Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Percentage
of World's
0.012
78 million) to the world's population in 2005,
an average increase of 214,000 people per day, or 8,900
per hour. At this rate it takes only about 3 days to add
the 652,000 Americans killed in battle in all U.S. wars
and only 1.7 years to add the 129 million people killed
in all wars fought in the past 200 years!
How much is 78 million? Suppose you spend
1 second saying hello to each of the 78 million new
people added this year for 24 hours each day—no
sleeping, eating, or anything else allowed. How long
would your handshaking marathon take? Answer:
about 2.5 years. By then you would have 195 million
more people to shake hands with. Exponential growth
is astonishing!
19
Population
81
0.1
Population
growth
1.5
85
Wealth and
income
15
88
Resource
use
Economics: Economic Growth
and Economic Development
Economic growth provides people with
more goods and services, and economic
development uses economic growth to improve
living standards.
Economic growth
is an increase in the capacity of a
country to provide people with goods and services. Ac-
complishing this increase requires population growth
(more producers and consumers), more production
and consumption per person, or both.
Economic growth is usually measured by the per-
centage change in a country's
gross domestic product
(GDP):
the annual market value of all goods and ser-
vices produced by all firms and organizations, foreign
and domestic, operating within a country. Changes in
a country's economic growth per person are measured
by
per capita GDP:
the GDP divided by the total pop-
ulation at midyear.
Economic development
is the improvement of
human living standards by economic growth. The
United Nations (UN) classifies the world's countries
as economically developed or developing based pri-
marily on their degree of industrialization and their
per capita GDP.
The
developed countries
(with 1.2 billion people)
include the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia,
New Zealand, and the countries of Europe. Most are
highly industrialized and have high average per capita
GDP. All other nations (with 5.3 billion people) are
classified as
developing countries,
most of them in
Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Some are
middle-
income, moderately developed countries
and others are
low-income countries.
Figure 1-4 compares some key characteristics of
developed and developing countries. About 97% of
the projected increase in the world's population is ex-
pected to take place in developing countries, as shown
in Figure 1-5.
12
Pollution
and waste
75
25
Developed countries
Developing countries
Figure 1-4
Global outlook:
comparison of developed and
developing countries, 2005. (Data from the United Nations and
the World Bank)
12
11
10
World total
9
8
7
Developing
countries
6
5
4
Developed
countries
3
2
1
1950
2000
2050
2100
Year
Figure 1-5
Global outlook:
past and projected population size
for developed countries, developing countries, and the world,
1950-2100. Developing countries are expected to account for
97% of the 2.4 billion people projected to be added to the
world's population between 2005 and 2050. (Data from the
United Nations)
Figure 1-6 (p. 10) summarizes some of the benefits
(
good news
) and harm (
bad news
) caused mostly by eco-
nomic development. It shows the effects of the wide
and growing gap between the world's haves and
have-nots.
