Are there billions of people in the world than we think? If so, this is not a bad thing | Jonathan Kennedy

Are there billions of people in the world than we think? If so, this is not a bad thing | Jonathan Kennedy

artCcording to UN, the world’s population stands In more than 8.2 billion. However, a The recent study suggested The count can be hundreds of millions or even billions of higher. The news that can be scary, but it is important to remember that concerns about overpopulation are rarely about numbers. They show the struggles of power causing life, who is a burden or a threat and finally what the future looks.

The world’s population arrived at 1 billion after the 19th century arrived. The number of people on the planet began to grow in large, doubling 2 billion in 1925 and again in 4 billion about 50 years ago. At 15 November 2022, the UN announced the Birth of eight billion people.

As if it is not possible to count each person in the world, UN population numbers are calculated by dividing the surface of a grid and used the census data to estimate as many as per square. This procedure gives a moderate estimate, but so far is considered reasonable reliably.

A recent study of Dr. Josiah Láng-ritter and his companions at the Aalto University in Finland discovered that the UN estimates of people with more than 50%. This is because global South census data is often incomplete or unreliable outside of large cities. As a result, UN numbers may reduce the world’s population by hundreds of millions or many millions.

Many people argue that our planet has no resources to support 8 billion people. “Overpopulation” appears as the cause of the majority of the largest problems in the world. But these concerns are not new.

In 1988, Used in US Sci-Fi Asac Asac Asimov what he called “my metaphor in the bathroom“To describe his fears about population growth.” If two people live in an apartment, and there are two baths, then both have the freedom of the bathroom. “But if 20 people live in the same apartment, it will impose one’s liberty or another.

According to Asimov, the power growth creates a similar problem. It is not only the areas of many pressures in natural resources, but also remove autonomy, dignity and civilians. “While you still put more people in the world, the value of life doesn’t just decrease, it’s lost.”

By the time of the 19th century, if there were little one-billion inhabitants of the earth, Thomas Mallous convinced that “the number of men would exceed their way of coming”. Mosthus’s failure to predict that technology changes food production has not prevented his popularity. On the contrary, as the world’s population increases, the prophets of destruction are strong.

Neo-Mathusian concerns reached fever Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s the Population Bomb – subtitle control or different from the population or race of Oplivion (1968). This more influential, bestselling book warns: “The war to feed all the people. In 1970,000 millions people will die of famine.”

These harmful predictions encourage governments and agencies to international agencies to obtain a lot of action. As productivity rates fall into most countries with income, these efforts focus on Africa and more Asia. Family planning programs in USAID families in what is called the developing world. Millions of Indians are sterilized men’s sterilized the emergency by the mid-1970s. In 1979, the Communist Party in China indicates a young policy and a few years later launched a mass campaign, which focuses on women.

Today, many people remain concerned about overpopulation, but their views on Apocalyptic now focus on climate change, loss of resource and loss of biodiversity. Despite the consumption of consumption – Americans consume 360 ​​hours of additional carbon per capita than Somalis, the control of the population still focuses on most of the world.

Thankful, the basic policies that occur in India, China and wherever is no longer in vogue. The new method of controlling population is focuses on in exchange for women’s power. Ensuring women and grant control of their lives proves effective in reducing fertility rates. In the 1960s, women in common five children each. Now, the number is 2.3 per female – more than necessary to keep the population. When 2100 Global GLALRATE is expected to fall by 1.8.

According to UN, the world’s population Up to about 10.3 billion By the mid 2080s. Then it will heal, then fall. The exponential growth gave Mathususia so many nights without sleep. That many people will set many people in the resources of the earth, but if consolidation has taken responsibility for responsible and lasting technologies developed, the world can avoid a christmas disaster.

Return to the metaphor of Asimov’s bathroom, as anyone crammed in a house with their extended family generally knows, many people share some restrooms that make a subsequent situation. You won’t take a shower exactly if you want – and it’s better to do it a short. But it’s not almost worth rounding. In fact, compromise and sharing is probably closer to most of the idea of ​​people in a good life than to freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want.

Population growth varies between regions. In most countries with income, fertility rates are below the replacement level. The African continent is expected To account for half the growth of the world’s population in the next three decades, with Asia and Latin America responsible for others.

Nigel Farage launches a Poster EU referendum in 2016. Photo: Philip Toscano / Pa

As the historian Alison Bashford meant, concerns about overpopulation are often not about many people but so many of the wrong kind of people. Eternonationalists in Europe and North America have seen differences in births as an existing threat of “western civilization”. They are concerned about their countries that are not changed by the migration of the masses. But the cold difficult fact is that in some decades we shrink, older societies need to require new taxes and work in health care and health care. This future vision may not prevent for some, but the alternative is worse.

In order to extend Asimov’s metaphor, the populist entitlement promotes a class in the bathroom apartheid. They are the isuite isolationists, who want to keep an exclusive use of one of the apartment baths, and pressed 19 more flatmates to share. At first, this method has its advantages. They can be swiftly in the bathroom all day. They can sit in a lot of time reading the news.

But soon or they can easily come to a copyer. Perhaps other toilet becomes blocked and the whole flat is filled with raw channels. Other flatmates can be forced to control personal bathroom. Or as the en suite ideonationist gets old and sick, they can find themselves nobody to shower or wipe their bottoms.

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