Unless birth rates are lowered sharply through voluntary family-planning programmes and easy access to contraceptives, the tally of humans on Earth could swell to an unsustainable 11 billion by 2050, they warned.
The UN currently projects that global population will rise from 6.8 billion today to between 8.0 and 10.5 billion by mid-century.
The researchers said that with one and a half million more humans climbing aboard the planet every week, a recipe is looming for ecological overload, famine and broken states.
"Continued rapid population growth in many of the least developed countries could lead to hunger, a failure of education and conflict," said Malcolm Potts at the University of California in Berkeley, which hosted the conference in February.
I read a book on this recently, though, called "America Alone", that talked about how across America and Europe, the population replacement rate is actually DROPPING, because fewer people are having large families anymore. I wonder how accurate these population explosion numbers really are.
ReplyDelete