World Population

World population....
Current mood: confused

Population growth..that's what scares me...this is not a joke, just some
facts I picked up from from wikipedia


The world population is the total number of humans alive on the planet
Earth at a given time. According to estimates published by the United
States Census Bureau, the Earth's population hit 6.5 billion on
Saturday, February 25, 2006. In line with population projections, this
figure continues to grow at rates that are unprecedented prior to the 20th
century. Approximately one fifth of all humans that have existed in the
last six thousand years are currently alive. By some estimates, there are
now one billion (thousand million) young people in the world between the
ages of fifteen and twenty-four.

(This incidently, means, that there are more people currently alive on the
planet, than the total of everyone who has died....! How freaky is that!
This puts paid to the reincarnation theory for me..)

The last 70 years of the 20th century saw the biggest increase in the
world's population in human history. The following table shows when each
billion milestone was met:
1 billion was reached in 1802.
2 billion was reached 125 years later in 1927.
3 billion was reached 34 years later in 1961.
4 billion was reached 13 years later in 1974.
5 billion was reached 13 years later in 1987.
6 billion was reached 12 years later in 1999.
From the figures above, the world's population has tripled in 72 years,
and doubled in 38 years up to the year of 1999.


So in other words, it took 50,000 years for the population to grow from
say 0 to 1 billion. Then it only took 125 years to go from 1 to 2
billion, and so on and so on. This despite the fact that that the 20th
century was the bloodiest ever in terms of death by other than natural
causes.
WW1 killed approx 22 million
the great flu epidemic killed 25 million
WW2 killed approx 20 million
Stalin killed over 30 million peasants between 1939 and 1955
It is alleged that Mao Tse tung caused the premature deaths of over 70
million Chinese between 1950 and 1976.

So. what would've happened if all these people had not died prematurely????

There have been no massive disasters on this scale since the late 60s.
Nothing has happened to significantly reduce the world population, apart
from new "1 child laws" in China, and enforced vasectomies in India.

What does the future hold????
If we look at Darwinian theory - it says that any population will only
increase whilst there are abundant resources, as soon as the population
outstrips the resources, then massive cutbacks in population are
inevetable.
I think this will happen, not in 1000 years time nor 100 years time. I
think this will happen in our kids' lifetime!!! Scary.....