



A tale of three islands

The world’s population will reach 7 billion at the end of October. Don’t panic

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If overpopulation is so bad then why are countries not limiting the number of people in their countries (besides China of course). Russia and Italy are actually in population decline and the countries are doing everything they can to turn it around. More people mean more power--both economic and physical for a state. More people--more ideas--more of a chance for innovation. Sure if we keep doing the same things to the globe as we currently are things would be bad, but change will come as the population develops.



What you are currently seeing is not overpopulation. By the year 2100 the world population is expected to peak at 11 billion people. And in any case, that number will decline slightly to maybe 10 billion as the demographic time-bombs of Europe, Japan, and China are finally over. I believe at the end the world population will be like that of the US: It will have a fertility level just above replacement level, and we can rest easy with the fact that the population of the world remains unchanged.

We do need to clean up our act, seriously. We are reducing the resources of the Earth with our phenomenal waste, making the situation worse for future generations. The true problem is not the population, this is not Coruscant from Star Wars, the true problem is that we are sloppy about how we treat the Earth.

Also, by 2100 or so, we will have the technology to ship some people to Mars. There's plenty of space over there.


It is astonishing to see that the world's population will soon reach 7 billion people. This is a huge amount of people and I'm sure some will extremely worry about how we can all survive much longer in the world. Although we are reaching such a huge number, the reproduction rate is slowing down and people are still dying. Some might say in order to slow the birth rate down, under civilized countries especially in Africa need the proper items to stop having children. It is awful to see how many children are dying there and yet there are so many children being born! Hopefully, like this article says, people won't panic and we can continue on with life.


Whether the world population can stand on Maui or will need a bigger one, is absolutely irrelevant to whether seven, ten or even 15 billion people can be sustained on this planet. Every person needs land and water for growing food, shelter, recreation and absorbing waste - our ecological footprint. (And so do other species, let's not forget them.)And as we grow, the 11 billion hectares that are available get divided into smaller and smaller parcels for each person. The only time this article came close to appreciating biophysical realities was with respect to food and even then it did not fully appreciate the extent to which agriculture is dependent on oil, a finite resource that has passed peak production and will only get more expensive as it becomes more scarce. Natural gas, too, is a finite resource and we need it for fertiliser production but even now it is becoming very expensive. Farmers here in Australia are using it more sparingly which in turn affects yields. Oil, natural gas and minerals are one lot of limits that we are running up against. Another limit is land, already mentioned, and that has already manifest itself in country's like China buying up large tracts in other countries to ensure food supplies back home. The third limit is 'sinks', that is, those parts of the biosphere that absorb our wastes, not least of course is the atmosphere absorbing our carbon dioxide. The climate is changing because we have exceeded that particular limit. In summary, given that we passed the biological carrying capacity of the Earth back in 1979 and have been in a state of overshoot ever since, we need to stabilise numbers as quickly as possible and get our numbers back below five billion. But if we are to lift the poor out of poverty, our numbers need to be even less than that, to two billion at most.


Its time to really read the approaches to solutions available to us now that the population bomb has exploded and the shockwave broadcast by The Economist.

One strong approach is based on 30 years of work done by Dennis and Donella Meadows and Jorgen Randers since their graduation from MIT Sloan. Consistently based on factual evidence, and consistently attacked by many for whatever flaws, the simulations in these System Dynamics models are profound and the outcomes equally worthy of careful attention.

Limits to Growth, 30 year update


I'd like to note that it's funny how overpopulation only comes up when the number of people reaches an arbitrary level like 7 billion. There won't be any shift when we reach that mark; things will be the same. And we shouldn't panic.

There will be a point when I don't think we'll be able to sustain ourselves and the population will begin to fall. And actually, we do have enough food to feed everybody, it's *distribution* that's the problem. For now, we need to seriously encourage birth control and family planning. There are probably already too many people on this planet, and we are exhausting the resources we have like there's no tomorrow.

Hey I'm not panicking. 7 Billion, 8 Billion people will not really affect me directly. I wont be around when it hits 10 billion so I am not worried. The world will come up with a way to accommodate all those people when the time comes. Its just a matter of being civilized about it, thats what I would be worried about it if I was truly concerned.


Your 10/22/10 article “the world’s population will reach 7 billion at the end of October. Don’t panic” seems to dismiss this dangerous next few decades transition period while the surging 9.3 billion humans of 2050 will continue to ravage our irreplaceable non renewable resources.

To be undaunted about the prospect of our untidy planet being able to avoid an apocalypse as this bulge of human devolves into a lower number seems infinitely naive. Particularly when so little money coupled with serious efforts to deliver family planning services to all who want them could make the transition from 7 billion to a lesser number and mute some of the ill effects which your article also kindly notes. What the world lacks most now is strong leadership espousing such expenditures.

Ron in New Hampshire

The population of the planet is increasing by about one million people every five days. We may talk of “a slowing growth rate”, or the need for more young workers to support an aging population, but the fact remains that there will be 200,000 more souls on earth tomorrow than there are today. Reasonable people may disagree as to how many is too many, but it should be clear that we cannot increase our population indefinitely.
More people means more use of resources and less open space.
The idea of needing more young workers to support an aging population is a "Ponzi Scheme" in the truest sense. Those young workers will age and need more young workers to support them, and on and on.

Pali nalu

Everyone on earth standing in Zanzibar or Maui or Los Angeles? For starters, there is not even enough OXYGEN in the column of air defined by the perimeters above Zanzibar to allow such numbers to even BREATHE for more than a few minutes, if that. The point being that the carrying capacity of the earth has nothing whatever to do with standing shoulder to shoulder in Zanzibar or anywhere else and trying to subsist on the air that lies in the column directly above.

The carrying capacity of the earth for a modern industrialized humanity (which is on the order of TWO billion or less) is not defined by open-space nor GDP or quarterly earnings. Nor is it solely a matter of supplies of food, or water, oil, or similar "running-out-of" suppositions. One "limiting factor" that is often underestimated is humankind's massive, never-ending, and EVER-INCREASING daily avalanches of societal and industrial WASTES that we empty each day, year after year, into earth's finite environments, atmosphere, and seas. And still another critical limiting factor arises from the sheer worldwide levels of eradication of and sheer levels of ongoing damage that we inflict upon the ONLY planetary life-support machinery so far known to exist anywhere in the universe.

(No rational astronauts, for example, would ever dream of dismantling, destroying, and eradicating huge and ever-growing percentages of their vehicle's navigation, propulsion, and life-support systems that maintain their lives in space - and the rest of us would never eradicate, destroy, or degrade 70, 80, and 90% of the operating systems of our automobiles and then expect them to continue to operate as they have always done in the past. Why should we suppose that the earth's biospheric life-support machinery is invulnerable?)

IMHO, this article underscores the dangers of permitting economic theorists to make planetary and environmental assessments. We are now at seven billion and were already adversely impacting earth's life-support machinery back in 1987 at five billion. And the U.N.'s high-fertility trajectories show us headed toward as many as 15.8 billion by the end of this century. These numbers not only add to humankind's already extreme J-curve trajectory, but 15.8 billion by century's end is the demographic equivalent of a collision trajectory with a near-earth asteroid.


Poor China? With the fastest growing economy in the world and the fastest accumulation of wealth per person, their policy of slowing population growth is clearly a liability? The author's logic is sophist at best.

cotton grass

The complacency expressed in the October 22nd article on a world population of 7 billion and still growing is made possible by almost complete neglect of the environmental impact of those now alive. When 80% of the world's fisheries are now full exploited (Science Oct 7 Vol 334 p 33, the total number of vertebrate species has declined 40% in 30 years (ibid), and, in the words of the eminent ecologist George Woodwell, " the totality and integrity of life is now threatened by systematic impoverishment" any further increase in population is cause for deep concern. "Demographic dividends" and increased agricultural productivity offer feeble support for optimism.

Frosty Wooldridge

Upon rereading this piece about "Don't Panic!" about humanity overwhelming this planet at 7 billion as it heads to 10 billion, I feel my own rage growing as to the incredible inability of this writer and magazine to understand the enormous consequences our species faces in the coming decades. You talk about our populations declining after we hit 10 billion. You don't understand that we are setting in motion gargantuan upsets in the natural world that will render a whirlwind of environmental collapse in the decades to come. We're already killing off 100 species per day in 2011. Think about how many millions of our fellow creatures will parish at 10 billion of us. We need a worldwide meeting of countries to begin the task of reducing humanity via one child per woman around the world before Mother Nature does it for us. When we combine Peak Oil, Peak Water, Peak energy, Peak pollution--we are creating the Perfect Storm for our demise as a species on this finite planet. Frosty Wooldridge


Sadly, this essay reads like a novel with a silly premise. One could also stuff every fatal virus and bateria in a single jar - a small jar whose contents would be sufficient to destroy an entire species. Moreover, one could suggest that a tiny little button, and one finger could target nuclear weapons worldwide. Volumetrics and demography are not rational bedpartners.

When I toured the U.S. in the mid-1990's doing interviews for my newly released book, World War III: Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium, I heard from one irritated caller that everybody on Earth was welcome to come settle in Texas, where there was lots of room. About that time, the Pope was suggesting that he would be happy to share his breakfast table with forty billion people (inspite of what the majority of Sancta Sedes scientists were telling his Holy Father). United Nations demographic projections have gone haywire, as we now stare into a loaded weapon of 10 billion plus, not 9.1 or 9.2 billion human consumers sometime later in this century.

What the essayist misses is the fact that while total fertility rates have dropped, the youth demographic profile in most countries, compounds to make a large population momentum (think of ozone continuing to rise and remain in the upper stratosphere long after the discontinuance of CFCs. The demographic short-, mid-, and long-term outlooks are grim, if you are even remotely schooled in what over-population means: deleterious impact on every ecosystem. Nothing good has ever come, ecologically speaking, of human meddling with nature. Given the (not unreasonable) hopes shared by all of us for dignified lifestyles, an end -obviously- to hunger and chronic malnutrition; and an end to the suffering and hardships of billions of people; an end to the cruelty meted out in the name of human prosperity to nearly 100 billion other terrestrial vertebrates, and possiblly as many as one trillion marine creatures (fish, mostly) - all consumed by people, the environmental calculus is neither awe inspiring nor welcome. It is disastrous.

Most of the high-biodiversity areas of the planet (hotspots, coldspots, megadiverse regions) have been at least partly, if not mostly, plundered by our kind. Brasil's Atlantic Rainforests, once harboring some of the greatest, most extensive biodiversity in the annals of 4 billion years of global biology, have been drawn, quartered, scraped and burned such that fewer than 6% of the original paradise remains. The same can be discerned at a glance in at least 35 of the major biological hotspots across the planet. Humanity's NPP -Net Primary Production, that percentage of the planet that we have usurped in one form or another for exploitive wants (not necessarily needs) is well over 50% of the terrestrial earth. Nearly every fishery has been devastated.

And while economic bubbles burst worldwide as humanity's unreal expectations of high-end consumerist fantasies escalate, a little noticed phenomenon is also escalating (first pointed out by Dr. Norman Myers, and Dr. Paul Ehrlich,,) namely, that we are losing on average "42,000 populations" every single day.

Moreover, we are seeing - in this Sixth (solely human-induced) Extinction Spasm, the loss of possibly hundreds of species every day, as well, hundreds-of-thousands per year, though the vast majority of them will go unnoticed by legislators, or even biologists -as funding for field research dissipates in most countries, while science education, and direct experience with wild animals and plants becomes a thing of the past for most students, replaced by digital surrogates and other distractions.

Converting human demographics into biodiversity loss is the divining rod of what we have done, namely, failed to live up fully to the dream of a mature, non-violent, restrained and sapient human nature. Part of the problem is that very few politicians or their advisors are willing to discuss population stabilization. The United States has no official population policy, while many nations remain pro-natalist, yielding easily accessed data that shows TFR -Total Fertility Rate - numbers far in excess of what it will take to put the breaks on this population explosion we are witnessing - what author Boris Pasternak, in a different context, referred to as a train roaring through a dark tunnel, out of control, with its headlights turned inward, or words to that effect. Or, in another witty paraphrase, recall the air pilot who announces mid-flight, Folks the good news is we are way ahead of schedule; the bad news is, we are lost.

Dr. Michael Tobias


Typical of "economists" who promote "growth" which is nothing but continual per-capita diminution in land, space, water, resources, etc. per person. We keep shrinking our per-capita estates, passing on an evermore crowded world to the next generation, and inviting-producing the worst of worlds. We need an ethic of balance, not growth - that is morality, and that is truly economic.

Kent Welton,

Frosty Wooldridge

Dear Economist:

Re: A tale of three islands: 7 billion humans, don't panic

This is the most absurd, inane and out of touch article I have read in the last decade. Don't panic my rear end! The USA is about to add 100 million people by 2035. It's already not sustainable as to water, energy and resources--but you're telling us not to panic. The UN population figures show humans reaching 10.2 billion, which will blast the environment into chaos. Acidified oceans, carbon footprint, species extinction and massive human poverty and you say, "Don't panic!" What do you folks use for brains, common sense and reasoned understanding? I've bicycled across 6 continents to see what's coming and it's not pretty. Mass starvation and human die-off will go off the charts as Peak Oil gets into full gear. Man, I hate stupid statements like, "Don't Panic!" You probably said the same thing about Hurrican Katrina! Frosty Wooldridge, author of America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans.


It is interesting to look at population changes over the years and see the different reasons why it goes up and down. Even though people usually had more children a hundred years ago, population was still low because of things like disease and not enough technology to take care of it. Then people kept having more children, but technology advanced and more survived. Now people are choosing to have less children, so the population will stay at a more steady pace rather than growing at an alarming rate.

John Taves

Demographers have missed a few fundamental concepts. It does not matter how many people there are 7 billion? 5 billion? It is an irrelevant number. What does matter? Two things, and two things only.

1) Do we all comprehend that we must not average more than two children? That answer to that is a resounding no. That means we have a whopping huge problem. Averaging more than two means the population attempts to go to infinity on an finite planet. The math is trivial. In the long run if we average 2.5 children, then 1 in 5 must die and must die as children. No demographer should be confused by what I stated here.

2) Are we consuming resources that are essential to providing for our numbers? The answer to that is resounding yes. We have no clue how to provide 7 billion meals a day without burning oil, coal, uranium and a bunch of other resources faster than they renew. When you properly comprehend what that means, the words "don't panic" most certainly do not come to mind.

What? "Don't panic, be ignorant"?

See for further explanations. If you can comprehend these two concepts StopAtTwo needs your help. StopAtTwo has a plan to begin the education process.


Excellent - so KK777 things that someone, or some group, should somehow have the power to control the fertility of everyone in the world, and then Gregary B goes one step further and promotes the use of a "biological vector" (nice euphemism, Gregary) to "contain human fertility".

Did either of you happen to, by any chance, read the article? Yes, the world's population is going to continue increasing for the next half-a-century but all indications are that it will decrease pretty rapidly after that. In essence, all humanity needs to do is to play a waiting game and age will take care of the overpopulation problem. There's no need to resort to mass sterilisation or genocide.


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