One of the aspects of sustainability that interests me the most, pertains to the studying of world population numbers overtime. Citing the, United Nations Secretariat, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, humanity reached one billion people on planet earth around 1804. Then in 1927, earth reached two billion humans needing only 120 years to add another 1 billion people. Surprisingly enough however, in another 33 years by 1960 earth reached 3 billion people. This was followed by another 14, 13, and 12 year growth span in 1974, 1987, and 1999 to where the population increased from 3 billion to 6 billion people. This shocking rate of growth would appear to be infinite for individuals looking at population trends in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Due to the study of sustainability and understanding the concept of a carrying capacity however, it becomes clear that this population growth is not an example of exponential growth but rather, very carefully instructed growth that will keep doing adding numbers to the population until the resources of earth are stretched to their limit, and we fail to provide adequate tools necessary to expedite and accompany the increase in population. At this time, we will realize that humanity is growing very specifically and within a very specific range of comfortability.
3 thoughts on “World Population Increase”
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This is very interesting. These numbers really put the global population into perspective. It is scary to think that the population will continue to increase at this carefully instructed growth until the earth runs out of resources.
These are some cool statistics, but it would be really cool to see what you could predict as the number that could potentially be the number at capacity. Are we close to capacity, and what do you thin will happen when we hit capacity? Will the Anthropocene cease to exist?
I found this really interesting, especially seen as though it seems like the worldwide population is nowhere near plateauing or slowing its growth. The idea that it this growth is somehow controlled and within parameters can, in some sense, be comforting. Of course, some time in the future we will have to face the consequences of unmitigated population growth under the guise of diminished resources.