Blogs can be like soapboxes. From time to time, I have banged on about population growth on this tiny spinning sphere in the vastness of this infinite universe. In the past, this topic weirdly riled my main trolls as though it was not a matter I had any authority to comment upon. Anyway, I am back to the subject this very evening - population growth.
It was in 1804 that Earth's population reached one billion for the first time. Then 123 years passed by before, in 1927, the population reached two billion. However it only took 33 more years to reach three billion which tally came about in 1960.
Onward to four billion and that happened just fourteen years later - in 1974. You can see that the pace of population growth was really picking up.
We reached five billion in 1987
We reached six billion in 1999
We reached seven billion in 2012
We reached eight billion this very year - 2024.
A decade ago, academic forecasters predicted that we would reach nine billion in 2048 but it is clearly going to happen much earlier than that as the world's ever increasing population has just this minute reached, wait for it:-
8,123,650,251
At this rate, we will be up to nine billion by 2030, not 2048. We will almost certainly be at ten billion by then.
It is easy to see that the COVID pandemic did almost nothing to put the brakes on population growth. As the graph continued to soar upward, COVID hardly made a blip in the ascending line. Not a squeak.
I still find it odd that meetings of world leaders and climate summits hardly ever mention our world's rampant population growth. It is as if they view it as a runaway train that cannot be halted and must inevitably plunge over the wooden bridge and down into the canyon of doom.
I am not offering any solutions, just stating the case.
What you say makes sense. What will be the effect of climate change on population growth.
ReplyDeleteThe latter feeds the former.
DeleteIt's a lot of ego, I think, too; men wanting to procreate to feed their sense of what makes them a man.
ReplyDeleteYou could be right. Two children should be the absolute limit in my view.
DeleteEvery year that passes another generation of young women reaches child bearing age, if they each have two children it's easy to see how quickly the population numbers increase. My mother was an only child, yet she had five children, and seven grandchildren. My four have given me six grandchildren and so far one great grandson and so it goes. With luck and forward thinking maybe future generations will limit familes to one or two children, that will at least slow the pace of expansion.
ReplyDeleteI didn't realise you were so good at basic arithmetic Elsie.
DeleteI have done my bit to save the planet...no children or grandchildren, and I shall no doubt die early to make room for someone else.
ReplyDeleteCould that "someone else" please be our Phoebe? Thank you in anticipation of your generosity. She will love The Church House.
DeleteI fully agree with you and the planet is not liking this massive population she has been called on to support. She will take care of it, and it may not be pretty.
ReplyDeleteIt's already "not pretty" - so many people on the move.
DeleteWell, my personal contribution was not to have children.
ReplyDeleteIf only more women in Africa, Asia and South America could make that choice.
DeleteOr in Europe.
DeleteOr possibly the US where a certain party wants to ban abortions and birth control.
DeleteI'm an only child, as was my husband, and we decided that we wouldn't have children.
ReplyDeleteSometime, during the 60's I think, it was decided that to slow down the rapidly growing Indian population, men would be offered a transistor radio if they had a vasectomy. Seems that idea didn't work!
Perhaps they listened to "Je T'Aime" by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin.
DeleteBirth rates in Western countries like Blighty and Ireland have dropped.
ReplyDeleteThe main growth surges are in Africa, Asia and South America.
DeleteHumans seem to be causing their inevitable extinction.
ReplyDeleteWe are too fractured and short termist.
DeleteIn the meantime, the EU pays 'Farmers' to do nothing, and even pays extra for allowing their land to become covered with Brambles (I have one such 2 hectare field right in front of my house). Maybe they're trying to starve any future population growth.
ReplyDeleteMan cannot live by brambles alone.
DeleteMany years ago, I read an author who compared the human population to a virus. We infect a host, in this case earth, and slowly start increasing our viral load until we start destroying the host. Eventually the host will dye along with the virus, us humans. I'm not sure I've ever seen a more apt description of what is going on.
ReplyDeleteWhen it is too late - that is when governments and the UN will take notice.
DeleteI've just watched an item on our TV news, bemoaning the fact that in all our major cities birth rates are falling as low as they were in the 70's (when the contraceptive pill was introduced). Which country? Australia!
ReplyDeleteMaybe Australians are forgetting what you need to do to increase the birth rate. Also all that Vegemite may be adversely affecting fertility.
DeleteAs you know, I also feel very strongly about this subject and I have always been mystified about why we can't have a public conversation about it. Years ago, in the '70s, governments used to run public health campaigns and put out postage stamps urging family planning, but you never see that kind of thing now. I think there's a fear that talk of population control will lead to some kind of state-sanctioned mass murder, and of course there are questions about vestiges of colonialism and cultural values and that kind of thing. But as I once read somewhere, if we don't do something about it ourselves, nature will do it for us -- and it won't be pretty.
ReplyDeleteI am an only child, as is my husband. We have one child and he and his wife have one child too, so we've done our bit to cut the population slightly. Unfortunately, our daughter in law is one of three sisters, the youngest is in her early teens, but sister number three has three children already and shows no sign of slowing down!
ReplyDeleteI thought I felt the earth tilt a bit just last night. Hmmmm.
ReplyDeleteI saw some figures recently that showed that the UK (or it might have been England) population increased by just 400 in the past year, taking the difference between live births and deaths. Of course, the counties population increased by dramatically more than that through immigration, but it shows that the housing "crisis" is largely a feature of uncontrolled immigration.
ReplyDeleteI also saw reports that across most of the developed world birthrates are falling dramatically, in some countries to well below the theoretical replacement level of 2, and that forecasts for global population now indicate it falling towards the end of this century.
https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-population-decline-getting-close-irreversible
ReplyDeletehttps://ourworldindata.org/population-growth#:~:text=While%20the%20global%20population%20is,at%20over%202%25%20per%20year.