Earthsky Interviews
Private: How many people will live on Earth in 2100?
11-19-2007 - Human World
Earth & Sky spoke with Carl Haub, a demographer at the “Population Reference Bureau”:http://www.prb.org/Home.aspx in Washington, D.C. He indicated the current projection – 9 billion people on Earth by 2050 – might be too low.
Carl Haub: _Every population projection we see – be it from the United Nations and U.S. Census bureau or from a country -makes the assumption that the birth rate will continue down very smoothly without interruption. And that does not appear to be happening in many African countries._
Haub emphasized that birth rate – how many children women have – is the obvious key to global population.
Carl Haub: _There will be a slow decline in the birth rate, but I think the key word there is that it will be rather slow. There is some concern, especially today in sub-saharan Africa, where it does appear – and it comes from surveys so we don’t have to guess – that fertility rates in many of the countries which had started to come down may not be coming down again._
Dear Carl Haub, Deborah and Friends,
Please take a moment to explain what you expect will occur that results in the stabilization of population numbers of the human species on Earth in the year 2050, given the fully anticipated young age distribution of a global population of 9+/- billion people at that time. What do you suppose billions of fertile young people, who are expected to be capable of reproducing in mid-century, will be doing with their sexual instincts and drives other than what human beings have been doing during the past several thousand years?
What scientific evidence exists for the widely shared and consensually validated perspective, based upon a presciptive, not predictive, Demographic Transition Theory, that the population growth will stabilize in 2050 or, as Dr. Wolfgang Lutz has put it, is coming to an end soon?
Thanks,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
before we can get to $9B, I suspect humanity will have to deal with increased food costs/shortages, peak oil production and a general scarcity of resources that coupled with the prospect of a pandemic of some kind (think 1918 flu) will leave us short of the $9B mark.
Humanity is a rubber band being stretched- no different than any other animal in an ecosystem- and it will snap back.
Dear Don’t Mind Me,
I have to disagree. Humans are different from other animals in an ecosystem in some important ways. We are intelligent and cooperative animals, for example. We have access to information … you and I are speaking, for example, in the virtual space of the internet, sharing our ideas. So scientists and policy makers are now sharing their ideas – immediately, vitally, in a way never possible before.
I don’t want to put too rosy a face on it. Surely, like other animal species, humans are limited by the natural resources Earth provides. But, unlike other animal species, we have the ability to think through our difficulties and attempt to find solutions for them. Animals can’t do that.
All best,
Deborah
No. NO, I’m sorry, the correct answer is Six. Six people will live on the Earth in the year 2100. The judges would have also accepted “seis” or “half-a-dozen . . . “
. . . BUT YOU’RE NOT GOING AWAY EMPTY HANDED! ROD, TELL US ABOUT THE FABULOUS PARTING GIFTS OUR CONTESTANT WILL BE LEAVING WITH TONIGHT!! . . . . . .
Dear Deborah and “Don’t Mind Me,”
I agree with certain ideas both of you are presenting.
It looks to me as if the human species does well by recognizing how Homo sapiens, like other living things, are bounded by Earth’s physical limitations: a relatively small, finite, noticeably frangible planet. It also appears that human beings are unlike any other species. We possess an astonishing intellectual capacity, one that we supposedly deploy honestly. Also, our species, ours alone, has been granted an unparalleled gift: good science. With these and other splendid, unique capabilities and gifts in mind, it remains obvious that the human species still has biological limits.
If we choose to consider the best available, good science honestly and behave within the constraints of human/biological limits and earthly/physical limitations, then all will be well, I believe.
Rather than look at the science of absolute global human population numbers at this point, let’s choose to focus on the virtual mountain of scientific data that has been developed over many years regarding climate change.
I would like to submit that the human community has received good scientific evidence which is being presented ably and honestly by the International Panel on Climate Change. This great work has been widely discredited and repeatedly rejected by the “powers that be.” Nonetheless, the human community is awakening to stark aspects of biological and physical reality: human limits and Earth’s limitations.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf
At least to me, it appears that the IPCC Report is not being examined in reasonable and sensible ways by too many politicians, economists, big-business benefactors and their minions in the mass media. For years now, people in positions of power have adamantly and relentlessly denigrated this good work and, even now, continue to debunk it.
Here’s an idea I would like both of you to consider.
After years of careful and skillful research by the IPCC, it seems to me that the time has come to examine whether many too many government officials are behaving malevolently and acting in bad faith by continuing to disseminate disinformation that debunks the established evidence on global warming.
With the establishment of the scientific consensus on climate change, is it reasonable and sensible to ask of government officials who remain obstructive and in denial of such overwhelming scientific data if they are perfidiously engaged in a violation of public trust and, therefore, malfeasant in office?
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
I heard in a radio program that every person in the Earth can fit comfortably in an area that now occupies Texas!
Uhh about the animals, they cant think it is true but they dont get themselves into messes. So they never have to think themselves out of bad situations. The problem is we try making things easier for ourselves which gives us even more problems. Animals dont go around trying to invent a better way to hunt. They just do the same thing everyday. In a way they are smarter then us because they dont create problems for themselves.
a p garcia, sure, you might be able to fit Earth’s entire human population into Texas. But you surely would not be able to fit the amount of cropland needed to feed all those people into Texas as well.
Bob, I know what you mean, but animals sometimes do get themselves into messes. Wolves, for example, might decimate their prey in a certain area and have to move to a new area. Our human challenge on Earth today is that we’ve run out of places to move.
It’s nice to think of animals as “natural” and therefore “always good.” But, if you really think about it, humans are just as natural. We’re just as natural to Earth as any other species … as natural as wind, or trees, or grass. We didn’t ask to be put on Earth. We evolved – with our big brains and opposable thumbs – to the huge population we have today. All totally natural.
Deborah
Hello! No one single person pointed out that they never projected what the population will be in 2100!!!
Quite sadly I don’t think anyone expects population to level off in Africa by 2050 due to enlighted self-interest or economic development. Same for large parts of Asia. Instead it seems far more likely population in those areas will stop growing and decline due to water shorages, food shortages, and the healthy effects related to those things and climate change. Very grim. Where’s the leadership in the developed world willing to mitigate this pending crisis? Often it seems few even care what happens on another continent (especially the “Dark Continent”) unless it affects our extraction of raw materials (like oil) for our own needs.
Emma, I’ve seen various projections for population in 2100. For example, I’ve seen the projection of 5 billion by 2050 (fewer people than on Earth today). But the idea of this radio show was that it’s impossible to project out that far with much confidence. The projection for 2050 – 9 billion people – may not be correct. If that 2050 projection isn’t correct, then there’s no basis for projecting out to 2100.
Trinifar, actually enlightened self-interest and economic development do both play a role in declining birth rates in the developing world. The role of women in those countries is especially important, as is the shift from a more rural world to a more urban world in this century. When people shift from farming to a non-agricultural lifestyle, they tend not to have as many children. And when women enter the workplace, birth rates fall. But the experts agree that water and food shortages – made more difficult by climate change – will also have a grim effect on developing countries.
Deborah, I agree with the general proposition that enlightened self-interest, economic development, improving education and status of women, and free access to family planning information and services all play an important role in achieving a sustainable population level. Iran, having gone from the highest population growth rate in the world (4.4%/year) to around 1% in just a decade, is a great example of what can be done and they did that without any draconian measures.
My point is it is unrealistic to see that playing out in Africa before more dire consequences catch up with them. The richer nations of the world would have to become more interested in the well being of Africans and less interested in extracting everything of economic value on that continent as fast as possible. For example, Nigeria, Africa’s major oil producer and one of the major oil producers in the world, also has one of the world’s highest population growth rates. All the money the oil brings them ends up in the hands of only a few, the population as a whole is not benefiting.
Trinifar, I think we essentially agree. There is truly no telling what will happen. Mainly, I think I’m trying to express a view that women will play a vital role in creating a sustainable society in the century ahead. I hope so, at least. I do feel that women are perhaps closer than men to the profound desire to see their children grow up in peace, and that women as a whole are willing to bend their minds to all sort of solutions, when their children are at stake. If having fewer children is one of those solutions – and if women have the control over their bodies (as I understand they don’t in some places) – I believe women will have fewer children. That will bring its own sorts of economic repercussions, but ultimately – surely – bringing population down would be a good thing.
I dont think well die from food shortages or disease. I think if the population gets high enough people will start to fight over the shortages and kill each other for them. In the wild for axample if there is not enough food for a certain species they will die out from starvation. Humans are smarter then animals and will try to get the stuff they need from other places and other ways.
Do you even think we’ll survive til then? Global warming is much more serious than you think…
There are more greenhouse gases now than ever, which stop the amount of heat being radiated back into space.
Since earth absorbs more heat than it can radiate back into space, this is causing major problems on the earths core.
The earth’s core needs cooling.
Since its harder to cool down now, the core starts to overheat.
As it overheats, more volcanic eruptions will take place and earthquakes will become much more frequent.
If many simultanious volcanic eruptions were to take place, that would block out the sun and plunge the earth’s temperature into the -30, -40s.
Doesn’t this seem like a mechanism of the earth to protect the core from overheating too much?
Alex, I have never heard one word in science about global warming affecting Earth’s core temperature. I doubt very seriously this is an issue.
Bob, you and I have very different visions of what might happen if food shortages occur. One thing we have with 6.6 billion people on the planet … a huge labor force. Surely there would be a certain amount of chaos if shortages occured, but most people are good. Most people are cooperative. I believe people would try to help each other.
Dear Bob and Alex,
The IPCC Report makes clear that dire consequences will be potentiated if humankind chooses to “stay the course” marked by endlessly growing the artificially designed, manmade global economy and by fecklessly increasing per capita consumption without regard to biological and physical limits to this unbridled growth. UN Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-Moon says that climate change is a problem for the human community now. The time is coming, I suppose, when we choose to “center” our attention on the good scientific evidence from no less than 2000 IPCC scientists so that the family of humanity can determine how we are going to proceed in order to make some new and different, ecologically sustainable choices regarding our ways of living in this wondrous world God blesses us to inhabit?
What kind of a future do we intend for our children? If we keep doing what we are doing now, we could end up leaving our children a world that is unfit for human habitation. The integrity of the Earth and and life as we know it could become dangerously undermined and irreversibly diminished by our current unrelenting efforts to endlessly increase human consumption, production and propagation activities on a relatively small, finite, noticeably frangible planet the size of Earth. Perhaps all of us and our leaders will at least consider that these distinctly human overgrowth activities could be changed by choosing to do less per human consuming, big-business producing and species propagating.
sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
Dear Friends,
Psychological phenomena have held a special place of interest for me over many years. But rather than inject my feeble thoughts as I typically do, perhaps an article with remarkable explanatory power from one of my colleagues in the field of psychology will prove helpful in this discussion.
http://www.energybulletin.net/37091.html
Always,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
we all see what happens when there is a crisis people freak out and kill eachother for what they need for exapmle drowning victims often drownd there rescuers in a state of paninc
Global warming is a reality. However, I doubt there is much we can do about it. Not that I am against green economics and politics, but I say cut down on oil usage so that we have blue skies instead of smoggy ones, cut down garbage production because landfills are ugly, plant trees because forests are pretty. As for food shortages… I think the world can easily produce enough food for 9 billion people to become obese (like most Americans). So it should be able to support 18 billion skinny people. Global warming may be happening but it is not something that you should fear. It is something that you should embrace (Lex Luthor can get his beach front property without using nukes).
About 5 Million people, due to my groups getting a hold of the nukes and biologial weapons. A much larger World War 3, 4 and 5 will be waged and 69.4% to 99.5% of the world Population will be killed off.
The remaining human, animal, insect, plant and wildlife population will be better off and more resistant to various natural disasters. Several hundred years later the human population will once again reach nearly a billion people.
Dear Unibomer,
There is nothing in what you report with which I can agree. Even though human beings are “all-too-human,” we have demonstrated a capability not to destroy ourselves with nuclear weaponry. Of course, relying on past experience is no guarantee of what might happen in the future; but I believe we can handle threats posed to the family of humanity by the malevolent use of nuclear energy.
What does worry me has to do with something within the psyche of the family of humanity that is making it difficult for our community to acknowledge, let alone address, the threat to life as we know it and to the integrity of our planetary home that is posed to humanity in our time by unbridled consumption, production and propagation activities of the human species now overspreading the surface of Earth.
Sincerely,
Steve
Dear Friends,
For just a moment, let us consider how to get to the year 2050………from here and now.
Perhaps we could follow what we already know from good science, reasoning and common sense. We can choose to respond ably and differently, in a more reality-oriented way, to the global challenges before humanity, the challenges that we can manage because they have been induced by the spectacular unrestrained overgrowth of human activities now threatening to engulf the surface of Earth.
Of course, it is fair to ask what the family of humanity could choose to do “ably and differently.” There are several ideas that come to mind.
1) Implement a universal, voluntary program that encourages people to limit the number of offspring to one child per family.
2) Establish an upper limit on the growth of the individual human footprint.
3) Restrict immediately the reckless dissipation of limited natural resources so that the Earth is given time to replenish them for human benefit.
4) Substitute clean, renewable sources of energy, through the use of substantial economic incentives, for the fossil fuels we rely upon now.
5) Recognize that everything human beings do on the surface of our planetary home utterly depend on the finite resources of Earth. One consequence of this realization is understanding that there can be no such thing as an endlessly expanding global economy, given its current scale and growth rate, on a relatively small and noticeably frangible planet the size of Earth.
Godspeed,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http:sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Dear Sansom,
Not to worry. We are getting organized for collective action.
Sincerely,
Steve
In 1996 I wrote a column in my local paper about our overcrowded planet. One reader who disagreed with me wrote in a letter to the editor that the population problem is fraudulent. To show this he pointed out that all 4 billion people in the world could be placed in Oregon, allowing a family of four 2650 square feet. The rest of the world, he indicated, would be “devoid of human life.” I bring this up, because someone else here made this point, although referenced Texas instead of Oregon.
These back of the envelope calculations can be informative, so let’s continue. First, a correction, there were 4 billion people in 1975, there are now 5.6 billion (Remember, this was written in 1996). To provide the 2650 square feet for the Oregonian foursome requires that we throw in Indiana.
Indiana and Oregon are apt to get smelly if we don’t put out the garbage. Where to locate the landfill? Ft. Collins is considering a 320 acre site for its next landfill. Ft. Collins has 100,000 people so it takes 56,000 of them to make the world’s population. Multiplying 320 by 56,000, and dividing the result by 640, the number of acres in a square mile, yields 31,055 square miles – the size of South Carolina. Thank you Dixie.
Assuming the foursome will not stay at home always, what about transportation. Just considering autos, there are 144 million in the U.S. If the average car is 100 square feet, then projecting these car numbers for the world population indicates we need 10,300 square miles of parking. Maryland’s 10,577 square miles is a good fit.
With all these vehicles, we might as well have roads. In the U.S., there are 3.88 million miles of them. If their average width is 30 feet, and noting that we’re building for the whole world, roads fill up Montana and Texas.
Want some light? The Rawhide power plant is 255 megawatts and sits on a large site: the cooling pond alone is 500 acres. Let’s say on average 255 megawatts occupies 500 acres total. Given that the U.S. has about 800 thousand megawatts, and projecting to the world, we need 49,000 square miles. This is the size of New York.
Rather than continue chipping away at the USA by adding stores, schools, manufacturing plants, mining, urban parks, museums and on and on and on, let’s get to some of the biggies.
Food. Of the 3.6 million square miles in the US, 21% is arable land and 26% is pasture. Two thirds of the former and all of the latter is devoted to livestock, either through growing feed or grazing. Taking these numbers and projecting to the world yields 29 million square miles. Oops, there goes the remaining states, Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America, Europe and Africa. What’s left? If we agree to eliminate Antarctica and the serious deserts like the Sahara and Gobi, which total about 11 million square miles, then add Asia, Oceania and Australia, we’re left with 10 million. Of this, half is taken by growing food for human consumption directly, instead of for livestock. Down to 5 million.
Forests anyone? The US is 29% forested, of which 72% is privately owned. Let’s ignore public lands and just use private forests to get lumber, paper, walks in the woods and so on. Private forests cover 756,000 square miles in the US which converts into 15.12 million for the world. There goes the last 5 million and were now 10 million square miles onto Mars.
Okay, what gives? The numbers are approximations, true enough, but they are in the ball park. Without considering thousands of other land uses we easily exhausted the earth’s land surface. Yet somehow there are 5.6 billion people living on the planet. Why the discrepancy?”
The answer is that the estimations assumed American production and consumption for the entire world population – as if the entire world produced and consumed at American levels. Given this assumption, we would need several planets to fit everything. Obviously the assumption is wrong and the presence of 5.6 billion people implies that per capita the vast majority uses far less land than we use.
This skewed use pattern does not apply to land alone, but to numerous key resources. For example, with 5% of the worlds population we consume 33% of the energy. This means if everyone consumed energy as we do, world production would have to increase sevenfold: seven times the coal, natural gas, and oil, and seven times the pollution.
How does all this relate to an overpopulation problem? To claim the world is overpopulated implies that there is such thing as being underpopulated and optimally populated. But how to define these concepts? I’ll offer the following definition: if we cannot bring everyone in the world up to a standard of living similar to Americans, or more modestly, western Europeans, without running out of resources, then we are overpopulated. To suggest otherwise is to either relegate large populations to low living standards or to redistribute wealth in a way that substantially lowers American and western European living standards.
In attempting to improve world living standards, will we run out of resources? There are two frequently made counterarguments. One is the economic reality that scarcity exacts higher prices, and higher prices exact conservation of resources. People will naturally reduce their consumption as prices rise, thereby, stretching the resources we have. True enough, but there is little comfort to be taken. The argument simply means that instead of heedlessly walking along and suddenly falling into a pit of poverty, we will lower ourselves into the pit gradually.
Coupling the economic argument with the second counterargument, that technology will save the day, is more powerful. Technological advances imply doing the same things with fewer resources. Higher prices spur new technologies that encourage substituting abundant resources for scarce resources. Good examples are lighting streets with town gas instead of whale oil in the 1800s, and communicating over glass fiber instead of over copper wires at the close of the 1900s. In the latter example, an abundant resource, sand, replaces a scarce resource, copper.
Counting on technology to steer us clear of the pit is a risky plan. Improving technology will require huge investments in basic research – a popular item to cut these days as public budgets tighten. And as shown above, to bring the world’s people up to reasonable living standards requires that the improvements increase essential goods and services several times over? Will this take one generation, two, three, countless? Suppose we are very lucky and it takes two generations. The world already has a billion people in dire poverty. Most of these people will not benefit, but in 40 years we will have figured how to provide a good life for 5.6 billion people. Unfortunately, in 40 years there will be 10 billion people.
Working to make the world a better place, without seriously addressing population, is treading water.
We really do need to sort this out faster because the “window of opportunity” to address the global challenges soon to be confronted by humanity is beginning to close. While we argue, too little action occurs.
The “powers that be” are evidently in denial of reality and unwilling to openly and honorably express their understanding of what 2000 IPCC Nobel Laureate scientists are reporting with regard to the ominous, distinctly human-induced predicament that is looming before the human community. That many too many economic powerbrokers, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and minions in the mass media adamantly support the soon to become unsustainable global enterprise of endless big-business expansion, come what may, does not favor our children’s well-being or safety, I believe. The talking heads appear to have pledged their primary allegiance and selfish devotion to their benefactors and to the short-term `successes’ of unbridled economic globalization, regardless of the long-term potential for catastrophe that such a recklessly unrestrained and unrealistic pursuit portends. For leaders of the political economy to conspicuously ignore —- much less debunk by using denialists from ideological ‘think tanks’ —- the carefully and skillfully obtained scientific evidence from the IPCC on climate change, and global warming in particular, is an incomprehensible failure with potentially profound implications for a good enough future of our children.
Plainly, what is necessary now is clarity of vision, intellectual honesty, coherence of mind and courage as well as a willingness among leaders to begin “centering” their attention on the probability of human-driven threats to humanity that could soon be posed by the gigantic scale and patently unsustainable growth rate of the over-consumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities of the human species, even now engulfing the surface of the Earth.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
did my comment from the 21 st of aug.make it to get read?