkable water. Currently, 1.2 billion people live in water scarcity, and many more people will experience severely limited water supplies in the future - and not only in developing countries. Over the past few years, the Colorado River in the US has struggled to keep up with demand for its fresh water from six regional states and parts of northern Mexico. As Americans continue to migrate to the region, water scarcity in the West and Southwest may become a recurrent theme.
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According to the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 'high water stress' will afflict nearly half of the world's population by 2030. Thus, policymakers will need to increasingly consult geologists and geographers in order to plan and manage growth.
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As for oil, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected a 60% rise in prices over the next five years due to declining reserves. Considering that real wages have risen negligibly since 1973, an even larger number of people - including those in the middle class - may be priced out of owning a car. Hence, nations dependent on fossil fuels (i.e. the US) need to create a new transportation infrastructure. The development of a high-speed rail network, which could connect areas together locally, regionally and nationally (similar to Japan and Korea), would not only reduce oil dependency but also be far more environmentally sound.
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More People, More Poverty: Reconsiderations
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Despite the efforts of the G-8 and the United Nations over the last few decades, a large segment of the world population lives in privation. Nearly 1 billion people are malnourished, and hundreds of millions of others lack adequate shelter and access to health care. What is the answer?
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Aside from making substantial investments in food technology and medical treatment, the world needs to consider bringing back an idea popular in the 1960s and 1970s - Zero Population Growth. Limited resources may be the primary issue, but it is certainly not the only one. Greater numbers of people translate into even more overcrowded cities, more competition for fewer places at universities and for fewer well-paying jobs, more traffic jams, more packed trains and subways, more litter on streets, more waste for a diminishing number of landfills, more anonymity and loneliness and a larger possibility for resource wars over energy and water in the future.
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Perhaps our historical paradigm of growth needs to be reconsidered. Rather than continuing to industrialize and increase the world population, it may be time to de-industrialize and decrease our numbers. A world with fewer people, more opportunities, a higher regard for nature and mankind, and a more judicious use of natural resources can only add to human happiness.
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There is no time to wait.
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(Photo: An overcrowded train in New Delhi, India. Click on to enlarge. To view graph-related data on this article, please click onto kleostoday.tumblr.com to the right and check postings for 2 November)
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Key Source
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World Population To 2300 (New York: The United Nations, 2011) To read the report in a PDF file, please click onto the following link: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf
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J Roquen