How Many people Can the Earth have enough?
Earth's capacity
Many scientists think Earth has a maximum carrying capacity of 9 billion to 10 billion people. [ How Do You Count 7 Billion People?] One such scientist, the eminent Harvard University sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, bases his estimate on calculations of the Earth's available resources.
The optimum population of Earth – enough to guarantee the minimal physical ingredients of a decent life to everyone – was 1.5 to 2 billion people rather than the 7 billion who are alive today or the 9 billion expected in 2050, said Ehrlich in an interview with the Guardian.
Earth's land mass covers an area of 148 million square kilometers. So that means you can fit 148 trillion people on the land masses if earth. If you take the entire surface of earth that's 510 million square kilometers, so 510 trillion humans.
The latest UN population update, released in July this year, also revises its long-term projection down from 11 billion people to 10.4 billion by 2100.
Both these trends are driven, in large part, by immense and unprecedented numbers of human beings. Because there are too many of us to share the Earth fairly with other species and with future human generations, Earth is overpopulated.
Repopulating the world after the apocalypse
However, to retain evolutionary potential – to remain genetically flexible and diverse – the IUCN criteria suggest we would need at least 500 effective individuals.
Population projections by the numbers
The UN predicts the global population could grow to around 8.5 billion in just 8 years. By 2080, the world's population is expected to peak at 10.4 billion. Then there's a 50% chance that the population will plateau or begin to decrease by 2100.
The danger of overpopulation: Earth's capacity
Population growth puts an increasing pressure on the planet's limited resources, and subsequently, on the environment. The Earth's exact 'carrying capacity' is still undecided, but it is still considered to be inevitable given our current trajectory.
“Overpopulation occurs when a species' population exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecological niche. It can result from an increase in births (fertility rate), a decline in the mortality rate, an increase in immigration, or an unsustainable biome and depletion of resources.”
Over 40 years of research Cohen has collected 65 estimates, ranging from 1 billion to over 1 trillion people. "The scatter in estimates of how many people the Earth can support increases over time," meaning that there is little consensus in how many Homo sapiens our planet can support, Cohen told Live Science.
How many Earths will we need in 2050?
It would take 1.75 Earths to sustain our current population. If current trends continue, we will reach 3 Earths by the year 2050.
Technically yes, we have enough space- 197 million square miles on earth which equates to 5,492,044,800,000,000 square feet which is more than enough to have a trillion people on earth. But that assuming we manage to build on water. I mean it would still fit without oceans, just more cramped.
Sadia Sultana Oishee, an 11-year-old from Bangladesh, who is the seventh-billionth child in the world, is aware of her fame. She was born in 2011, and according to her parents, her birth was nothing short of an event, with politicians and television crews swarming around her mother to get a look at her.
Until 1804, fewer than one billion people roamed our planet. More than a century later, in 1927, we crossed two billion. Since then, the world population has shot up in the shape of a hockey stick, boosted by the triumphs of modern medicine and public health.
- Generously fund family planning programs.
- Make modern contraception legal, free and available everywhere, even in remote areas.
- Improve health care to reduce infant and child mortality.
- Restrict child marriage and raise the legal age of marriage (minimum 18 years)
Overpopulation: The Numbers
In 2022 there are over 8 billion people alive on earth. Experts expect that if something doesn't change, we could see 9.7 billion people by 2050 and 11 billion by 2100. It took over 2 million years for the global population to reach 1 billion in the year 1800.
China has the world's largest population (1.426 billion), but India (1.417 billion) is expected to claim this title next year. The next five most populous nations – the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria and Brazil – together have fewer people than India or China.
They created the “50/500” rule, which suggested that a minimum population size of 50 was necessary to combat inbreeding and a minimum of 500 individuals was needed to reduce genetic drift.
The controversial Toba catastrophe theory, presented in the late 1990s to early 2000s, suggested that a bottleneck of the human population occurred approximately 75,000 years ago, proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps 10,000–30,000 individuals when the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia erupted and ...
Satellite imagery has previously estimated that 20-40% of the Earth's surface is still in relatively good condition and has not been affected by significant human activity.
What happens if Earth is overpopulated?
More people means an increased demand for food, water, housing, energy, healthcare, transportation, and more. And all that consumption contributes to ecological degradation, increased conflicts, and a higher risk of large-scale disasters like pandemics.
While it took hundreds of thousands of years for the world's population to reach 1 billion, the world grew from 7 billion to 8 billion just since 2010, a reflection of advancements in health.
Humanity passed the 7 billion milestone in 2011 and the UN estimates it will not reach 9 billion until 2037, 15 years from now.
Many metropolitan areas in the United States are tackling a similar problem – overpopulation. Although the U.S. is the third largest country in the world, it has a fairly low population density and in 2017, the U.S. birthrate was the lowest in thirty years, which is well below replacement level.
When more people are living in a country, they need more space and area for living. Hence overpopulation decreases the raw area and transforms it into a living area which further leads to environmental problems like pollution.
Our growing population
This dramatic growth has been driven largely by increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age, the gradual increase in human lifespan, increasing urbanization, and accelerating migration. Major changes in fertility rate have accompanied this growth.
Estimates vary, but we're expected to reach "peak human" around 2070 or 2080, at which point there will be between billion and 10.4 billion people on the planet.
There are numerous reasons why China's overpopulation is affecting the country's economy. Higher rates of unemployment , food shortages, increasing environmental change, and a lower standard of living are all direct consequences of China's overpopulation.
By 2050 , the world's population will exceed at least 9 billion and by 2050 the population of India will exceed that of China. By 2050, about 75% of the world population will be living in cities. Then there will be buildings touching the sky and cities will be settled from the ground up.
Humanity is using nature 1.8 times faster than our planet's biocapacity can regenerate. That's equivalent to using the resources of 1.8 Earths.
What will happen to the Earth by 2100?
Without strengthening climate policies, greenhouse gas emissions are projected to lead to a median global warming of about 3.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, per the report. Climate scientists have previously warned that severe effects could occur if the Earth warms more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The Earth has become five percent greener in 20 years. In total, the increase in leaf area over the past two decades corresponds to an area as large as the Amazon rainforests.
Results from a wide range of climate model simulations suggest that our planet's average temperature could be between 2 and 9.7°F (1.1 to 5.4°C) warmer in 2100 than it is today.
Has Earth grown larger from the buildup of decaying vegetation through the ages? Earth isn't getting bigger. It's actually getting smaller! Decaying vegetation does pile up across the planet, but not everywhere equally.
Earth is estimated to be 4.54 billion years old, plus or minus about 50 million years. Scientists have scoured the Earth searching for the oldest rocks to radiometrically date. In northwestern Canada, they discovered rocks about 4.03 billion years old.
To date (2022) there is no population on the moon. The moon has been visited multiple times. So far, NASA's Apollo 17 mission in 1972 let humans be on the moon the longest (12 days 14 hours).
Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. Actual global human population growth amounts to around 83 million annually, or 1.1% per year. The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.9 billion in 2020.
In Russia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held a 2-day-old boy named Pyotr Nicolayev and declared that he was the world's 7,000,000,000th person. There were other claims of babies born in Nigeria, China and Peru being Number 7 billion.
According to the BBC, Matej Gaspar, a Croatian, who is currently 35 years old, is the world's fifth-billionth human. According to a news report, Gaspar, who is now an engineer, does not enjoy the attention he has received for being the fifth-billionth child.
With a world population at approximately 7.8 billion, one percent would be about 78 million.
Who is the 8 billionth person?
NEW YORK (CBS) - The world's population has now reached an estimated 8 billion people. The honor of the 8-billionth person goes to a baby born in the Dominican Republic Tuesday. A projection from the United Nations calls the birth a "milestone in human development."
On 11th May 2000, India's population officially reached 1 billion people with the birth of a baby girl. Government officials decided that a baby born at the Safdarjang hospital in Delhi would mark the milestone. Astha Arora was named as India's billionth baby.
Some estimates extend their timeline into deep prehistory, to "10,000 BC", i.e., the early Holocene, when world population estimates range roughly between 1 and 10 million (with an uncertainty of up to an order of magnitude).
Alternatively, a much more rapidly declining fertility rate would produce a global population of 8.9 billion by 2100 – the lower limit of the 95% prediction interval. So, demographers are 95% certain that the world should prepare for a population somewhere between 8.9 billion and 12.4 billion by the end of the century.
An average middle-class American consumes 3.3 times the subsistence level of food and almost 250 times the subsistence level of clean water. So if everyone on Earth lived like a middle class American, then the planet might have a carrying capacity of around 2 billion.
As part of the ongoing supercontinent cycle, plate tectonics will probably result in a supercontinent in 250–350 million years. Sometime in the next 1.5–4.5 billion years, Earth's axial tilt may begin to undergo chaotic variations, with changes in the axial tilt of up to 90°.
On 15 November 2022, the world's population is projected to reach 8 billion people, a milestone in human development.
Humanity passed the 7 billion milestone in 2011 and the UN estimates it will not reach 9 billion until 2037, 15 years from now.
These effects will counterbalance the impact of mass loss by the Sun, and the Sun will likely engulf Earth in about 7.59 billion years. The drag from the solar atmosphere may cause the orbit of the Moon to decay.
Sadia Sultana Oishee, an 11-year-old from Bangladesh, who is the seventh-billionth child in the world, is aware of her fame. She was born in 2011, and according to her parents, her birth was nothing short of an event, with politicians and television crews swarming around her mother to get a look at her.
When did Earth hit 6 billion?
According to the latest United Nations population estimates, world population reaches ,the six billion mark on 12 October 1999, an historic milestone in the growth of world population.
The population of females in the world is estimated at 3,904,727,342 or 3,905 million or 3.905 billion, representing 49.58% of the world population. The world has 65,511,048 or 65.51 million more males than females. Gender Ratio in the World in 2021 is 101.68 males per 100 females.
It reached 5 billion in 1987 and 6 billion in 1999. In October 2011, the global population was estimated to be 7 billion. A global movement 7 Billion Actions was launched to mark this milestone.
Because according to scientists from the University of Utah, about a million years ago our ancestors numbered fewer than 20,000. The estimate appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists based this ancestral census on a reading of modern human genomes.
On the low end, the UN estimates the year 2300 will see only 2.3 billion people walking the Earth, fewer than we saw in 1940. On the high end, it predicts 36 billion — five times the current size. But tucked in the middle is a number it forecasts will hold steady from approximately 2050 onward: 9 billion.
October 31, 2011 • The U.N. says today symbolically marks the moment when the world's population reaches 7 billion. A little more than two centuries ago, the global population was 1 billion.
The model showed that human population would stabilize at the level of 14 billion around 2500 A.D. and 13 billion around 2200 A.D., in accordance with UN projections.
While the effects of human activities on Earth's climate to date are irreversible on the timescale of humans alive today, every little bit of avoided future temperature increases results in less warming that would otherwise persist for essentially forever.
Increases in carbon dioxide warm up our atmosphere and contribute to climate change. But the good news is this: LOTS of oxygen is already in the atmosphere. Compared to the 20% oxygen that is already there, changes in oxygen every year are less than 0.001%. It would take over 1000 years to really notice a difference.
Earth could continue to host life for at least another 1.75 billion years, as long as nuclear holocaust, an errant asteroid or some other disaster doesn't intervene, a new study calculates. But even without such dramatic doomsday scenarios, astronomical forces will eventually render the planet uninhabitable.