OOPS! The world just reached a record total of 7 billion inhabitants. But I am not celebrating. In fact, I have been ranting about too many people in this too small planet for a long time. The reality is the population growth today is out of control. Worldwide, people numbered 1 billion just a bit more than two centuries ago. One century ago it was 1.6 billion, not a huge growth. But by 1950 the world population was 2.5 billion and by 2000 it was an astounding 6 billion. By 2025, the United Nations predicts, the world will have to have the resources to support 8 billion people, many of them desperately poor, malnourished and uneducated. It may not be able to do it without widespread, death, famine, disease and war.
Birth rates are relatively low in Western Europe, The United States Japan and Russia. The two nations with the populations India and China have mightily reined in family size with limitations on the number of children allowed.. But that can do little to offset the situation in sub-Saharan Africa, a vast region in which high birth countries such as Uganda are driving the rise in population as poverty and hunger kill more of their young and old. The lack of education of those populations as to the burden of having to many children, the cultural prohibitions against birth control, and the corrupt governments there mean that Africa is nightmare case for reigning in the excess population.
The most recent population jump is due to more than just advances in agricultural technology making food sources more available. There is also the decrease in death due to advances in medicine and sanitation, the "save the children" style programs that gives food and medicine to the poorest nations (who also have the biggest population growth). What has not also happened is the implementation of family planning and birth control in the under developed areas of Africa and Asia that create the bulk of the huge population increases.
Stresses worldwide, meanwhile, intensify; high energy and food prices, insufficient food production and distribution, rivers and aquifers pollutes or drying up from overuse (By 2025 roughly 1.8 billion of the world's people will live in regions marked by severe water scarcity). And all the while the excess population threatens the world, it's population is alarmed by nonsense like global warming, excess carbon foot prints and other theories that are silly or trendy but not nearly the catastrophic prophesy of the reality we have now of too many people stressing too few resources.
Runaway population deepens the divide between the wealthier people of the developed world, who can buy their way out of shortages and crowding, and the poor of the undeveloped nations, who often face few to no options when things run out. Aside from the foolish waste of energy on "global warming" and other distractions, this circumstance alone works against the idea that reduced personal consumption can ease the impact of so many people being born and stressing the resources of the earth.
So it makes it unlikely that there will ever be population planning in the poor nations nations where there is now none. Reaching the 7 billion population figure should be a wake-up call for the world. But it is almost totally unrecognized as being the only true environmental problem today that could destroy earth. The United Nations, along with non government organizations battling worldwide poverty and disease, should step up to educate the world about the problem, and assist the nations with out of control population growth levels to making having babies there a more responsible and less frequent occurrence.
Want to bet that they will not?
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