Headcount on Mother Earth Hits 7 Billion Today!
Word has it that sometime during the 24 hours marking this Halloween the world population will officially break the 7,000,000,000 barrier. How spooky is that?
Before midnight tonight, October 31st, the seven billionth baby will be born, according to the “State of World Population 2011” report published by the United Nations. Want to put that into perspective? From the beginning of mankind, we didn’t reach the one billion point until about 1800. And as recently as 1959 there were only three billion people on the planet. That means the population has grown by 233% in a mere 52 years!
Every year the globe is adding some 80 million folks—that’s like an entire country the size of Germany, which has the 14th largest population. The sketch to the right shows the hockey stick rate of increase in human beings.
Consider the prediction that the United States alone will grow by 100 million people in the next 40 years. Today our population is closing in on 313 million. Mexico has nearly 108.5 million. So it’s sort of like we’ll be stuffing the whole of Mexico into our borders over the next four decades!
David Walker coined the phrase, “Demographics are destiny.” The headcount on Mother Earth, and in the U.S., will shape our future in powerful fashion.
Better study the demographics of population growth so you have a sense of what’s coming!
