Makuti Lounge: Approaching 7 Billion and Fast

Monday, October 24, 2011

Approaching 7 Billion and Fast

According to the U.N Population fund, by the end of this month we're expected to hit a world population of 7 billion. So why pay attention? After all, a lot more has happened this month than we have time to focus on the population.

Just in the 24 days we’ve seen this month, an earthquake has rocked eastern Turkey and severe flooding has affected Thailand. We lost a technology innovator in Steve jobs and a mad man is dead in Libya, reigniting the Arab spring movement. Tunisia, the country that started it all just had its first democratic elections. Within the US, presidential candidates took off the gloves as the debate turned heated and personal gluing us to our TV sets. Then there’s been numerous stock, commodity and currency market swings to make anyone gag from the uncertainty.

You combine that with what’s happening in our own personal world and there’s little left to think about the global population.

But in a world where the twists and turns will surely continue, 7 billion people on earth is here. Over the coming days, the news channels will be focused on the number and some will blame the number as a sign we’ve overloaded the earth. But are 7 billion people on earth too many? We got to 7 Billion fast.

After hitting our first billion in 1800 we’ve been on a tear clocking a billion more people every 12 to 15 years. Even though it’ll take you more than 200 years to say “Hi” to 7Billion people non-stop, please consider that if we all stood shoulder to shoulder we couldn’t even fill up the city of Los Angeles.

The number isn't the problem and it’s not more space that we need.

Right now in developed countries three quarters of us live in cities with 1million or more people. About half for those of us who live in emerging nations.

100 years ago, there were only 14 cities with 1 million or more people. Today that number is at 83 with 19 of those categorized as megacities (i.e. 10 million or more people). In other words most of us live in a very small section of this earth.

Overall, the population explosion is due to improved health and despite what the news channels shows you, there's been relative peace. I mean you were 35 times more likely to be killed just 100 years ago. And even though the devastation of war looks worse there’s been far fewer wars and resulting deaths overall are way down.

Say what you want but we are living far better than our parents and way better than our ancestors. As a result, the total population will continue to grow and by 2045 we will be at 9 Billion. With that being only 34 years away, most of us will be alive to see that. If it’s not the number and if we are safer now then what’s the problem?

Like anything else in life what we need is balance.

5% of us consume nearly a quarter of the world’s energy.
13% of us don't have access to clean drinking water.
60% of anything that is for consumption is consumed by 12% of us while the bottom one-third of us account for only 3.2% consumption.

The problem isn’t the growing population and the whole notion of forcing underdeveloped countries to quit having children or developed countries to consume less hasn’t and won’t work. The growth curve has been on the same predicted path. In other words, rest assured that children will continue being born at a high rate and consumption of resources will continue to increase in pace.

The problem has always been finding balance and as long as imbalances like those above continue to exist, we will always struggle. Finding solutions is tough stuff and there’s no magic wand to help us solve this. But how do we find balance and what’s the good news with having a large word population?

That I’ll attempt to answer in next week’s blogs. For now, you may be interested to note that in the time it took you to read this article, 1,200 babies were just born.