How many people actually live on earth? How many people live on the planet? Mathematical model of world population growth

Today, more than 7.5 billion people live on Earth, while 2.7 billion are citizens of just two countries - India and China. The demographic picture of the world is much more interesting than just dry numbers reflecting the size of the population. It includes information about national composition, age structure, migration processes, age parameters of the inhabitants of our planet.

More recently, at the beginning of the 20th century, the planet's population was about 1.6 billion people. Just 60 years later, the world celebrated the birth of the Earth's 3 billionth inhabitant. And starting from the mid-1960s, world leaders became seriously concerned about the problem of overpopulation, the world's population began to grow so quickly. According to experts, the number of people on the planet will exceed 11 billion by the end of the 21st century.

But population growth is not observed in all parts of the planet. Over the past 20-30 years, regions with rapidly increasing rates include countries in Southeast Asia and Africa, such as India, China, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Egypt, Congo, Thailand, and the Philippines. Slightly smaller, but also stable growth is observed in the American countries: Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina.

Despite the fact that India's population is currently smaller than China's (1.348 billion Indians and 1,412 Chinese), scientists predict that by 2020 India will rank first in the world in this indicator. This is partly due to the fact that in China for a long time Birth control measures were in place. But today, due to a sharp decline in the share of children and youth in Chinese society, the country's leadership has decided to lift these bans.

But the indigenous population of Europe, on the contrary, is rapidly decreasing, which is associated with the demographic aging of the population. This process leads to an increase in the proportion of older people compared to children and youth. Most people are familiar with this problem. developed countries peace. In addition to Europe, a similar process is observed in Australia, Canada, the USA and Japan. This situation is partly smoothed out by the stable number of labor migrants arriving in developed countries of the world. Unfortunately, Russia is no exception, and in our country there is also large number elderly people compared to working population.

At the initiative of American researchers, an information project was created called Worldometers, which collected demographic and some other parameters for different countries peace. Of course, the data displayed here is often derived from modeling and forecasting, but either way it's very interesting. We offer you to see how quickly the world's population is growing in real time.

MOSCOW, July 25 - RIA Novosti. The global population will reach 10 billion in 2053, but the number of residents in Russia and Ukraine will decrease by 7.9 and 9 million, and in Japan by a “record” 24.7 million, reports the Washington Population Bureau (PRB). ).

“Despite the general decline in birth rates across the planet, the rate of growth of the Earth’s population will remain at a high level, which will be enough to “reach” the 10 billion mark. Of course, the picture in different regions will be strikingly different - for example, the number of inhabitants Europe will continue to decline, while Africa's population will double by 2050," said Jeffrey Jordan, president and director of the Bureau.

This non-profit organization Today it is one of the world's leading bureaus for forecasting the demographic situation at the global level, publishing annual reports and estimates on world population growth since 1962. This year, Jordan reports, the forecasts were improved by adding six new demographic indicators that take into account how the availability of different resources affects population growth.

According to new PRB forecasts, the world's population will approach 9.9 billion by 2050, and in 2053 it will cross the 10 billion mark. Much of this growth will occur in Africa, with its population expected to reach 2.5 billion by then. At the same time, the number of inhabitants of America will increase by only 223 million, Asia - by 900 million, and the number of inhabitants of Europe will decrease by approximately 12 million.

The main socio-demographic problem of this growth will be that almost all of this growth will occur in the most underdeveloped countries on Earth. PRB estimates that the population of the world's 48 least developed countries will double by 2050 to almost two billion people. At the same time, in 29 countries on this list, almost all of which are in Africa, the population will more than double. Niger's population, for example, will triple by mid-century.

On the other side of the “table of ranks” the situation is the opposite - the population will decrease mainly in all developed countries except the United States, in a total of 42 countries of the world. The traditional “leader” in this regard will be Japan, where the number of inhabitants will decrease by almost 25 million, and its close competitors will be Russia, Ukraine and Romania.

With all this, the top three “ten” countries in terms of population will remain the same - India, China and the USA. There will be a series of reshuffles below, with Nigeria moving up to fourth, Indonesia down to fifth and Brazil down to seventh.

Such population growth in the poorest and most deprived countries of the world, according to PRB experts, speaks to the urgent need for a speedy transition to a sustainable development economy to provide this mass of people with the necessary resources and basic necessities without causing critical harm to the planet.

How many people live on Earth? Probably every person has sometimes asked a similar question. Population growth on our planet has always occurred: climate change, drought, famine, predators, and struggle between tribes only slowed down the demographic process.

6.7 billion people is a figure indicating how many people live on Earth today, which is 6% of the total population (107 billion) that has ever walked on its surface. Of course, this number is approximate, since it is difficult to imagine what happened in ancient times, much less to calculate.

How many people can “fit” on Earth?

If you imagine how many people live on Earth, you can understand that as the population grows, so do the needs of the population, and the uncontrollability of the demographic process can lead to an environmental disaster: epidemics, hunger, increased crime, and poverty.

Many people often ask the question: how many people can the Earth support? More than lives today. But the planet is not dimensionless, nor is its patience and endurance. The German Earth Population Foundation has calculated that its population increases by 155 people every minute. In total annual numbers, this can be represented as the emergence of another Germany. How many people on Earth can “fit” depends on their consumption of the planet’s strategic reserves, in which, of course, the Americans are the leaders. If all inhabitants consumed the Earth's resources with the same appetite, then the limit of ecological endurance would be a thing of the past. With the frugal lifestyle of the Brazilian Indians, the planet could feed 30 billion people.

Scientists theoretically tried to weigh how many people there are on Earth in weight units, and found that obesity, which affects half of humanity, harms not only the individual who consumes large amounts of food, but also the planet as a whole, increasing the burden on it.

Examples of population density

Surprisingly, 70% of the population is crowded into 7% of the entire Earth's territory. In Moscow alone there are about 13,000 people per square kilometer, while Canada, an entire country, is empty. Conventionally, it can even be called deserted, because in certain areas there are about 100 square meters for every Canadian. kilometers. Thus, the uneven distribution of people on the planet is an extremely important issue that interests the minds of many ordinary people.

The most populous country is China, whose government has already begun to take measures to slow down the process of overpopulation in the country. In second place are India and the United States, which are inactive on the demographic issue. It is India, according to UN forecasts, that in the near future will become the leader in population growth, the number of which in 50 years will reach 1.5 billion people on Earth.

How many years does such rapid demographic progress last, which, in addition to its detrimental effect on the ecosystem, breaks the destinies of people, forcing them to leave their inhabited areas due to climate change, lack of water and food? Migration occurs due to disruption of the natural habitat. In 1996, the UN attempted to calculate how many people lived on Earth and how many people tried to leave their habitable lands. The results were shocking: the number of environmental migrants amounted to 26 million people; 137 million are planning to leave their country.

Reasons for the growing demographic growth

A number of studies have shown that the main population growth occurs in countries with low level life.

To answer the question: how many people are there on Earth now, we need to understand the reasons for the increased birth rate, especially in countries with a low standard of living:

• the biological law of the struggle for survival, implemented on a subconscious level and consisting in the opinion: the less chance of offspring, the higher the birth rate;
• continuation of the family, supported by economic considerations: the number of children in the family guarantees the number of planned workers, on which the provision of old age for disabled parents depends;
• socio-psychological features: customs, traditions, religious dogmas, developing over the centuries, taking into account economic and social features life at different stages of social development.

In poor countries, which have high infant mortality and short life expectancy, the birth rate is very high, so almost all families there have large families. The assistance annually allocated to the poor population to improve their standard of living, no matter how paradoxical it may sound, only worsens it. That is, the impact occurs not on the causes, but on the effect. In addition, poor countries that exist on subsidies from richer countries get used to them and stop any attempts to improve the situation by reducing the birth rate.

High standard of living - low birth rate

While uncontrolled reproduction occurs in poor countries, developed countries are trying to cope with the problem of extinction, even using incentive and bonus systems. For example, in France, each child born is valued at $10,000. Russia pays parents $11,000, albeit under certain conditions. The leader in rewards for each child born ($13,000) is Italy, or rather its small town of Laviano, whose population is 2,000 inhabitants.

With a high degree of material well-being, the need for fertility decreases, the mortality rate falls, and the average life expectancy increases. As an example, we can consider Thailand, where in 25 years (from 1965 to 1990) the standard of living increased almost 12 times, and the birth rate sharply decreased. This dynamic is observed in most countries that have embarked on the path of industrialization.

With the growing standard of living of the population and a well-developed pension system, children cease to be an economic priority for parents, as is the case in traditional society. The number of families with two or more children is decreasing; For many parents, one child is enough. Moreover, the decision to give birth to a baby is made thoughtfully, taking into account all the pros and cons, since individualistic claims to one’s own happiness become predominant in modern society. Therefore, many couples remain childless, and this directly affects how many people live on Earth.

Forecasts

According to cautious forecasts, by 2075 the world's population will be approximately 9 billion people, after which this figure will decline.

The assumption of how many people there will be on Earth is determined by the following reasons:

• Growing well-being of the population of developing countries.
• Rapidly growing level of education developing countries, which dramatically increases the possibility of increasing the well-being of the population. The income of qualified specialists is much higher than that of uneducated people. A high level of education reduces the need for numerous offspring.
• The steady increase in urbanization (the movement of people from rural areas to the city) of all regions of the planet. The higher the percentage of urban residents, the higher the level of education of the population and, accordingly, its income. And this again affects the decrease in the birth rate.
• Increasing mortality from epidemics and AIDS, which in 20 years infected more than 60 million people and killed more than 22 million. AIDS especially affects residents of poor countries, who experience a catastrophic lack of general medical culture, hospitals and medicines.

Natural selection?

The current size of the planet's population is undoubtedly large. Apparently, this is why disasters began to occur more and more often, the number of which increased by 3 times compared to the last century. How many people lived on Earth? How many more will be born? How many people are on Earth today? Perhaps the planet independently regulates the population and is trying to restore the natural balance, freeing itself from its excess.

One of the most scandalous topics in official “science” is the problem with the population of the planet, which no one really knows. According to data published in “encyclopedias,” there are currently 7.6 billion people living on Earth, but there is no way to verify this figure.

The problem, let’s say, is not in statistics, but in dynamics. Let us dwell only on the population size of past eras. The official history presents the following assessments:

Vertically they are billions of k.ltq, horizontally they are millennia. According to the figure, during Ancient Egypt the planet was deserted, like the Moon, so when looking at the graph, even children ask the question: “Who built the pyramids then?” Anthropologists get out of it very easily: they shrug their shoulders and redirect them to Egyptologists, who continue to tell tales. However, in addition to Egypt, which is inexplicable by science, there is still such an interesting city in the world as Paris, under which it is unclear who built catacombs with a total length of 300 kilometers.

The length there, of course, is orders of magnitude greater, since the structure is multi-level, in bottom part which tourists are not allowed in because there are huge, wide, stone-lined corridors leading from Paris to other cities in France and Europe. But let’s not argue either: three hundred or three hundred, at least 150, in this context it’s not so important.

The important thing here is that the dungeons of Paris are filled from floor to ceiling with human bones, which were officially counted as “6 million skeletons.”

According to the official explanation for the appearance of these bones, around 1780, Paris was once again flooded by the overflowing Seine, destroying the local cemetery and throwing corpses onto the city's pavements. Then the wise King Louis XVI issued a decree to remove all the dead from the cemetery and put them in the catacombs of the city. We always had no time to look at the nonsense of academics about how many people lived in Paris in 1780, but at one time, many years ago, we looked at contour maps of the area from the 1720s, on which the city plan was outlined in detail:

In a modern metropolis, where people live either on top of each other or in towers that go far into the sky, the population density is about 10,000 (USA) - 30,000 (China) people per square kilometer. Since Paris did not have the Empire State Buildings of 1720, the population density there should have been on the order of that of a modern European town with a population of 50,000 people. People live there at a density of 2,000 - 4,000 people per square kilometer.

Based on these considerations and size contour map the population of Paris in 1720 was about 10-20,000 people. It's rude. About five years ago, a more accurate estimate flashed - 12,000 people. This raises the question: where did six million come from in the quarries?
The quarries of Lutetia (that is, Paris) are just one example, most likely familiar to our readers, of the discrepancy between real statistics and scientific fiction. However, there are much more shocking examples that are no longer known to many. Back in 2013, when Google Earth had just begun to work normally, millions of people rushed to look at all sorts of interesting places on the maps.

Among them was Gary Schooning, who found in South Africa artifact structures that are very incomprehensible to the uninitiated: However, unlike many YouTubers who look out for Google maps star fortresses and traces of thermonuclear explosions, he turned out to be a certified enlightened adept from agriculture. With the trained eye of a specialist, he immediately saw in this system a colossal irrigation complex, about which he made simple mathematical calculations: The entire complex covers an area approximately equal to the state of Arizona in the USA.

The system is about 350 miles wide and about 300 miles long, at least for the remnants that are still visible. This system represents approximately 67 million acres of sustainable agriculture. Given the complexity of the design, it is likely that the system fed at least 90 people per acre on an annual basis. Moreover: technically the system could provide sustainable aquaculture (i.e. marine farming).

I have no reason to suspect that this is not the case. Considering the size and scale of this complex, (the canals are spaced on average about 1 mile apart) and add up to approximately 350 X 300 miles in a rough rectangular format. (At least the observable parts). The complex may actually have been much larger, but it now covers approximately 105,000 square miles. One square mile = 27,878,400 sq. feet or 640 acres, so the entire complex had a sustainable production area (640 acres x 105,000 square miles) or over 67,200,000 acres (67 million acres).

One linear mile of canal had 47,520,000 cubic feet of water per linear mile. Multiplying this by the number of canals of the structure, we get 5 trillion cubic feet of water in the canals, which is simply excessive for irrigating this area. Therefore, it is quite possible that the system was used not only for irrigation, but also for the production of marine food, which at least doubled its productivity.

However, even if we do not take into account the possibility of parallel irrigation of aquaculture, let us calculate the harvest of agricultural crops from this area. Depending on management and the choice of crops cultivated, they vary widely, but the minimum figure is capable of providing an annual diet of anywhere from 60 to 120 people per acre. Since the area (visible remains) of the system is 67 million acres, the the complex produced the amount of food needed to feed 5 billion people for a year.

This is how simple statistics turn out, so it is not at all surprising that a scientific discovery is not trumpeted on TV from morning to evening. We don’t even ask the stupid question about who built and processed all this. More important question: Who did this system feed? How many people were there on planet Earth? Was there only one system? If there were several systems, then what was the population of the Earth at that time?

Illustration copyright Thinkstock

Does the Earth have enough resources to support its rapidly growing human population? Now it is more than 7 billion. What is the maximum number of inhabitants, beyond which the sustainable development of our planet will no longer be possible? The correspondent set out to find out what researchers think about this.

Overpopulation. Modern politicians wince at this word; It is often referred to as the "elephant in the room" in discussions about the future of planet Earth.

The growing population is often spoken of as the greatest threat to the existence of the Earth. But is it correct to consider this problem in isolation from other modern global challenges? And is there really such an alarming number of people living on our planet now?

• What ails giant cities
• Seva Novgorodtsev about the overpopulation of the Earth
• Obesity is more dangerous than overpopulation

It is clear that the Earth is not increasing in size. Its space is limited, and the resources necessary to support life are finite. There may simply not be enough food, water and energy for everyone.

It turns out that demographic growth poses a real threat to the well-being of our planet? Not at all necessary.

“The problem is not the number of people on the planet, but the number of consumers and the scale and pattern of consumption,” says David Satterthwaite, Sr. researcher London International Institute for Environment and Development.

In support of his thesis, he cites the consonant statement of the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, who believed that “there are enough [resources] in the world to satisfy the needs of every person, but not everyone’s greed.”

The global effect of increasing the urban population by several billion may be much smaller than we think

Until recently, the number of representatives living on Earth modern look there were relatively few people (Homo sapiens). Just 10 thousand years ago, no more than several million people lived on our planet.

It wasn't until the early 1800s that the human population reached a billion. And two billion - only in the 20s of the twentieth century.

Currently, the world's population is over 7.3 billion people. According to UN forecasts, by 2050 it could reach 9.7 billion, and by 2100 it is expected to exceed 11 billion.

Population has only begun to grow rapidly in the last few decades, so we do not yet have historical examples on which to make predictions about possible consequences this growth in the future.

In other words, if it is true that by the end of the century there will be more than 11 billion people living on our planet, our current level of knowledge does not allow us to say whether sustainable development is possible with such a population - simply because there are no precedents in history.

However, we can get a better picture of the future if we analyze where the largest population growth is expected in the coming years.

The problem is not the number of people living on Earth, but the number of consumers and the scale and nature of their consumption of non-renewable resources

David Satterthwaite says that most of the demographic growth in the next two decades will occur in the megacities of those countries where the level of income of the population is currently assessed as low or average.

At first glance, an increase in the number of residents of such cities, even by several billion, should not have any impact. serious consequences on a planetary scale. This is due to historically low levels of consumption among urban residents in low- and middle-income countries.

Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases are a good indicator of how high consumption may be in a given city. “What we know about cities in low-income countries is that they emit less than a tonne of carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide equivalents per person per year,” says David Satterthwaite. “In high-income countries, this figure fluctuates ranging from 6 to 30 tons."

Residents of more economically prosperous countries pollute the environment to a much greater extent than people living in poor countries.

However, there are exceptions. Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark, a high-income country, while Porto Allegre is in upper-middle-income Brazil. Both cities have a high standard of living, but emissions (per capita) are relatively low in volume.

According to the scientist, if we look at the lifestyle of one individual person, the difference between rich and poor categories of the population turns out to be even more significant.

There are many low-income urban residents whose consumption levels are so low that they have little effect on greenhouse gas emissions.

Once the Earth's population reaches 11 billion, the additional burden on its resources may be relatively small.

However, the world is changing. And it's possible that carbon dioxide emissions will soon begin to rise in low-income metropolitan areas.

There is also concern about the desire of people in poor countries to live and consume at levels that are now considered normal for high-income countries (many would say that this would be some kind of restoration of social justice).

But in this case, the growth of the urban population will bring with it a more serious burden on the environment.

Will Steffen, Professor Emeritus, Fenner School environment and society at State University Australia, says this is in line with a general trend over the last century.

According to him, the problem is not population growth, but the growth - even more rapid - of global consumption (which, of course, is unevenly distributed around the world).

If so, then humanity may find itself in an even more difficult situation.

People living in high-income countries must do their part to keep the Earth sustainable as its population grows.

Only if richer communities are willing to reduce their consumption levels and allow their governments to support unpopular policies will the world as a whole be able to reduce negative impact impact on the global climate and more effectively address issues such as resource conservation and waste recycling.

In a 2015 study, the Journal of Industrial Ecology tried to look at environmental problems from a household perspective, where consumption is the focus.

If we adopt smarter consumer habits, the environment can improve dramatically

The study found that private consumers account for more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions, and their share in the use of land, water and other raw materials is up to 80%.

Moreover, scientists have concluded that environmental pressures differ from region to region and that, on a per-household basis, they are highest in economically prosperous countries.

Diana Ivanova from the University of Science and Technology of the Norwegian city of Trondheim, who developed the concept for this study, explains that it changed the traditional view of who should be responsible for industrial emissions associated with the production of consumer goods.

“We all want to shift the blame to someone else, to the government or to businesses,” she says.

In the West, for example, consumers often argue that China and other countries that produce consumer goods in industrial quantities should also be held accountable for the emissions associated with their production.

But Diana and her colleagues believe that an equal share of responsibility lies with consumers themselves: “If we adopt smarter consumer habits, the environment can significantly improve.” According to this logic, radical changes are needed in the core values ​​of developed countries: the emphasis must move from material wealth to a model where what is most important is personal and social well-being.

But even if in mass consumer behavior and favorable changes occur, it is unlikely that our planet will be able to support a population of 11 billion people for long.

So Will Steffen proposes stabilizing the population somewhere around nine billion, and then starting to gradually reduce it by reducing the birth rate.

Stabilizing the Earth's population involves both reducing resource consumption and expanding women's rights

In fact, there are signs that some stabilization is already taking place, even if statistically the population continues to grow.

Population growth has been slowing since the 1960s, and fertility studies conducted by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs show that the global fertility rate per woman has fallen from 4.7 children in 1970-75. years to 2.6 in 2005-10.

However, for any truly significant changes to occur in this area, it will take centuries, says Corey Bradshaw of the University of Adelaide in Australia.

The trend towards increasing birth rates is so deeply rooted that even a major catastrophe will not be able to radically change the situation, the scientist believes.

Based on the results of a study conducted in 2014, Corey concluded that even if the world's population were reduced by two billion tomorrow due to increased mortality, or if the governments of all countries, following the example of China, adopted unpopular laws limiting the number of children, by 2100 The number of people on our planet would, at best, remain at its current level.

Therefore, it is necessary to look alternative ways fertility reduction, and seek urgently.

If some or all of us increase our consumption, the upper limit on the sustainable (sustainable) population of the world will be lowered

One relatively simple way is to raise the status of women, especially in terms of their educational and employment opportunities, says Will Steffen.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that 350 million women in the poorest countries did not intend to have their last child, but had no way to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

If the basic needs of these women in terms of personal development, the problem of overpopulation of the Earth due to excessively high birth rates would not be so acute.

Following this logic, stabilizing the population of our planet involves both reducing resource consumption and expanding women's rights.

But if a population of 11 billion is unsustainable, how many people – theoretically – can our Earth support?

Corey Bradshaw believes it is almost impossible to give a specific number as it will depend on technology in areas such as agriculture, energy and transport, as well as on how many people we are ready to sentence to a life full of deprivation and restrictions, including in food.

It is a fairly common belief that humanity has already exceeded the acceptable limit, given the wasteful lifestyle that many of its representatives lead and which they are unlikely to want to give up.

Environmental trends such as global warming, reduction in biodiversity and pollution of the world's oceans are cited as arguments in favor of this point of view.

Social statistics also come to the rescue, according to which currently one billion people in the world are actually starving, and another billion suffer from chronic malnutrition.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the population problem was associated equally with female fertility and soil fertility

The most common option is 8 billion, i.e. slightly more than the current level. Most low rate- 2 billion. The highest is 1024 billion.

And since assumptions regarding the permissible demographic maximum depend on a number of assumptions, it is difficult to say which of the given calculations is closest to reality.

But ultimately the determining factor will be how society organizes its consumption.

If some of us—or all of us—increased our consumption, the upper limit on the sustainable (sustainable) population size of the Earth would fall.

If we find opportunities to consume less, ideally without giving up the benefits of civilization, then our planet will be able to support more people.

The acceptable population limit will also depend on the development of technology, an area in which it is difficult to predict anything.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the problem of population was associated equally with both female fertility and the fertility of agricultural land.

In his book The Shadow of the Future World, published in 1928, George Knibbs suggested that if the world's population reached 7.8 billion, humanity would be required to be much more efficient in cultivating and using land.

And three years later, Carl Bosch received the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the development of chemical fertilizers, the production of which, presumably, became the most important factor in the demographic boom that occurred in the twentieth century.

In the distant future, scientific and technological progress may significantly raise the upper limit of the permissible population of the Earth.

Since people first visited space, humanity is no longer content with observing the stars from Earth, but is seriously talking about the possibility of moving to other planets.

Many prominent scientific thinkers, including physicist Stephen Hawking, have even stated that the colonization of other worlds will be critical to the survival of humans and other species present on Earth.

Although NASA's exoplanet program, launched in 2009, has discovered a large number of Earth-like planets, they are all too distant from us and poorly studied. (As part of this program, the American space agency created the Kepler satellite, equipped with an ultra-sensitive photometer, to search for Earth-like planets outside solar system, so-called exoplanets.)

So relocating people to another planet is not a solution yet. For the foreseeable future, the Earth will be our only home, and we must learn to live in it environmentally.

This presupposes, of course, a general reduction in consumption, in particular a transition to a lifestyle with low emissions CO2, and the advancement of women around the world.

Only by taking some steps in this direction will we be able to roughly calculate how many people planet Earth can support.

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