The World's Population Is Shrinking

About That Overpopulation Problem -- Slate

Research suggests we may actually face a declining world population in the coming years.

The world’s seemingly relentless march toward overpopulation achieved a notable milestone in 2012: Somewhere on the planet, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the 7 billionth living person came into existence.

Lucky No. 7,000,000,000 probably celebrated his or her birthday sometime in March and added to a population that’s already stressing the planet’s limited supplies of food, energy, and clean water. Should this trend continue, as the Los Angeles Times noted in a five-part series marking the occasion, by midcentury, “living conditions are likely to be bleak for much of humanity.”

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WNU Editor: For more info on the world's population growth, go here.

The World Population Is Getting Older

World Faces Ageing Population Time Bomb Says UN -- The Telegraph

The world needs to take urgent action to cope with the impact of a rapidly ageing population, according to a new report, which forecast that the number of people older than 60 would surpass one billion within a decade.

A major study published by the United Nations has warned that the growing numbers of the elderly presented significant challenges to welfare, pension and health care systems in both developing and developed nations.

And it bemoans the fact that skills and knowledge that older people have acquired are going to waste in societies rather than being used to their full.

"We must commit to ending the widespread mismanagement of ageing," said Richard Blewitt, chief executive of HelpAge International, which collaborated on the report, Ageing in the 21st Century.

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My Comment: We have the means to live longer .... and better than our descendents. I regard this as a positive development .... not the UN's line that the world is facing an "aging population time bomb".

The Trends And Impact Of Population Growth

(Click on Image to Enlarge)
Sources: World Bank; U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, U.N. Global Forest Resources Assessment, 2010. Graphic: Dan Keating and Bill Webster/The Washington Post. Published on October 23, 2011, 8:55 p.m.

Population Growth Taxing Planet’s Resources -- Washington Post

Humans have mined resources from the remote and rocky coast of Peru and Chile for more than a century and a half, gathering the guano deposits of seabirds for fertilizer and gunpowder. Those seabirds flourished on anchoveta in the coastal waters, while Peruvians in the highlands ate the same fish as dried snacks.

Now fishing vessels haul 7.5 million tons of the small silvery fish out of the water every year. Almost all the catch is reduced to fish oil and fish meal, which is fed to pigs, poultry and salmon being raised thousands of miles away to satisfy demand in the industrialized and rapidly-growing developing world.

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More News On Mankind Reaching The 7 Billion Population Mark

How Do You Get to 7 Billion People? -- Wall Street Journal
World population will more than double to 15billion by 2100, says UN -- Daily Mail
Crowded earth: Bursting at the seams -- News24
Halloween fright: 7 billion humans -- Mother Nature Network
The global population will reach 7 billion this month; here are 7 things you didn’t know -- Smart Planet
Spiralling population puts the planet at risk -- NZHerald
Why current population growth is costing us the Earth -- Roger Martin, The Guardian
Seven Billion -- Joel E. Cohen, New York Times

Will Changes In Demographics And Population Shift The Power Balance Of The World?

In A World With Seven Billion People, The Power Balance Will Shift -- Hamish McRae, The Independent

Asia and Africa will determine what happens with population growth.

Seven billion. Next week the world's population will, according the UN, reach seven billion and a baby born somewhere in the world will be designated the seven billionth baby – just as Adnan Nevic, now a healthy 11-year-old living in Bosnia, became the six billionth when he was born just after midnight on 11 October, 1999.

There is, of course, a spurious precision about this. We may have passed seven billion already – there are some suggestions we got there three months ago – or if the US Census Bureau is right, it will not happen until next March. But the detail does not matter.

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My Comment: The short answer is yes .... if this population shift is also followed with changes in economic and social conditions. But will this happen? Hmm ... tell me when the population of the world hits 10 billion.

World Population To Reach 7 Billion This Week

Room For One More? World Population To Reach 7 BILLION In Next Few Days -- Daily Mail

* Children most likely to be born in Asia-Pacific region
* Fears over pressure on food supply and medical care

The world's population looks set to smash through the seven billion barrier in the next few days, according to the United Nations.

It comes just 12 years since the total reached six billion - with official estimates saying the figure will top eight billion in 2025 and 10 billion before the end of the century.

And it is most likely the baby will be born in the Asia-Pacific region - where the population growth rate is higher than anywhere else in the world.

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My Comment: Will more people mean more unrest and more wars .... hmmm ....we are going to find out in the next decade or two.

Can We Sustain This?

Growth: A motorcycle carries 6 people in China. The population on the Chinese mainland is around 1.5billion

Population To Hit 7bn By The End Of October With Five Babies Born Every Second -- Daily Mail

A little over a decade ago, the world’s population stood at 6billion. By the end of October, it will reach 7billion.

With five babies being born every second, 78million people are added to the global community each year.

The population was fewer than 1billion in 1800, 3billion in 1960 and 6billion as recently as 1999.

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My Comment: Advances in technology and its wide dissemination is the only way that we can sustain this .... if not .... expect more worldwide unrest, conflict, and wars.

The Coming Population Explosion

Graph From The Economist

Can The World Feed 10 Billion People? -- Raj Patel, Foreign Policy

With an exploding global population -- and Africa's numbers set to triple -- the world's experts are falling over themselves arguing how to feed the masses. Why do they have it so wrong?

The world's demographers this week increased their estimates of the world's population through the coming century. We are now on track to hit 10 billion people by 2100. Today, humanity produces enough food to feed everyone but, because of the way we distribute it, there are still a billion hungry. One doesn't need to be a frothing Malthusian to worry about how we'll all get to eat tomorrow. Current predictions place most of the world's people in Asia, the highest levels of consumption in Europe and North America, and the highest population growth rates in Africa -- where the population could triple over the next 90 years.

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More News On The World's Growing Population

World population to reach 10.1 billion by 2100 -- AP
U.N.: Earth's population to hit 9 billion by 2050, 10 billion by 2100 -- CNN
Rising Sea of Humanity: UN Says Pop. Will Hit 10B by 2100—& Keep Going Up -- Discover
World population to pass 7 billion on Oct. 31-UN -- Reuters
Global population to reach 7 billion this year, UN report says -- Deutsche Welle
U.N.: World population to pass 7 billion on October 31 -- Baltimore Sun/Reuters
World population expected to hit 7 billion in October 2011 -- Xinhuanet
Coming to a Planet Near You: 3 Billion More Mouths to Feed -- New York Times
New Population Projections Show Us Growing Unsustainably, But We Can Put on the Brakes -- Time
UN projects world population of 6.2 to 15.8 billion in 2100 with 10.1 billion midrange -- Next Big Future
Counting to Ten Billion -- Huffington Post
World population projections. Growing pains -- The Economist

10.1 Billion People By The End Of The Century

U.N. Forecasts 10.1 Billion People by Century’s End -- New York Times

The population of the world, long expected to stabilize just above 9 billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, the United Nations projected in a report released Tuesday.

Growth in Africa remains so high that the population there could more than triple in this century, rising from today’s one billion to 3.6 billion, the report said — a sobering forecast for a continent already struggling to provide food and water for its people.

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My Comment: By looking at the above graph, it is easy to see where most of the world's future wars and conflicts will come from .... Asia, Middle East, and Africa. The reason why .... that is where the people are.