I was pondering a little factoid about world population today. Any day now, there will be 7 billion people living on the planet. It wasn’t so long ago when there were only half as many; in 1968, there were about 3.5 billion. No wonder the world seems to have changed so much over this time. <\/p>\n
Even though most population growth has occurred in the developing nations, communications and transportation technology have brought every corner of the planet closer and closer together in terms of every day life. You can’t have a nice suburban life in America these days without worrying over affairs in Iran, Syria, Yemen, Somolia, Japan, Greece, Haiti, the Congo — you name it. And as Neil Diamond once sang, “They’re Comin’ to America”; you can’t go to the local supermarket without standing in line next to people from all corners of the world, often on a cell phone speaking their native tongues with some relative in Moscow, Karachi, Santiago or Singapore, waiting to put their diapers, chips and Pepsi on the checkout belt. <\/p>\n
Up until about 1900, an average person living to age 70 could not expect to see a doubling of the world’s population. However, for the 1900 millennium child, world population went from 1.6 billion to 3.2 billion by 1965. A baby boomer born in 1950 will likely live through a tripling of population; 2.4 billion in 1950, and 7.6 billion expected in 2020. According to today’s forecasts, kids born since 1990 will not see a doubling in their lifetimes; world population is expected to level out between 9 and 10 billion after 2050. <\/p>\n
The Occupy movement is fond of citing the unfairness of a super-affluent 1% of American population versus a struggling-to-hold-on 99%. But on a world-wide basis, the majority of Americans would be in the top 10%, and even the most destitute would be in the upper 50%. I’m just putting things into context on an international basis.<\/p>\n
Back in 1968, I remember talk about the crisis of world population growth. But no one then would have guessed that population would double in 45 years without rampant starvation and political turmoil. For now, the world seems to be holding together, although many thoughtful and informed people wonder if this is sustainable — or are things going to get ugly before long (e.g. famines, mass refugee movements, revolts and wars due to accelerating global warmth and climate change). <\/p>\n
I hope that technology and human wisdom will prevail over the darker aspects of our species, and that 10 billions humans can reach a relatively stable and workable accommodation with one another. Like rats, we do tend to get a bit nutsy when too many are forced into a small cage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was pondering a little factoid about world population today. Any day now, there will be 7 billion people living on the planet. It wasn’t so long ago when there were only half as many; in 1968, there were about 3.5 billion. No wonder the world seems to have changed so much over this time. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2605"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2607,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2605\/revisions\/2607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}