The 7 billionth world citizen was born in October 2011. In less than 10 years, a billion people have been added. How many people will we end up with and how many can our planet handle?
According to demographer Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
Malthus predicted worldwide famine, disease and war. All this due to too large a population. In Malthus’s time, a couple had an average of 3 to 4 children, and this continued for several generations. While food production could never keep up with this growth.
Fortunately, things never got to that point due to the industrial revolution and the declining number of children per couple.
Demography in Western countries
A couple in the Netherlands and Belgium now has an average of 2.1 children. This is enough to maintain the population. Contemporary scientists even predict that by 2050 the population in Western countries will gradually decline. This has been the case in Germany since the 1970s. For example, the population in Germany fell by 200,000 between 2005 and 2010, due to the disappearance of the housewife or husband. Nowadays, both men and women want to have a career with negative consequences for the number of children.
Demography in developing countries
Things are completely different in developing countries. The population there continues to rise enormously. India and China now each have more than 1 billion inhabitants. Nevertheless, China’s one-child policy, which has partly put a brake on population growth. These countries themselves make a small contribution to the depletion of the earth. It is because of the Western lifestyle that the raw materials are flying through.
As developing countries continue to grow, the population will probably stabilize here too, but when this will happen is an important unresolved question.
The hard numbers
The Earth currently has approximately 7 billion inhabitants. For the entire earth’s surface, this amounts to 51 inhabitants per square kilometer. If you consider that there are 400 inhabitants per square kilometer in the Netherlands, this is not so bad.
Yet this is not the case. 33,000 people live in the Principality of Monaco, but with an area of only 2 square kilometers this equates to 16,500 inhabitants per square kilometer. Australia, on the other hand, has not yet reached 3 inhabitants per square kilometer. This is due to the dry and hot interior where agriculture is hardly possible and living is therefore not possible. But it can be even better. Only 1.77 inhabitants live per square kilometer in Mongolia. This makes Mongolia the least populated country in the world.
What does the future look like?
This is difficult to predict, according to one scientist the earth is already too full. Others go up to 282 billion people.
This 282 billion is only possible if we use every piece of available land for agriculture. If we want to preserve some forests and rainforests, there is room for another 150 billion people. But if industry and recreation are still to be possible, the figure ‘only’ amounts to 75 billion. Yet there are still many scientists who think 75 billion is an exaggeration. Then you might find it suitable for agriculture and industry. But raw materials must also be taken into account. At 7 billion, we have already pumped almost all of the oil through. And other raw materials are also being depleted. If we walk around with 75 billion people who all want a mobile phone, laptop and their own home, we will be on a barren planet in no time. In addition, our atmosphere would be full of toxins, all the oil has been used up and our food is full of heavy metals. So no one can predict with certainty
how many people the Earth can handle. This depends on how much we consume and what technologies we use.