Green Thing Blog

Today marks the day. The day that the world's population reaches 7 billion.

If you look back historically, population growth happened at constant rate. Now we are growing exponentially, with projections showing that by the end of this century we'll be a world of 10 billion people. That's a whole lot of people in this world needing access to a finite number of resources.

Last week the BBC created this tool so that people can find out what number they are in a world of 7 billion. It's quite humbling to know your number but also very scary.

Population growth has been identified by some of the foremost thinkers as being the root cause of climate change.

James Lovelock, author of the Gaia hypothesis shares,

“Did you know the exhalations of breath and other gaseous emissions by the nearly seven billion people on Earth, their pets and livestock are responsible for 23% of all greenhouse gas emissions? If you add on the fossil fuel burnt in the total activity of growing, gathering, selling and serving food, all this adds up to about half of all carbon dioxide emissions. Think of farm machinery, the transport of food from the farms and the transport of fertiliser, pesticides and the fuel used in their manufacture; the road building and maintenance; the supermarket operations and the packaging industry; to say nothing of the energy used in cooking, refrigerating and serving food. Like it or not, we are the problem.”

Sir Jonathan Porritt, former chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, (and outspoken figure for his 2-child limit remarks) recently wrote a piece for the Independent identifying some difficult and sensitive issues to do with overpopulation that people prefer not to acknowledge.

"Of course there are political sensitivities involved. The continuing drought in the Horn of Africa, is a humanitarian disaster, demanding (and getting) the highest level of compassion from both governments and individuals. The causes are complex. But to ignore the contribution that overpopulation makes is deeply dishonest. The current total fertility rate for the women of Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia and Kenya is between 4.6 and 6.5 children per woman of childbearing age. The combined population of these four countries was 40 million in 1960; now it’s 167 million. The population of Ethiopia was 23 million in 1960; now it’s 83 million."

While may sound all doom-and-gloom, a world of 7 billion people is also a place for great opportunity, humanity and innovation. Can we come up with ways to tackle poverty like never before?  Will we become better at managing our natural resources? Perhaps we might even kick our carbon consuming ways and move more and more towards renewable, cleaner technology.

What can you do about our ever-increasing, not so sustainable population growth? Aside from going easy on the kids, you can show your support and take responsibility for your community through 7 Billion Actions, one of the many campaigns that aims to lessen the burden on our planet and its people.

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