With 7 billion people living on Earth, the global demographics experts are considering the planet’s future in space along with the Earth’s human population. However, the global population count could begin dropping in the next few years.

Actress Alexandra Paul thinks couples should either produce one child or have no children. She desires a planet with just 2 billion people, a number reflecting the 1930s. Environmentalist author Alan Weisman’s new book Countdown is dedicated to the scheme that we must stop the human population explosion before we become extinct as a species, according to Annalee Newitz . However, Hampshire College professor Betsy Hartmann rejects the over human population theory facilitating future extinction of humanity. She assess the global population will peak around 10 billion before it levels off. At this number, we will still have resources to give every person water, food, education, and homes, according to Annalee Newitz. In July 2012, the year’s World Population Day was celebrated by a focus on birth control because global elites believe we should slow down our tendency to reproduce ourselves. People concerned about over population require contraception to more easily accessible to women around the globe because “our population is growing rapidly and our Earth is not and something has to give,” according to Open the Word. Actually, something has already given because it took over 120 years for the global population to grow from 1 to 2 billion people. It took roughly 30 years for the human population to reach 3 billion people. When the globe reached 7 billion people in the year 2011, the interval of growth between 6 and 7 billion people was longer than the interval between 5 and 6 billion people. This means that population growth has been slowing. A larger population has been adding fewer children to the Earth, according to SLATE news. China has resists the human practice of producing multiple children. The country’s population could be reduced to half within the next 50 or more years because its population is aging rapidly and the people are not replacing themselves. Europe’s population is decreasing like China, according to IIASA. The average birthrate in Germany, Spain, England, and France is too low to replace the aging European populations, according to the Guardian news and IIASA. Fewer human offspring mean that there are more aging adults dying and no new children coming up to replace them and fewer young workers to pay and care for the aging masses. Analysis of Central and South American countries and African nations show birth rates are decreasing significantly. Mexico’s birth rates have decreased since 2009 and diminished more significantly since 1960. Brazil’s birthrate is down, and IIASA’s World Population Program projects that even Sub-Saharan Africa birth rate will drop to below replacement numbers within the next 60 years, according to CNN and the Washington Post. With its 1.2 billion people, India faces many challenges when feeding and hydrating, housing and clothing, teaching and providing plumbing for nearly 1/5 of the world’s population. By helping mothers have fewer children, experts advocating for human population stabilization hope to reduce poverty and improve the health and economic situation of women and the children they do have. If they are successful in their quest for population reduction, India could decrease its population significantly, according to SLATE news. While it appears easy to worry about the population on the planet when managing public sanitation in New Delhi and providing water for the explosion of humanity in certain regions worldwide, some experts believe that there remains enough room on Earth for more people. From St. Louis, Missouri to Seattle or from Magadan, Russia to Moscow, it appears clear that there is still a vast amount of open space remaining on planet Earth for human occupation. Contrary to the population control arguments, large families are good for planet Earth. Children from large families often manage their resources with serious efficiency. They learn to make the most will less, taking their meals, clothes, and vehicles as far as they can use them. Their experiences practices very little wastes. There is little room for complaining about food they do not enjoy. Their resourcefulness becomes an important and life-long skill. The world’s water problems, sanitation problems, and food production problems could someday be solved by the minds of people who came from large families. Concerns about the planet having too many people are not new. During the late 1950s, when the world population was 3 billion, articles appeared offering solutions for world overpopulation. Dr. Fritz Zwicky, a rocket scientist at the California Institute of Technology, suggested that we use the hydrogen bomb power to build some new Earth-like planets from the useless dead planets moving around the solar system. He believed that we could move planets and planet parts, and he envisioned building rocket ships that would transport humans from one planet to another. His plans were more than naive for a rocket scientist, even in the late 1950s, but it shows that there was a concern about overpopulation even when the planet held fewer people than it does now, according to Google news. Analysis Over population is a myth proliferated by global elites who seek to remove undesirable people from the planet. The real problem with Earth’s population is humankind’s treatment of Earth along humankind’s inhumanity to man. For generations, humankind has employed poor farming practices that have depleted the planet’s soils and lowered its water tables. Human beings have pillaged and destroyed the crops of their enemies, causing hunger even in rainy years. Human beings have allowed thousands of pounds of fruit to fall to the ground and rot in one place while many people starve elsewhere. Human groups goes to war against their neighbors, fighting over land, water, religion, and historical rights rather than finding practical, peaceful solutions. The human problem is not too many people on planet Earth, but we are corrupt and selfish and foolish and evil. When human nature evolves, there will be no overpopulation problems.

8 Comments on "Are human populations increasing or decreasing?"

BillT on Sat, 26th Jan 2013 5:04 am 



“…When human nature evolves, there will be no overpopulation problems…”

When pigs fly, human nature will evolve.

More feel good ideas from the fringe crowd. We do not have the thousands of years to change. We may not even have this century. Climate change is going to drastically reduce the world’s population, by billions. I don’t see us ever exceeding 8 billion ever. Certainly not 10 billion. Not on this planet.

keith on Sat, 26th Jan 2013 5:35 am 



We won’t fix anything. From the get-go, the mantra to the masses should’ve been as follows: if we don’t do something right now then nature will do it for us later. Of course if we did do something I’m sure segments of the population would’ve been screwed by those making the hard decisions, whereas, nature doesn’t discriminate. Makes you root for nature, but I digress.

DC on Sat, 26th Jan 2013 9:14 am 



What a muddle mess of a article, and pushing a clearly ‘more is better’ view on population. I wonder what kind of fantasy world the author lives in? Large families are ‘efficient’? (by necessity its implied). Does that mean the inverse is equally true? Small families are wasteful and in-efficient and squander resources? For no other reason than there are fewer of them?

Kenz300 on Sat, 26th Jan 2013 3:14 pm 



Every problem is made harder to solve with the worlds ever growing population. We add 80 million more mouths to feed, clothe, house, and provide energy for every year.

Around the world we see food crisis, water crisis, declining fish stocks crisis, a financial crisis, a climate change crisis, a jobs crisis and an over population crisis.

Endless population growth is not sustainable and only leads to more poverty, suffering and despair.

If you can not provide for yourself. You can not provide for a child.

SOS on Sat, 26th Jan 2013 4:42 pm 



Zwickey sounds like the crack-pot that proposed peak oil.

Dmyers on Sat, 26th Jan 2013 11:16 pm 



Perhaps Nature is asserting Herself to correct the earthly imbalance caused by human overpopulation. There may be a slow turning from peak to down slope. Any of the usual decimating forces could cause a rapid decline at any time, especially in the highly vulnerable urbanized, high tech state of modern civilization: famine, war, disease, or natural catastrophe (e.g. Yellowstone caldera).

One aspect little discussed in all this is the importance of population growth to our economic history with our particular economic model. Aside from energy or any other important factors that led us from log cabin to modern, insulated, thermostat controlled home, the growth in population was a driving force, which created markets and profits for the creation of our modern paradise. I don’t think we appreciate all the possibilities that come when we turn population growth into population contraction.

I know, the elite population contractionists think robots will do their bidding. No need for all the useless eaters, anyway. But “watch out, you may get what you wished for” may apply here more than we realize.

Kenz300 on Sun, 27th Jan 2013 3:18 am 



Every country needs to balance its population with its resources, food, water, energy and jobs.

As of right now there are billions of people living on less than $2 a day.

We have plenty of people… we do not have enough jobs. Spain has a youth unemployment rate over 50%.

It is just simple math.

Too many people and too few jobs….

Overpopulation is the problem.

BillT on Sun, 27th Jan 2013 4:41 am 



The Black Plague did a fair job in the Dark Ages. Maybe another “Black Plague” only world wide this time? With a million people jetting around the world everyday, how long to spread a really deadly virus like HIV that can be spread by air? No symptoms for months and then…