Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
“
Sometime around 2050, there are going to be nine billion people roaming this planet—two billion
more than there are today. It's a safe bet that all those folks will want to eat. And that's . . . an incredibly
daunting prospect. Right now, an estimated one billion people go hungry each day. So add two billion
more people, a limited supply of arable land, plus the fact that rising incomes will boost demand for
meat and dairy products, plus the fact that many key natural resources (fisheries, say) are already
being overexploited . . . and it's hard to see the situation getting better. And that's before we get into
the fact that the planet's heating up, which is expected to wreak havoc on agricultural yields.
”
—Brad
Plumer, “Is There Enough Food Out There for Nine Billion People?”
New Republic
, February 3, 2010
Overpopulation is the elephant in the room that few are talking about. In the last decade, we
have added more people to the planet than were added between the births of Jesus and Abra-
ham Lincoln. Around the year 1975, our world first overshot its capacity to provide for its hu-
man population, yet this population continues to grow, and we continue to live on borrowed
time (Global Footprint Network 2010). One thousand years after Jesus walked the earth, human
population was around ½ billion. It took another 800 years to double this population to 1 billi-
on. It took only 130 more years for the next doubling to 2 billion in 1930. When I was a kid in
1960, world population hit 3 billion people, and it only took another 40 years to double to 6 bil-
lion in the year 2000.
Figure 1-2. Global population growth.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
