There is an opinion that the uncontrolled growth of the Earth's population will certainly lead to environmental disasters, and also threatens to increase the level of crime, poverty, hunger and epidemics, since now the main increase is due to poorest countries peace. It is already quite clear that the goal set by some organizations to double the quality of life of people will never be achieved. Allocated annually to poor countries financial aid, paradoxically, only worsens their situation. There is an impact, first of all, on the effect, and not on the causes. In addition, poor states simply get used to living on support and stop all attempts to improve the situation on their own.
Surprisingly, 70% of the world's total population is crammed into an area of just 7%. For example, in Moscow there is one square kilometer The land occupies about thirteen thousand people. And Canada is empty. You can even conditionally call it “deserted”. There, in some areas, there are as many as one hundred square kilometers per inhabitant. Thus, uniform distribution people on the surface of the Earth is extremely topical issue, which is of interest to many modern researchers.
The most populous modern country is China. It is closely followed by India and the USA. But if the Chinese government, thinking about the future, has already begun to fight overpopulation, then countries such as Nigeria or India are still inactive.
The UN predicts that India will soon become the “champion” in population growth. 50 years later there will be 1.5 billion Indians. Among Western countries, a “surge” is predicted only in the United States.
Such rapid population growth has a detrimental effect not only on the ecosystem, but also on the fate of the people themselves. Even a new concept has already appeared: “migration, in connection with the destruction natural environment a habitat". Climate change is fueling flight from homelands. Back in 1996, the UN attempted to count the “fugitives”, and the results shocked everyone: environmental emigrants amounted to about 26 million people, and another 137 live “out of suitcases” under the threat of leaving their homeland.
Not the most optimistic scientists argue that the upper acceptable population limit is 12 billion and, if it is crossed, there will be a collapse of all ecosystems and nothing less than a worldwide catastrophe. People will begin to die of hunger and thirst.
Perhaps it is precisely because of the fear of overpopulation of the Earth that cures for deadly diseases have not yet been “found”? Or they were found a long time ago, but are not available en masse, who knows.
"Extinction" of developed countries
Another paradox is that while poor countries multiply uncontrollably, developed countries cannot cope with the problem of extinction. In some states, at the government level they are even trying to “spur” people with all sorts of incentives and bonuses. For example, in France, each newborn is valued at ten thousand dollars. Russia went even further, promising eleven thousand for every little Russian, however, under some certain conditions. The leader in the “bonus hit parade” is the tiny Italian town of Laviano, with a population of only two thousand inhabitants, where thirteen thousand dollars are paid for each newborn baby. Israel is distinguished by the smallest payments, the amount of $320 can be considered purely symbolic, but, unlike the Chinese, they do not have to complain, children are not taxed. As they say, thanks for that.
How many people can the Earth bear?
In principle, the Earth is capable of feeding more people than he lives today. But the “patience and endurance” of our planet are not limitless and are directly dependent on the lifestyle of humanity as a whole and each individual individually.
The problem of overpopulation is by no means new. It has worried researchers since the 17th century. Much has been written scientific works, each of which had its supporters and opponents. These disputes continue to this day.
“The boat is full” or “The prohibition of demanding even a minimum of food” is nothing more than a quote from the famous Ethymus Malthus. His position was based on the view that helping the poor was immoral. In his opinion, if parents are not able to support a child, and he does not bring any benefit to the crowded world, then he does not deserve a piece of bread. Considering the widening gap between people's living standards and the current food crisis, such statements can be considered very explosive.
What changes has the birth rate undergone in connection with this? The answers to this question are very contradictory and ambiguous. Considerable interdependence exists between the concepts of “population growth” and “growth of needs.” People have long ceased to be content with little, technology is rapidly developing without regard to resources. The German Earth Population Foundation has calculated that every minute the world's population increases by 155 people, which in total per year is actually equal to the population of Germany.
Whether people can survive this painlessly depends on many factors. For example, from the consumption of the planet’s “strategic reserves”. Klaus Leisinger wrote that if everyone consumed resources like US citizens, the limit of ecological endurance would have been reached long ago. At the same time, if people lived like the Brazilian Indians, the planet would not be afraid of 30 billion people.
The maximum figure, supposed to be the “peak point” of the planet’s endurance, belongs to the pen of Cesar Marchetti. In his work “The Limits of Reproduction” he mentions the billiard man.
The most realistic, in turn, can be considered the figures of ecologists William Reese and Mathis Wackernagel. In the mid-90s, in the work “The Footprint of Ecology,” they suggested the number of people who could survive on Earth without problems under certain conditions. According to them, the inhabited area of the Earth is an area of 9 billion hectares, which is home to about 6 billion people, thus 1.5 hectares per person.
"Search a woman"
So, be that as it may, today's population sizes are, in any case, excessively large. And the consequences of this are very noticeable. Therefore, according to some researchers, it is worth seriously asking the question of population decline. Some of them believe that the blame for overpopulation lies primarily with women who do not know how to plan a family. According to them, about 210 pregnancies a year are unwanted, and therefore unnecessary.
The earth takes revenge on people
By the beginning of the 21st century, the number of disasters had more than tripled compared to the mid-sixties and continues to grow. According to statistics, at least a third of the world's population suffered from the effects of the disaster. Despite the collection and analysis of all kinds of information regarding this issue, scientists cannot explain in any way why there is such a rapid increase in frequency natural disasters. Has the Earth begun to take revenge on people?
During the spring-summer period of this year alone, an incredible number of disasters occurred in almost all corners of the planet. Disasters, moreover, entailed human casualties. Earthquakes in China, Italy, Philippines, Iran, Costa Rica; hurricanes in Japan, Novorossiysk, Aleksin, Primorsky Krai; heavy rains in the East; flooding in Kuban and Nicaragua; typhoon in Hong Kong; tropical storm in Madagascar - all this is far from full list natural disasters that befell people just this summer.
Animals also suffer. Some of them are soon threatened with complete disappearance from the face of the Earth, others are predicted to have a little more time to live. For example, according to scientists’ forecasts, on Adelie Earth due to melting Antarctic ice The number of emperor penguins may soon be reduced to just five hundred pairs of individuals.
"Obesity of the Planet"
Scientists have attempted to “weigh” humanity. It turned out that obesity harms not only each individual, but the planet as a whole. Researchers are concerned that people's passion for gluttony could cause a global environmental catastrophe and other disasters.
“Humans have become too heavy on our planet,” say the researchers. According to their calculations, total weight The adult population alone, excluding children, is two hundred eighty-seven million tons. Moreover, overweight people are responsible for fifteen of them, and obese people are responsible for four.
An interesting fact is that the population of Asia, the largest on the planet (accounting for 61% of the total population), is responsible for only 13% of the obesity rankings. excess weight inhabitants of the Earth. And in to the greatest extent Citizens must accept the blame for the “obesity of the planet” major powers, first of all, residents of the USA. Researchers note that if the weight of each person was between seventy and eighty kilograms, this would be equivalent to an increase in the population of the earth by 1 billion people.
Professor Ian Robertson argues that the excessive attention paid to population growth in poor countries that cannot feed themselves is unjustified and the “obesity” of the planet is much more dangerous in terms of the degree of harm caused to nature, and can rival any, even the most harmful , production.
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Scientists recently calculated maximum quantity people that the biosphere can support. On the one hand, the forecast turned out to be optimistic - even if the population size Homo sapiens reaches 10 billion people, famine can still be avoided. However, when current pace population growth, this threshold may soon be crossed.
"The strength of mankind is so superior to the forces of the Earth expended in supporting its existence that human race premature death must come, in one form or another." The philosopher Thomas Malthus wrote these ominous words in late XVIII century in his essay about how he sees the future of humanity.
The irresistible craving of humanity for reproduction, according to Malthus, will inevitably lead to overpopulation of the planet, the destruction of all resources and death from starvation. To what maximum can the Earth reach in “supporting the existence” of humanity? And how right is Malthus in his vision of our future?
The maximum "carrying capacity" of the planet, according to modern scientists, is nine to ten billion people. Sociobiologist Edward Wilson bases his assessment on calculations of the Earth's available resources. Firstly, the quantity fresh water limited. And secondly, the Earth can no longer produce the same amount of food as 200 years ago. Even at maximum efficiency, that is, if absolutely all the grain grown goes to people and not to livestock (which is an inefficient way to convert plant energy into food energy), there are limitations in the distribution of the crop.
“If everyone agreed to become vegetarians, leaving little or no grain for livestock, 1.4 billion hectares of arable land could feed 10 billion people,” Wilson estimates. The harvest from these hectares would be two billion tons of grain per year. This is enough for 10 billion herbivorous citizens, but for omnivores this amount of grain could be fed four times less. Since much of the world's grain harvest goes to feed livestock and poultry, two billion tons of grain would barely cover the needs of 2.5 billion meat-eaters and those who eventually end up on their tables.
Ten billion people is the level at which there will still be no squabbling over a piece of bread. And this is the extreme limit. It is unrealistic to switch everyone to plant foods - many are not going to give up meat - so now we can say with confidence: the Earth will not be able to feed ten billion people.
Population biologist Doel Cohen from Columbia University in New York adds that there are a number of other factors that limit the planet's capabilities - the nitrogen cycle, the rate of recycling carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, providing sufficient quantity phosphorus and so on. Even if everything world population managed to convert to vegetarianism, we can easily die out due to lack of oxygen. How exactly humanity will affect the atmosphere is not yet known exactly - the volume of emissions is quite large, but more and more methods are being developed to help avoid turning the Earth into a giant greenhouse. “The truth is, no one knows when or at what population level the limit will be reached,” Cohen explains.
The seven billionth inhabitant of the planet was born a month ago. According to UN forecasts, the ten billionth child will be born in 2100. However, in almost 90 years, humanity can turn into reverse side, scientists say. The trend is that families are becoming smaller and smaller in composition. Comparing data from 230 countries since 1950, the researchers concluded that fertility rates have been falling steadily in most countries, said Gerhard Heilig, head of the UN's Office of Population Estimates and Projections.
In order to avoid subjective judgments, scientific methods of counting participants in mass events should be used.
Every time any political force holds protests, there is bound to be speculation about the number of participants. As the experience of studying protest movements around the world shows, playing with the numbers of the number of supporters becomes indispensable integral part information support for protests.
Protest organizers always tend to exaggerate the number of people who took part in the action, thus, as if claiming that the number of their active supporters is much greater than it actually is. Visual estimates of the number of protesters, according to experts, can distort real data by several times, from 2 to 10.
Especially if the visual assessment is done in horizontal plane, because with such a look the crowd seems solid mass people standing close to each other. The higher the viewpoint rises, the more objective the assessment becomes, since when viewed from above at an angle of 90 degrees, the distance between people and sparsely populated areas become visible.
But even a view from above does not provide complete objectivity in the calculations. Especially when there is a desire to wishful thinking. For example, when a rally was held in Hong Kong in memory of the people who died during the protests in Tiananmen Square, according to the organizers, 150 thousand people took part in it. While the police estimated the number of participants at 77 thousand.
Watson and Yip, known for their work on crowd counting techniques, estimated the crowd density to be less than 2 people per square meter. Accordingly, given that Victory Square, where the rally took place, has 42,000 square meters, therefore, the number of participants was approximately the same as the police department calculated.
Therefore, in order to avoid various subjective assessments, you need to apply one of the existing methods in order to know how to count the number of people in a crowd. Moreover, now with the help Google programs Maps can accurately determine the size of any site with an accuracy of up to a meter.
One of the most common methods is calculation using the Jacobs Crowd Formula. Herbert Jacobs, a well-known professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley in the 60s, observing student rallies protesting the Vietnam War, set out to count their number. University Square was paved with large square slabs same size, so Jacobs counted the number of people in several squares, then multiplied them by total squares and found out the total number.
He also established rules for determining crowd density. According to the most commonly used classification" rare crowd" - this is when one person occupies approximately 1 m 2, in dense crowd 2.5 people can fit on one meter and finally very dense crowd(pandemonium) when on one square meter accommodates about 4 people. In fact, at rallies it almost never happens that the entire crowd stands tightly shoulder to shoulder, this usually happens in the first rows near the stands, or when moving at the head of the column, the remaining parts of the area are always filled extremely unevenly and, as you move away from the stands , the crowd thins out.
Thus, knowing the area of the rally site and estimating the approximate density of the crowd, you can quite accurately determine the number of participants in the rally. For example, the width of the Palace of the Republic building according to Google Map is 47.5 meters, the width of the platform from the beginning of the steps to the fence across the road from the Palace, including the sidewalk, is 19 meters. Total - the area in front of the Palace of the Republic is 47.5 x 19 = 902.5 square meters. If you fill this space with maximum density, at which people will stand, like in a full elevator or like in a trolleybus at rush hour, then you will get 902.5 x 4 = 3610 people.
If we assume that such an area will be filled with the usual density of 2.5 people per meter, typical for rallies and more or less evenly, without “bald spots” with a filling of one person per 1-2 meters, then the figure comes out to 902.5 x 2 .5 = 2256 people.
If the filling is not complete, and there is sparseness in the rows, starting from the second, third from the podium, the filling of the site will be 902.5 x 1 = approximately 902 people.
Using the same principle, you can calculate the number of people on any site. For those who want to calculate how many people the Great National Assembly Square can accommodate, let us remind you that its length, from Pushkin Street to Banulescu-Bodoni, is 295 meters, width - 25 meters (with the roadway - 44 meters), a total of 7375 m2 or 12980 m2 with the roadway of Stefan cel Mare Boulevard. Thus, depending on the density of filling and the use of the roadway, the Square of the Great National Assembly can accommodate up to 52 thousand people, this does not take into account the park and adjacent streets.
Currently, writes Money.ro, there are 7.25 billion people living on the planet, and their number is constantly growing. Every five years, the world's population increases by approximately one million more people. The current population of the planet is ten times greater than 400 years ago. And just 50 years ago, 2.5 billion people lived on Earth. Improved living conditions and the quality of medical services have increased life expectancy and increased resistance to disease, causing a population explosion that would have been difficult to imagine just a few hundred years ago. In addition, the birth rate in some areas of the world continues to remain high.
In 40 years, the world's population could reach 30 billion
Research conducted by scientists shows that if significant changes do not occur, then in the next 40 years the number of inhabitants of the Earth may exceed 20, or even 30 billion people. The saddest thing is that in such conditions our planet may become so impoverished that the population risks being left without supplies of water, food and energy. Other researchers, however, are more moderate in their estimates and believe that the global population will increase to about 10.5 billion by 2050. One way or another, the problem of the limited resources available to the planet is already present. A completely logical question arises: how many people can our planet support while providing them with normal living conditions?
Carl Safina, author of “The View from a Lazy Point of View. A natural year in an unnatural world,” answers this question the word "depends". “Depends on lifestyle. If everyone received 800 kg of grain a year, like the Americans, then the earth could support 2.5 billion people. Problem: We overcame this barrier in 1950. The earth can support 10 billion people if they live like Indians. The problem: All Indians want to live like Americans,” wrote Carl Safina in an article published in the Huffington Post.
To live like Americans, you need four planet Earths
Just to build houses, so much wood will be used that the forests of Indonesia, Myanmar, eastern Russia and Papua New Guinea will disappear before 2025, along with a number of birds, insects and monkeys, the scientist believes. At the same time, the quoted author assures, for the same density of cars as in the United States, China will need to produce 30% more more cars than there is now in the world. They will use an amount of fuel equal to 98 million barrels of oil per day. Today, humanity produces an average of 85 million barrels of “black gold” per day.
As American biologist Joel Cohen from Rockefeller University states in his book on this topic, to grow 1 ton of wheat, 900 tons of water are needed. To survive, humanity needs enormous areas to produce food, clothing, medicine, building materials, as well as sufficient quantities for all inhabitants. clean air And clean water. According to his calculations, on average 2.1 hectares of land with water are needed to provide one person with everything they need. If this person lives by US standards, he needs 10 hectares, which means that to provide all earthlings with the same standards as Americans, we will need 4 more planets like Earth, writes The Guardian.
Social catastrophe: in a few decades or centuries?
Viorel Badescu, a professor at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, believes that if the world population grows to 9 billion by 2050, this figure is not even close to the planet’s maximum capacity. The Romanian professor and Richard Cathcart, a consulting geographer from Burbank in California, together repeated Fremlin's calculations using more modern thermodynamic models. Assuming that each person radiates an average of 120 watts of heat and that life would become very unpleasant if the average temperature on the Earth's surface rose too high, the researchers claim that the Earth could support 1.3 quadrillion people without overheating. The two researchers acknowledge, however, that Earth's resources may be depleted long before population reaches its theoretical peak.
How many people live on Earth? Probably every person sometimes wondered 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 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 lack of control over the demographic process can lead to environmental disaster: epidemics, hunger, increased crime, 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 on Earth in weight units of measurement, and found that obesity, which affects half of humanity, harms not only the specific individual who consumes a large number of food, but also to the planet as a whole, increasing the load 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, uneven distribution on the planet of people is extremely important issue, which interests the minds of many ordinary people.
Most populous country is China, whose government has already begun to take measures to slow down the process of overpopulation of 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 harmful influence on the ecosystem, ruins the fate 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 on different stages development of society.
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. Leader in remuneration for each born child($13,000) is Italy, or rather its small town of Laviano, whose population is 2,000 inhabitants.
At high degree material well-being, the need for fertility decreases, the mortality rate falls, and 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 the predominant modern society individualistic claims to one’s own happiness become. 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. High level education reduces the need for numerous offspring.
- The steady increase in urbanization (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. People in poor countries especially suffer from AIDS, experiencing 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 its population and is trying to restore natural balance, freeing itself from its excess.
