Question: What is your opinion on how our earth is going to cope with our rapidly increasing population?

Can I tell you a secret? No? Okay, well, never mind then.

Just kidding! The secret is that we’re on the way to solving the population growth problem. What am I talking about? What I’m talking about is the difference between the increase in world population, and the growth rate of the world population. Year by year the world population is increasing in total number; it’s a bit over 7 billion now, and by 2050 it’s projected to be over 9 billion. Some projections have us hitting 10 billion by 2083. But the amount that the population is increasing each year is going down and has been for a while now. In 1963 the world population was increasing at a rate of 2.2% per year, and by 2009 that rate was 1.1%. The world population in 1963 was about 3.3 billion, so 2.2% percent of that means that in 1963 the world population increased by about 73 million people. In 2009 the world population was about 6.5 billion, and the population increased by 1.1%, so the population increased by about 72 million people. Doesn’t look like a solved problem, does it? But the growth rate is projected to keep going down and down. When it hits zero, that means that the population will no longer be growing, that it’ll be same each year. If it goes negative, that means that the population will actually start to shrink (don’t panic: it would be centuries before we ran out of people). It’s difficult or even impossible to say when it might hit zero or go negative – if it ever does – but as birth rates go down and the population gets older, it’s likely that we’re going to be able to deal with the increasing population. The Earth has plenty of space, and we can fit a lot more than 10 billion people. Look at all that empty space in the outback!

If that last sentence looked weird to you, then you may have hit on the real problem. Where are we going to find billions of people willing to live in the outback? The real problem is that while we may have the space for all those people, we don’t have the resources for all of them. There’s a saying floating around on the internet that if everyone on earth lived like the average North American, we would need 4-5 planets to sustain all of them. (Want to find out what kind of footprint you have? Try this calculator…) So where do we get the resources for all those people? Technology might save us; we might be able to do more with less, or recycle things more effectively, and so on. But while it’s less frightening to think about, it’s a little dicey to hope that technology alone will save us. Chances are that we’re going to need to make changes to consume less. And that’s where you come in! You’re at the forefront of this, and the choices you make are going to have a big effect on the kind of planet you and everyone else lives on.