Worldometers estimates the world population is 7.796 billion. This is increasing by 224,400 people every day. This means we are about 900 days from 8 billion people.
Worldometers is leveraging UN population estimates. The UN leverages the population counts of countries.
In Nigeria, censuses are controversial: The country has even gone as far as annulling two of them (1973 and 1991). From the 1953 census done by the British to the 2006 census done by Nigerians, all censuses have ended in controversy.
Each Nigerian state managed to maintain its exact share of the population across two censuses, 15 years apart.
In 1991, Nigeria might have had about 89 million people. In 2006, Nigeria might have had 140 million people.
Population is mainly growing in Africa. South Asia population growth is slowing. The political problems for counting people in Africa make it difficult to get good estimates of how many people are in Africa. This will make it hard to get good estimates of how many people are in the world. Right now it is believed that are there are 1.35 billion people in Africa.
The population of Africa may reach 2.5 billion by 2050.
SOURCES – Worldometers
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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O’Neills for all.
Seriously- what is with the planet fixation?
Can someone name one engineering/tech feat stopping us from mining the moon and using the raw materials to construct O’Neill cylinders[with/without artificial soil]?
Ocean fishing has done quite a bit of damage. They have nets that scrape the bottom of the ocean, and destroy a lot and also artificially level it out removing habitat.
It is very hard to control this, as there is no global enforcement even if you could get agreements.
Japan refuses to stop whaling. The US continues to let Native Alaskans kill 200 year old bowheads.
In the US, 14% of the land is protected and 12% of marine area. Totaling roughly 1 million square miles. 14.7% of the World’s land is protected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_area
And these things tend to grow rather than shrink. In 50 years, it may be 20% or more. Even much of the non-protected areas are uninhabited. People more and more are moving to the cities. That leaves wildlife more room. Sure we still have personal ownership of a lot of land, but if few people are there, animals will still make use of it, to the extent that they can get in and avoid people.
Dang wildlife ate one of my cats the other day. He was a house cat, and evidently did not know how best to escape an attack in the yard. And there is suburbia in all directions.
That is what the CCP said and now they are driving over a demographic cliff.
Most people are sadly ignorant about the population bomb, and many of those who know find it too upsetting to think about as there are no easy fixes. I don’t have a good solution, besides improving space travel and colonization technology, but I am at least willing to think about the problem!
I don’t know about you but I don’t have the power to affect any country’s demographics. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Population growth is not a problem, population decline is one of the the LARGEST problem we face
nonsense
Most of Earth is wild, urban areas are only a tiny fraction of land area, not even mentioning that most of Earth is covered with water which is also wildlife area
Get out of the big city centre for once in your life.
Of course Hispano means to start with the genetically inferior first.
You know the ones. Them…
Yes, it’s ALL gone. There is no more. Look into how much habitat is being returned due to advances in farming alone. “Clean energy” will take up all the extra land if we move that route.
Let’s start with you, nuts please!
Backlash hasn’t happened in China – at least not in the form of higher birth rates
You obviously have not used Google Earth, or heard of a national park, wildlife refuge, state park, national forest, national monument, national preserve…
You assume more people is a bad thing, I think that is incorrect. We will develop better more efficient ways to grow or otherwise produce food. Transportation will finally advance with batteries with several times the energy density, and AI drivers. We will recycle water. We will use new materials to build rather than being highly reliant on wood from trees. Communications will improve dramatically, reducing the need for travel. Delivery of food and other goods will further reduce the need for travel. Virtual education will increase also reducing travel. Energy will increasingly move toward wind, solar, tidal, hydro, nuclear, and geothermal.
Environmental harm will diminish even as numbers grow and lives become more rewarding.
No, it wont: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSAgHvETNSg&t=1s
For my country: fertility way below 2 children per woman for the natives, way above two for muslims.
It saddens me that we have created a world that has no place for wildlife.
Where does Asia have high population growth?
Maybe we should see what happens if long term reliable methods like hormonal IUDs are free everywhere. I suspect ‘enforcing’ birth control would result in a backlash that results in higher birth rates.
And asia too
We need to”enforce” birth control
Child welfare is the enemy of the System, which relies upon children being abused until the Pain inflicted causes repression and neurosis, in the very *form* of the System: it reproduces and lives exactly that way. Once understood, the System must be destroyed.
Throw in the fact that people are as crazy as they can possibly be, my gloss on Janov, BTW, and it is time to start thinking!
Starting 50 years ago, we not only had the tech, we (a few) had the plan. G. K. O’Neill had asked *the* question already and would publish in Physics Today and “The High Frontier” shortly thereafter. Starting in ’77, I have adamantly required reading “The High Frontier” to avoid sarcasm being heaped upon those pontificating about Mars, or whatever, ignorantly. If planetarianism were not so obvious, much as the Earth being the center of the universe is obvious, I would suspect criminal conspiracy by neurotic power addicts to bury thought of O’Neill, as it is sooooo liberating. I do anyway!
See Janov for actual solution to mysticism and socialism, right wing or left.
https://youtu.be/z8zuqR95fqA
What is ecologically sustainable depends on the available technology and management. It is possible, in principle, to sustain a much larger population on Earth. There are enough resources. I’ll admit that our technology is still lacking for that, but it’s close. The much bigger issue is management. Our current management of the available resources, of our industry, etc, is far from good enough.
The other thing is, even if the world as a whole can sustain a larger population, the poorer regions, and particularly Africa, are severely lacking in the necessary infrastructure. And many of those places lack the political climate and stability that would allow such infrastructure. So the realistic situation is that the regions with the most population growth are also the ones least able to sustain it. The developed regions are actually heading towards reducing their population (but it will still take a while).
(I’m not going to get into what is socially optimal.)
The usual replies will be socialist tripe about education of females and that “studies have shown this”, while the experience with immigrants in Europe shows that religious and other backwardness cannot be remedied with education and that leftists pander to islamic fundamentalism.
Most people think that ignoring poverty and educational opportunity in third world countries will make these people simply disappear. But continued poverty and ignorance in the third world only makes their numbers grow at a substantially higher rate. Several African and middle eastern countries still have literacy rates that are less than 50%! Absolutely shocking, IMO.
There should be a global education fund that provides a quality K-12 education– for every child on Earth– plus college scholarships for the best students.
Studies have shown that the best way to substantially reduce population growth in third world countries is to provide educational opportunity to females. Educated women don’t like having large families especially if it interferes with their careers.
But even in America, the least educated women tend to have the most children which is part of the reason why poverty never seems to completely disappear in the wealthiest country on Earth.
African and middle-eastern population growth is the world’s #1 problem, more so than Climate Change, Nuclear War, or global pandemics. There is no way that the rest of the world can absorb Africa/Mideast population growth. Asia will simply continue to refuse to let them in, and same with Eastern Europe. Western Europe/North America can’t absorb the billions of excess population. Remember that the problem is literally multiple BILLIONs in this century alone.
Ideally we would not allow world population to grow until we have the technology to create off-world colonies and utilize space resources. The world is already overpopulated compared to what is ecologically sustainable and socially optimal.
They have so many problems, high population growth in Africa will infest the whole world.