2050: What Will the Earth's Population Be?

On a planet that is so markedly divided between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’, population growth is often seen as a massive problem. At the end of 2007 it was announced that the planets population had reached approximately 6.7 billion people. A common estimate also suggested that by 2050 the planets population would reach 9 billion people.

However, according to the Worldwatch Institute, a nonpartisan Washington research group, there is absolutely no confidence in that number any more.

The report points to the massive variability in fertility rates worldwide as the reason for this. There are simply too many factors to pin on too many people to arrive at a conclusion worthy of recognition. For pessimists, this only adds fuel to their fires of fear that Earth will be overrun.

There are a veritable multitude of factors that have brought researchers to this conclusion. Amidst the factors exists a mass of contradictions.For example, there is a massive contradiction in the fact that families continue to shrink in number and in size, yet there are near-record levels of birth. This is easily explained by the simple fact that there are now more women of childbearing age then there was. Consider that in 1970 there were only 856 million women aged between 15 and 49; however in 2007 that number had skyrocketed to 1.7 billion.From the report:

Only the future growth of the reproductive-age population is readily predictable, however: all but the youngest of the women who will be in this age group in two decades are already alive today. But sustaining further declines in childbearing and increases in life expectancy will require continued efforts by governments to improve access to good health care, and both trends could be threatened by environmental or social deterioration.

The uncertain future of these factors makes population growth harder to predict than most people realize. So much makes up the population statistics of our planet. There are enumerable reports showing that there is enough fresh water and food for the entire planet, but once again the richer countries abuse that. Even then, it is the poorer nations that often have larger families.

Posted by Josh Hill.

Related Galaxy posts:

Dr Strangelove Two? -Cambridge Astrophysicist Gives Earthlings a 50/50 Chance of Making it Through the Century
The Language of the Future: Harvard Mathematicians Break the Code
Predicting the Future -A Galaxy Insight
The Final Century -Video Classic
The "Hawking Solution" -Will Saving Humanity Require Leaving the Planet?
Bigger Threat than Global Warming -Mass Species Extinction
Coming of Age in the Holocene
Robots Rising -Scientists are Worried
Ghost Map -Scientists Unlock Secret of 1918 Pandemic

Links:

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/earth-2050-population-unknowable/
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5645

Comments

[Jane Woods]

Hmm, I would say somewhere between Bursting at the seams, and totally insane!

Jane
www.privacy.de.tc

[mark twain]

who cares?

[john]

Anybody who thinks that we'll be fine if the population doubles is simply delusional. Unless of course, we somehow manage to grow corn, or find oil, for example, at the same exponential rate that we are growing. Even today many countries are starving, yet they're multiplying even more condemming their children to a literal living hell. Sooner or later common sense will have to prevail and we'll have to stop behaving like rabbits. Law and order will have to impose control on births, not unlike law and order put controls on, say commuters. It's called the "transit system". Long gone are the days when people would hop on a horse and go directly to their destination. Today we have a SYSTEM of logical laws and regulations that ensure that we can all travel from one place to another. By the same token, the days of completely chaotic reproduction must end with some sort of SYSTEM that makes sense and will prevent further suffering.

[CSinMN]

In the article, the pessimist thinks the earth will be over run. The realist knows that nature will balance itself all on its own. Should happen right about the time we start running out of clean water.

[samuel clements]

@mark twain

you're a dick. a real dick. everyone should care because it affects us all. it's attitude's like that that is getting us in this mess.

[Free Apple iPhone]

Well we'll see how it turns out. there's no point in trying to predict it, if it's unpredictable.

[George]

0... zilch... nada...

[Frank Glover]

John, the thing is, the example you gave is far easier to *enforce.*

You could concievably outlaw cars, leaving mass transit (or bikes) the only alternative, but just how do you prevent (not simply discourage or give disincentives, but outright *prevent*) people from making babies? How, exactly, would that SYSTEM work?

[john]

George.. That's the challenge. Take for example cancer or aids, today we all agree that it must be solved, therefore there's a global effort to find the solution. There's efforts and attempts to corner it, but no "perfect bullet" - yet. Overpopulation in this analogy would be the "cancer", yet (nearly) nobody wants to even see it for what it is, the root/initial cause of many evils on earth.
So this is the challenge: what SYSTEM works for us in the West? What SYSTEM works for the poor african farmer whose land can only sustain a few?
Just like cancer or aids there's no easy, cheap, quick solution, but if enough people start thinking and realizing what we're doing to ourselves, then perhaps we'll begin looking for a solution - let alone putting something in place. Sadly, until that happens millions of people, men, women and children will die miserably directly and indirectly as a result.

We also did not go suddenly from riding horses to a full-fledged law-enforced transit system in a few years. This took decades of development and getting used to. By the same token, I think an even more gradual approach is best here because people's customs and behavioural aspects are on the line. I believe you cannot enforce prevention, like aids for example, but *everything* is affected so negatively that something must be done about it.

[Gordon Freeman]

The Combine have placed suppression fields that prevent humans from being able to reproduce.

[Pete Murphy]

Rampant population growth threatens our economy and quality of life. I'm not talking just about the obvious problems that we see in the news - growing dependence on foreign oil, carbon emissions, soaring commodity prices, environmental degradation, etc. I'm talking about the effect upon rising unemployment and poverty in America.

I should introduce myself. I am the author of a book titled "Five Short Blasts: A New Economic Theory Exposes The Fatal Flaw in Globalization and Its Consequences for America." To make a long story short, my theory is that, as population density rises beyond some optimum level, per capita consumption of products begins to decline out of the need to conserve space. People who live in crowded conditions simply don’t have enough space to use and store many products. This declining per capita consumption, in the face of rising productivity (per capita output, which always rises), inevitably yields rising unemployment and poverty.

This theory has huge implications for U.S. policy toward population management. Our policies that encourage high rates of population growth are rooted in the belief of economists that population growth is a good thing, fueling economic growth. Through most of human history, the interests of the common good and business (corporations) were both well-served by continuing population growth. For the common good, we needed more workers to man our factories, producing the goods needed for a high standard of living. This population growth translated into sales volume growth for corporations. Both were happy.

But, once an optimum population density is breached, their interests diverge. It is in the best interest of the common good to stabilize the population, avoiding an erosion of our quality of life through high unemployment and poverty. However, it is still in the interest of corporations to fuel population growth because, even though per capita consumption goes into decline, total consumption still increases. We now find ourselves in the position of having corporations and economists influencing public policy in a direction that is not in the best interest of the common good.

The U.N. ranks the U.S. with eight third world countries - India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, Ethiopia and China - as accounting for fully half of the world’s population growth by 2050. It's absolutely imperative that our population be stabilized.

If you’re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, I invite you to visit my web site at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com where you can read the preface, join in my blog discussion and, of course, purchase the book if you like. (It's also available at Amazon.com.)

Please forgive the somewhat spammish nature of the previous paragraph. I just don't know how else to inject this new perspective into the overpopulation debate without drawing attention to the book that explains the theory.

Pete Murphy
Author, "Five Short Blasts"

[Gordon Freeman]

Might I just add, I just farted!

Pete Murphy
Author, "Five Short Blasts"

[kacey]

um well i think there is 9,000,800,798,795,5666999230776347659248765 people in this world and i just made up this number

[ItWillBalance]

While I think it matters and we should consider trying to fix it, nature is already looking into that. Once we outgrow our ability to feed ourselves we start starving, by the millions and then 10's of millions.

If we understand what is happening we can at least change for the future but it seems clear that no one is going to allow their "god given" right to have as many damn children they want.

You make a decision to have children, they are not "gifts"

[ganeshbrhills]

While the RATE of growth of population has differed
from century to century, the population has always been on the increase. Unless we kill each other by using Nuclear weapons, my guess is:

15 billion by the year 2050, give or take a couple!

[Mark]

Remember the Catholic Church? Recall their anti-life efforts in Africa along with nations where Christianity is the majority? The anti-life efforts I'm talking about are the opposition of birth control AND abortion. You must talk about the church when you discuss population control. If you ignore their insane directives, edicts, bulls and discussions, you ignore a significant portion of the reason why we have this issue. Ignoring medieval philosophy and value systems in the modern world is amoral. AMORAL.

[Saudi]

The problem is sex.

[Frank Glover]

"who cares?"

Anyone who expects to be around (or those they care about) in 2050 should. I'll be 96 at that time, yet I'm planning on it...

[SaneScienceOrg]

Zero.

[George Bush]

Clearly the planet will deal with the Human problem just as it has dealt with other species in the past. The way that the Earth deals with Overpopulation is by Mass Extinction and we are overdue for this event.

It is not a tragic event that the Human population must perish since we are little more than parasites on the small round rock called Earth.

Truthfully I pray everyday for Humanity to wiped out in it's entirety. Comets, Disease, Super Volcanic Eruptions, Loss of Atmosphere, Lack of Food.... I don't care which one or if it's all of the above if it happened tomorrow I'd still think it was a couple thousand years too late!!

Thank You for reading.

[William MacLeod]

I hope that horses, cowboys, rodeos, and tie-down calf roping and making the videos of rodeo will be going on forever, and I hope rodeos go on forever in the 21st century and all the way to the 100th century, and I hope horses and rodeos and cattle will be around forever. I hope movies will be around forever. I hope laptops and computers will be around forever and also I hope the calgary Stampede goes on for a lot of years forever as in 2050.

[Jon H]

How about you go back to 7th grade and learn to label your graphs, then come back and write an article like an adult?

[Jason Whitlock]

LOL, do you really think the earth will still be here in 2050??

Whit
www.web-privacy.us.tc

[Vern Baker]

I would be surprised if its much higher than 5 billion in 40 years time.

[0gogo]

And food enough for all?