By the end of this year, Earth’s population is predicted to pass 8 billion. To mark the occasion, BBC have asked just how large can Earth’s population grow? And, importantly, is that even the right question to be asking?
To do this, the BBC go back a long way in history. About 50,000 to 100,000 years. Where the human population risked going extinct as scientists suggest there were just 10,000 people left on Earth. Fast forward 100,000 years and the UN predict on 15 November 2022, we will tick over to 8 billion humans (we tried to do the Compound Annual Growth Rate calculation on this, but the online calculators don’t let you input 100,000 years).
There is a debate about whether the world is underpopulated or overpopulated (basically, the only thing everyone agrees on is that we’re not correctly populated). Those that argue underpopulation are led by the space billionaires – Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. In 2018, Bezos advocated for a world of one trillion people spread across the Solar System and announced he was planning ways to achieve it. Similarly, this year Elon Musk has been advocating for higher birth rates and an increased rate of population growth.
On the other hand, David Attenborough labelled the number of people on our planet a “plague on the Earth” and scientists from Stanford University calculated that the ideal size of our species would be between 1.5 and 2 billion.
This article takes a look back over thousands of years of history, from the Mesopotamians, to the Greeks and Romans, to medieval England, all the way to 20th century scientists, and shows that they have all argued the same thing – that the Earth is overpopulated. From when the world had just tens of millions of inhabitants to today, where it is closer to ten billion, the concern has been the same. That there are too many people for the Earth’s resources to sustain.
The question becomes is there something different about this time – does climate change change the equation – or will Sir David Attenborough join Plato and Thomas Malthus as famously incorrect worriers about overpopulation?
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