11/1/11 (or 1.11.11) – crazy date today! And most likely we’ve also crossed the 7 Billion mark in earth’s human population and we’re now gunning it for the 8 Billion mark sometime around 2020. Is it time to panic? Depends on which estimate in the graph below becomes a reality.

The reality is also that the rate of growth of human population has steadily decreased over the years. In most of the world, more and more parents decide to have fewer children. Empowering women in particular, and giving them access to birth control are critical factors for this trend.

However, population growth in and of itself is not the key problem we’re facing.  The single biggest problem standing in the way of a sustainable human population on this planet is the massive and disproportionate use of resources of a fairly small portion of the human population:

Reducing the total footprint of the human population means we – who live in rich consumer societies – have to cut back dramatically our overuse of resources. That, even more than overall population growth is the real challenge.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 at 11:11 am and is filed under Mother Earth, word up. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.