The Future of Earth’s Population

As you can see from this graph, the world’s population has dramatically increased over the last 500 year, and if the population continues to increase at this rate, in less than 100 years the world population may reach over 70 billion, yes SEVENTY BILLION.

But first of all, there are several factors that could stop the population reaching this number.

1. Obviously, food supplies could run out
2. A pandemic may break such as Aids or Bird Flu, or perhaps a completely new disease which we have no knowledge of, causing a huge dent in the worlds population, like the black plague did.
3. Water, the worlds water supply may run out
4. Linked to the previous, War. If there is a World War Three, this could quite likely be over water, and if it became a nuclear war, if America and Russia use just 10% of their nuclear power, it would be enough to cause a nuclear winter, and most likely wipe out all humanity.

If Earth’s population did reach 70 billion and beyond, what effects would this have?

• Not enough space?
• Limited food supply?

Well research has shown that Earth could quite well deal with 70 million, people, Even 700 Million! Of course a lot of change and sacrifice would have to be made. Some possibilities
Give the Earth 24/h sunlight. America has the technology to make this happen, it seems very sci-fi, but near 100 years ago, the Right brothers were making the first aircraft, 100 years later, we have landed on the moon, we have internet, TV, tickets to fly into space are being sold. It’s not that unrealistic considering the achievements of humanity over the last 100 years. 24/hours sunlight would significantly increase crop growth, allot more food.

EVERYONE becomes vegetarian; raising livestock, to be frank is a hugely inefficient use of land. Cattle for example, they take many acres and we grow a lot of food just for them to eat, to produce a very small amount of food in comparison to what we would grow if we used all that land for crops. No, I didn’t like the idea either, but if the Earth is to reach such large population that might well be one of the sacrifices we would have to make.

Overcrowding – not really a problem, remember China and India themselves hold around 1/3 of the world’s population, and most of China live on the East coast anyway, there’s plenty of land to be used.