As World’s Population Booms, Will Its Resources Be Enough for Us? New projections of escalating growth increase the tension between humanity’s expanding needs and what the planet can provide. here are more than 7 billion people on Earth now, and roughly one in eight of us doesnt have enough to eat. The question of how many people the Earth can support is a long-standing one that becomes more intense as the worlds population—and our use of natural resources—keeps booming. This week, two conflicting projections of the worlds future population were released. As National Geographics Rob Kunzig writes here, a new United Nations and University of Washington study in the journal Science says its highly likely well see 9.6 billion Earthlings by 2050, and up to 11 billion or more by 2100. These researchers used a new probabalistic statistical method that establishes a specific range of uncertainty around their results. Another study in the journal Global Environmental Change projects that the global population will peak at 9.4 billion later this century and fall below 9 billion by 2100, based on a survey of population experts. Who is right? Well know in a hundred years. Population debates like this are why, in 2011, National Geographic published a series called 7 Billion on world population, its trends, implications, and future. After years of examining global environmental issues such as climate change, energy, food supply, and freshwater, we thought the time was ripe for a deep discussion of people and how we are connected to all these other issues—issues that are getting increased attention today, amid the new population projections. As part of this human-dominated era, the past half century also has been referred to as a period of Great Acceleration by Will Steffen at International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. Besides a nearly tripling of human population since the end of World War II, our presence has been marked by a dramatic increase in human activity—the damming of rivers, soaring water use, expansion of cropland, increased use of irrigation and fertilizers, a loss of forests, and more motor vehicles. There also has been a sharp rise in the use of coal, oil, and gas, and a rapid increase in the atmosphere of methane and carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases that result from changes in land use and the burning of such fuels. When it comes to natural resources, studies indicate we are living beyond our means. An ongoing Global Footprint Network study says we now use the equivalent of 1.5 planets to provide the resources we use, and to absorb our waste. A study by the Stockholm Resilience Institute has identified a set of nine planetary boundaries for conditions in which we could live and thrive for generations, but it shows that we already have exceeded the institutes boundaries for biodiversity loss, nitrogen pollution, and climate change. news.nationalgeographic/news/2014/09/140920-population-11billion-demographics-anthropocene/
Posted on: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 06:13:42 +0000
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