Sunday, January 31, 2016

Global Human Population: When will it peak?

                                      Comments due by Feb. 7, 2016
There are more than 7 billion people on Earth now, and roughly one in eight of us doesn't 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 world's population—and our use of natural resources—keeps booming.
This week, two conflicting projections of the world's future population were released. As National Geographic's Rob Kunzig writes here, a new United Nations and University of Washington study in the journal Sciencesays it's highly likely we'll 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 Changeprojects 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? We'll 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 changeenergyfood 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.
After all, how many of us there are, how many children we have, how long we live, and where and how we live affect virtually every aspect of the planet upon which we rely to survive: the land, oceans, fisheries, forests, wildlife, grasslands, rivers and lakes, groundwater, air quality, atmosphere, weather, and climate.
World population passed 7 billion on October 31, 2011, according to the United Nations. Just who the 7 billionth person was and where he or she was born remain a mystery; there is no actual cadre of census takers who go house to house in every country, counting people.Instead, population estimates are made by most national governments and international organizations such as the UN. These estimates are based on assumptions about existing population size and expectations of fertility, mortality, and migration in a geographic area.
We've been on a big growth spurt during the past century or so. In 1900, demographers had the world's population at 1.6 billion, in 1950 it was about 2.5 billion, by 2000 it was more than 6 billion. Now, there are about 7.2 billion of us.
In recent years we've been adding about a billion people every 12 or 13 years or so. Precisely how many of us are here right now is also a matter of debate, depending on whom you consult:The United Nations offers a range of current population figures and trends, the U.S. Census Bureauhas its own estimate, and the Population Reference Bureau also tracks us.
The new UN study out this week projects that the world's population growth may not stop any time soon. That is a reversal from estimates done five years ago, when demographers—people who study population trends—were projecting that by 2045, world population likely would reach about 9 billion and begin to level off soon after.
But now, the UN researchers who published these new projections in the journal Science say that a flattening of population growth is not going to happen soon without rapid fertility declines—or a reduction in the number of children per mother—in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa that are still experiencing rapid population growth. As Rob Kunzig wrote for National Geographic, the new study estimates that "there's an 80 percent chance . . . that the actual number of people in 2100 will be somewhere between 9.6 and 12.3 billion."
A History of Debates Over Population
In a famous 1798 essay, the Reverend Thomas Malthus proposed that human population would grow more rapidly than our ability to grow food, and that eventually we would starve.
He asserted that the population would grow geometrically—1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32—and that food production would increase only arithmetically—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So food production would not keep up with our expanding appetites. You might imagine Malthus' scenario on geometric population growth as being like compound interest: A couple have two children and those children each produce two children. Those four children produce two children each tomake eight, and those eight children each have their own two kids, leaving 16 kids in that generation. But worldwide, the current median fertility rate is about 2.5, (or five children between two couples) so, like compound interest, the population numbers can rise even faster.
Even though more than 800 million people worldwide don’t have enough to eat now, the mass starvation Mathus envisioned hasn't happened. This is primarily because advances in agriculture—including improved plant breeding and the use of chemical fertilizers—have kept global harvests increasing fast enough to mostly keep up with demand. Still, researchers such as Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Ehrlich continue to worry that Malthus eventually might be right.
Ehrlich, a Stanford University population biologist, wrote a 1968 bestseller called The Population Bomb, which warned of mass starvation in the 1970s and 1980s because of overpopulation. Even though he drastically missing that forecast, he continues to argue that humanity is heading for calamity. Ehrlich says the key issue now is not just the number of people on Earth, but a dramatic rise in our recent consumption of natural resources, which Elizabeth Kolbert explored in 2011 in an article called "The AnthropoceneThe Age of Man."
As part of this human-dominated era, the past half century also has been referred to as a period of "Great Acceleration" by Will Steffenat 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.
Measuring Our Rising Impact
As a result of this massive expansion of our presence on Earth, scientists Ehrlich, John Holdren, and Barry Commoner in the early 1970s devised a formula to measure our rising impact, called IPAT, in which (I)mpact equals (P)opulation multiplied by (A)ffluence multiplied by (T)echnology.
The IPAT formula, they said, can help us realize that our cumulative impact on the planet is not just in population numbers, but also in the increasing amount of natural resources each person uses. The graphic above, which visualizes IPAT, shows that the rise in our cumulative impact since 1950—rising population combined with our expanding demand for resources—has been profound.
IPAT is a useful reminder that population, consumption, and technology all help shape our environmental impact, but it shouldn’t be taken too literally. University of California ecologist John Harte has said that IPAT ". . . conveys the notion that population is a linear multiplier. . . . In reality, population plays a much more dynamic and complex role in shaping environmental quality."
One of our biggest impacts is agriculture. Whether we can grow enough food sustainably for an expanding world population also presents an urgent challenge, and this becomes only more so in light of these new population projections. Where will food for an additional 2 to 3 billion people come from when we are already barely keeping up with 7 billion? Such questions underpin a 2014 National Geographic series on the future of food.
As climate change damages crop yields and extreme weather disrupts harvests, growing enough food for our expanding population has become what The 2014 World Food Prize Symposium calls "the greatest challenge in human history."
Population's Structure: Fertility, Mortality
Population is not just about numbers of people. Demographers typically focus on three dimensions—fertility, mortality, and migration—when examining population trends. Fertility examines how many children a woman bears in her lifetime, mortality looks at how long we live, and migration focuses on where we live and move. Each of these population qualities influences the nature of our presence and impact across the planet.
The newly reported higher world population projections result from continuing high fertility in sub-Saharan Africa. The median number of children per woman in the region remains at 4.6, well above both the global mean of 2.5 and the replacement level of 2.1. Since 1970, a global decline in fertility—from about 5 children per woman to about 2.5—has occurred across most of the world: Fewer babies have been born, family size has shrunk, and population growth has slowed. In the United States, fertility is now slightly below replacement level.
Reducing fertility is essential if future population growth is to be reined in. Cynthia Gorney wrote about the dramatic story of declining Brazilian fertility as part of National Geographic's 7 Billion series. Average family size dropped from 6.3 children to 1.9 children per woman over two generations in Brazil, the result of improving education for girls, more career opportunities, and the increased availability of contraception.
Mortality—or birth rates versus death rates—and migration (where we live and move) also affect the structure of population. Living longer can cause a region’s population to increase even if birth rates remain constant. Youthful nations in the Middle East and Africa, where there are more young people than old, struggle to provide sufficient land, food, water, housing, education, and employment for young people. Besides the search for a life with more opportunity elsewhere, migration also is driven by the need to escape political disruption or declining environmental conditions such as chronic drought and food shortages.
A paradox of lower fertility and reduced population growth rates is that as education and affluence improves, consumption of natural resources increases per person. In other words, (as illustrated in the IPAT graphic here) as we get richer, each of us consumes more natural resources and energy, typically carbon-based fuels such as coal, oil, and gas. This can be seen in consumption patterns that include higher protein foods such as meat and dairy, more consumer goods, bigger houses, more vehicles, and more air travel.
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 institute's boundaries for biodiversity loss, nitrogen pollution, and climate change.
Those of us reading this article are among an elite crowd of Earthlings. We have reliable electricity, access to Internet-connected computers and phones, and time available to contemplate these issues.
About one-fifth of those on Earth still don't have have access to reliable electricity. So as we debate population, things we take for granted—reliable lighting and cooking facilities, for example—remain beyond the reach of about 1.3 billion or more people. Lifting people from the darkness of energy poverty could help improve lives.
As World Bank Vice President Rachel Kyte told Marianne Lavelle ofNational Geographic last year, "It is energy that lights the lamp that lets you do your homework, that keeps the heat on in a hospital, that lights the small businesses where most people work. Without energy, there is no economic growth, there is no dynamism, and there is no opportunity."
Improved education, especially for girls, is cited as a key driver of declining family size. Having light at night can become a gateway to better education for millions of young people and the realization that opportunities and choices besides bearing many children can await.
So when we debate population, it's important to also discuss the impact—the how we live—of the population equation. While new projections of even higher world population in the decades ahead are cause for concern, we should be equally concerned about—and be willing to address—the increasing effects of resource consumption and its waste.( National Geographic 2014)

18 comments:

Rowan Lanning said...

One of the interesting components of capitalism that has grown apparent in the united states is that when dealing with an issue, the primary response is to control the damage, instead of addressing issues at their root cause or even taking preventative measures to stop problems from occurring in the first place. If something is making us money, we are hesitant to stop or slow the use or development of that thing until it's so big of a problem we can no longer ignore it. Population has been encouraged highly to grow when it wasn't an issue, because the more people a country has, the more power the population would bring. Imperialism and colonies was a way of addressing this issue when the population was much smaller, and the illegalization of birth control, abortion and other family planning methods were spread while simultaneously encouraging couples to have lots and lots of children - often through religious scriptures. The fastest way to grow a movement is through birth. Now that we have such a large global population, it's seen as too controversial to discuss population control outright. As the article suggests, education and improved respect for girls in societies worldwide is a fantastic way to deal with population in a more subtle manner. But should the global population be comforted and shielded from the harsh truths of the world today? Are issues really controversial if they are pressing to the first degree? At what point do the global leaders need to stop protecting the feelings of their populations for the good of humanity as a whole? The greater good is an awful phrase which is too often used to justify horrors, but at what point does the greater good actually outweigh the personal conceptions of a society or person?

Anonymous said...

The fertility rate is important for any population in showing the trend, whether it is decreasing or increasing. Along with affluence increasing possibly raising standard of living increases the life span of people. This will now add technology and have a larger environmental impact.
I feel that this article makes very good points when talking about fertility, but does not talk about how education of women specifically impacts that rate. As mentioned in class the more women who go to college and get advanced degrees and spend more time working and on a career. Along with men who also maybe busy with education and a career, and it is just not a good choice to have children because it will impact decisions made in their careers. Education has become such an important part aspect to our society that I feel that education should somehow be mentioned when talking about population growth and how it can affect fertility rates.

-Andrew Ponticiello

Unknown said...

Fertility rate, morality, and migration is a hugely important topic when talking about population. I think it is so interesting how much it varies from state to state. With issues happening in each environment affecting each one, is very key to population and has a huge impact to the environment.
In more developed nations it's interesting to see how different it is, but also how fertility rate and morality rate really does need to be equal in some sort of way because if not over population will only get worse.But like Andrew said above, it is really important to mention how in developed nations women get more of an education in recent history, and focusing on having a family less. That is important cause that will affect overpopulation in developed areas, in under developed areas it doesn't really affect it much at all, but it is an important think to mention when talking about fertility rates.

Anonymous said...

This is one of those issues where it’s easy to look on from the outside, just reading the raw numbers and saying, “wow, yes, people are having too many children and this needs to stop”. But then when you go back to your personal life, and look at your siblings who each have several children or at the neighbors who have four kids, or yourself and your plans to have two or three children and completely shrug off the notion that we should be going out of our way to plan only for very one, maybe two children, ideally no children at all. I think one way we in developed nations is point to developing nations and their high birth rate. While work should certainly be done to limit birth rate in these nations, it isn’t unreasonable to look inwardly and perhaps start asking ourselves “is it socially responsible to have too many children?”
Reducing fertility rate would need to be an international effort. Those of us using enormous resources need to realize that reallocating those resources to developing nations will directly impact the fertility rate there. Investing in education and jobs for people in nations with high birth rates is one of the best ways to reduce the fertility rate. To make any real impact, it is likely our lifestyles here too will need to change. To address increasing affluence in developing nations, we need to divvy up resources more equally across the world. We in the west can’t afford to use so much when the rest of the world has so little. If resources are distributed more evenly, than the increasing affluence becomes less of an issue (though probably not a non-issue). This might be one reason to take another look at capitalism and how viable is really is in its current form.

-Carl Wojciechowski

Johnny Lopez said...

The topic of population is such a controversial and difficult subject to talk about. Furthermore, it is so extensive and detailed that it is nearly impossible to talk about an environmental issue without touching any direct/indirect influence from population growth. Ideally, to reduce the global footprint, the population growth would have to level-off and start decreasing. However, as the article stated, in order to reduce population growth, affluence would need to rise in developing countries. This may be true, but potentially dangerous. With developing countries' affluence on the rise and developed countries already with a high level of affluence, this can cause another potentially serious problem. In order to restore some sort of balance, developing countries like the U.S. and European countries would need to cut down on their expensive and high-producing fossil fuels lifestyles. This is difficult because the public might not respond positively to these necessary changes. Also population growth has components of culture, economics, biology, religion, among other disciplines, that can potentially influence the decison-making process among the public. To bring it closer to "home", I think population growth is evident within my own family. My mother is the 11th out of 12 siblings, which is ironic because most of my aunts and uncles have decided to keep their families relatively short. I only have one sibling and very few cousins. Growing up in Ecuador, my grandparents were not rich and needed a bigger family in order to support themselves. I think it is important to point that I am not be able to comprehend this mentality, but for people in third-world countries, this is their reality. To conclude, a "perfect" balance between affluence, technology, and population needs to be implemented in order to reduce our footprint.

Anthony Jones said...

In a famous 1798 essay, the Reverend Thomas Malthus proposed that human population would grow more rapidly than our ability to grow food, and that eventually we would starve.

“It’s been 50 years since President John F. Kennedy spoke of ending world hunger, yet on the eve of World Food Day, Oct. 16, the situation remains dire. The question “How will we feed the world?” implies that we have no choice but to intensify industrial agriculture, with more high-tech seeds, chemicals and collateral damage. Yet there are other, better options.”

-Mark Bittman, New York Times

Too many people think we have no choice but to continue to grow food and raise animals using the destructive methods of industrial agriculture. They imply that there are no other alternatives. But a system that pollutes the earth, abuses animals, threatens human health and contributes to global warming has no place on a finite planet. In our current economic system, we are merely wage earners. Because we make money, we think we are independent and can buy everything that we need. The truth is that we’ve actually lost real life skills and self-reliance, becoming dependent on a system that prioritizes profits above all else. In this way, we have allowed big corporations to misuse natural resources and disrupt our food system in the midst of a global population boom. As a result, we painstakingly wait to see how many mouths will really be fed and left hungry when our population reaches an unsustainable 10 billion. Local sustainable agriculture is the alternative to this broken system, serving as a testament that despite global increases in population, we can be food secure and sustainable. Local agriculture will not only ensure people are well fed but will also remove much pressure off of the biggest stressor of our planet, agriculture.

Ralph Green said...

The controversy of overpopulating the Earth has been long discussed topic and I believe that it is a real problem. I see it as the primary example ecologists use for species overpopulation which is a species number grows so much that the habitat can not sustain the increase in population and starvation and destruction occurs. So now you plug in humans as that species and it's as simple as that. One can argue that we are smart enough to prevent this,but just because we think were doing are selves good does not mean were doing our planet and ourselves good. More people also means more pollution and carbon emissions, so for those of you who believe in global warming this means trouble. We must realize that there is only so much we can fit onto our plate.

Unknown said...

One thing that I found interesting in this post is that it states, "...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." This statement basically summarizes the whole article into one sentence. It is very eye opening. Now it has m thinking about 10 years from now. What is going to happen? Most likely less open lands for the animals, but more houses and buildings for humans. When you actually think about it, we are taking over what was once their homes. As the Global Footprint Study said, we are using the equivalent of 1.5 planets for our resources that we use on a daily basis.

Unknown said...

It is insane how much food we waste in this country, when there are hungry people in our country and starving people in many other countries. I do believe that one day we will run out of food. Either that, or we will waste all of our natural resources and the world will be in chaos as to what to do. It is crazy that I am sitting in a room with so many useless, meaningless items that took a bunch of energy to produce, meanwhile people in other countries don't even have electricity. We cannot force people in poor countries to stop having too many children, they need these children to help and work. We have to work on educating everyone in the world with what can be done to help our planet because it's different for every country. It's crazy how every time we talked about preserving the Earth in school people wouldn't care at all. We need to start educating the elementary school children in our country about becoming more sustainable because once they reach high school age, most will be set in their ways.

- Christina Marciante

Unknown said...

One of the major issues on our Earth is overpopulation. Due to overpopulation the world is suffering from global warming, environmental pollution, climate change, a decrease in food and water, depletion of natural resources, and so on. The question many of us are asking is how long can we support the human kind? I find the issue of overpopulation to be extremely concerning. Mostly because no matter what I personally do to work towards adjusting to the situation, I have no control over the dilemma. We as a whole are holding these matters in the palm of our hands. How many of us there are, how many children we have, how long we live, and where and how we live affect virtually every aspect of the planet upon which we rely to survive.
Everything in this world interconnects. In order to reduce the impacts of overpopulation we need to spread as much awareness as possible. One of the first steps is to control birth rates. If birth rates do not decrease, overpopulation will continue to remain an issue. We need to work towards collaborating, becoming fully aware of the dangers of overpopulation, and work towards fixing it.

Erika Anzalone said...

Over consumption and overpopulation are two major occurrences that influence the dynamics of our world and how we use our resources. As the population size increases, the more natural resources are consumed which also means more waste is being released into our atmosphere. We are fortunate enough to have energy which drives or daily life and what we rely on day to day in order to make our living more convenient, but what we don't think about on a regular basis is how much product we are consuming and whether or not we are using an access of material which will be depleted as the years continue. We are overusing our natural resources and we will never get these luxuries back. What needs to be done, is to limit consumption to each and every individual on the planet if we are every willing to turn the page and renew our living standards to help our future generations.

-Erika Anzalone

Kaitlynn Brady said...

Personally, I have always seen overpopulation as the root of environmental degradation. We have been overlooking the growth of out population to the point where it's almost too late. Despite the recent decline in the overall rate of population growth, the earth is still hosting a population that is no longer sustainable and continues to grow. I remember learning about China's one child policy and I was taught to think of how evasive and inhumane it was. Now that I have had time to gain new perspectives and learn about the environmental issues that aren't taught in our public school education system, I have formed a new opinion. If we are unable to regulate ourselves, then there must a system in place to regulate population for us for the sake of our future generations and the sustainability of the earth.

-Kaitlynn Brady

Joseph Santini said...

I believe that overpopulation has already occured, in terms of comfortability. Yes, perhaps we can "sustain" life for "x" amount of years, but what about the quality of life? Due to rapid consumption of resources paired with overpopulation, the general public has been forced to make serious lifestyle changes. Not ones that will better the environemnt, but changes that allow them to react to our world's current situation, in order to live more comfortably. To say that population growth might level out within the next 100 years is a reasonable assumption, as we would no longer have resources to sustain everyone. Some will live and others will die; but at what cost? One,seriously underestimated, fact, is the biological footprint we leave as a society. Population and consumption may be issues that can be tackled, but greater issues impend. As we continue to accumulate waste (from products like coal, the waste would be ash and C02), the bi-products of matter stay in the environment. Once the ozone layers depletes in total; I am hard pressed to beieve that we will find a way to reconstruct it. In my opinion, the population growth will not be relevant in another 100 years, because the planet Earth will be too degraded.

SUET SZE AU said...

Written by SUET SZE AU

Population growth is always a root cause of the environmental problem. Since World War 2, the population has grown drastically, largely because the advancement of technology and people have become wealthier. Nowadays, our population size has already exceeds 7.4 billions and a lot of problems arose, like the food security problem, climate change, pollution and desertification, etc. All these above problems are closely related to population growth. A thing that worth to mention is IPAT, a formula that can show the human impact on environment. The environment impact is related to population, affluence and technology. People in developed countries really have a high- quality life, if they can change their lifestyle and only seek to fulfill basic needs, the environmental problems may be alleviated.

Brian Frank said...

Growing populations are definitely a cocern for our world because we simply can not afford to support the growing population if it continues at the rate it has. First off we will not have enough resources because they aren't completely expendable. We also set a carbon footprint on this earth and if the population grows that footprint will only increase and there's no way we can get rid of that much waste. Another issue is that the more people we have the the less land is available to grow crops to feed a huge population. So one possibility of a peak could simply be due just to not people able to feed the world and the population could drastically drop.
-Brian Frank

Unknown said...

The spread of colonialism is arguable the single worst development for the planet. But that's just my opinion. interestingly this post points out how our population of exponential growth is impacting resources of the planet. I think the aspect of how affluence is proportional to resource consumption is pretty telling. I would also add that currently the statistics of population at 7 billion do not reflect our animal farming population. I have seen documentaries that estimate it at 70 billion.So if the estimation for our population is going to increase by anywhere from 3 to 5 billion in the next 10 to 20 years we can see unless everyone stops eating meat this is gonna be obviously unsustainable. Also if we focus on educating impoverished countries and creating upward mobility for women as a way to slow our human growth wont that increase their overall affluence and thereby encourage greater resource use. Seems like were in a bit of a pickle.

Grace Florian said...

The idea of over-population and population growth is extremely overwhelming. It feels as though we have almost gotten to a point of no return. There are many reasons that the extreme growth of our population can destroy our world. The constant use of resources that we don't necessarily have and, the destruction of the environment due to so many people overcrowding it are only a couple of these reasons. If we want to make a change in order to save future generations and our Earth there needs to be a change. This may include limiting the amount of children to each family, or simply changing the ways in which these families live. Yes, it is important that there be a limit on the growth of population but if we can find a more efficient way for all of these people to live together without destroying the Earth, that is an even better solution.

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