Looking at the world, the only countries with a population of more than one billion are China and India. Although China’s population growth has slowed down, India has not. The current population is close to 1.4 billion, and it is still growing at a high speed. It is expected to surpass China in 10 years!
Tips: When will the population of India surpass that of China?
India’s population is currently 1.396 billion. From the 2001 to 2011 census, India’s population has increased by 17.7%, which means that the population has increased by 181.5 million in 11 years, or about 16 million per year. At this rate of growth, India will be within 3-4 years A historic transcendence can be completed, and India will become the world’s most populous country in 2025.
The earth that mankind depends on for survival: how many people can it carry?
From 50,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago, the global scale was only a few million people, but by 1800, the global population had reached 1 billion, and by the 1920s, the population had exceeded 2 billion!
However, from the 1920s to the present, the global population has been close to 7.9 billion, and it will not be long before it breaks through 8 billion. The earth’s population is growing exponentially. From the perspective of the curve, it is like a spacecraft approaching the speed of light. The curve of qualitative growth has risen sharply. A little change in time can make a big difference. According to the forecast of the UN population experts, the earth’s population will exceed 10 billion by 2050!
The Earth, with a diameter of 12,700 kilometers and a surface area of more than 510 million square kilometers, is definitely an astronomical figure for small humans, but modern human aircraft can already orbit the Earth in one day. If it is a low-Earth orbit satellite, then It can make a circle in one and a half hours.
Human beings need to consume resources to live on the earth, and the output of the earth is limited, because human beings need to consume energy from birth to death, and this energy comes from the biomass energy produced by the earth, which is the earth’s ecological system How many people can the stored solar energy feed on the earth?
In 2012, the United Nations Commission on Population and Development issued a report on the scale of the largest sustainable population on the planet. The most typical estimate is 8 billion, while the smallest scale is 2 billion, and the largest scale reaches 1,024 billion. The range varies greatly. What caused the difference of this order of magnitude?
The per capita consumption rate of resources is the key
A report by Science.com in 22017 pointed out that the food consumption level of an average middle-class American is 3.3 times the standard of living and 250 times the standard of clean water living. If all human beings in the world live like the average middle-class American, Then the carrying capacity of the earth will not exceed 2 billion!
American waste is famous all over the world. Guo Jerry, the well-known UP owner of station B, once appeared to talk about the waste of Americans. He randomly found several trash cans in hypermarkets, and the whole bucket of bread, desserts, and barbecue chicken were dumped. It makes people feel heartbroken. These are foods produced through complicated processes in food production, and the reason for dumping them is that they are not fresh anymore.
The waste of energy is even more shocking. For example, a statistics in 2019 showed that the average annual electricity consumption of Americans is 12,000 kWh, and that of gasoline is 5,000 liters, which is about twice the average annual electricity consumption of the British (5,000 kWh). , 2.5 times the Chinese average and 3 times the global average! You can imagine what a scourge the Americans are on the earth.
The United States has grown in various wastes in recent years. (The growth of various solid wastes)
Of course, if you consider the advancement of agricultural technology in the future and the full and effective use of the fertility of the earth’s soil, if you consider the poor areas of Africa every day to be just a fruitful day, then the earth’s carrying limit is 1,024 billion, but this number seems to be of little significance, after all. No one intends to survive like canned sardines.
It is more difficult to comprehensively assess the population carrying limit. For example, we are now facing a very headache problem, that is, educational resources. High-end and high-quality educational resources are limited. Everyone is fighting for these high-quality resources. However, people in underdeveloped areas are rushing to feed themselves every day.
A forecast by David Satterthwaite, a senior researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London, said that most of the growth in the next two decades is expected to occur in the urban centers of current low- and middle-income countries. For example, Mexico City is rapidly expanding, Tehran, Iran, Mumbai and New Delhi, India, and some low-income countries in Africa.
Mumbai Slum-Dharavi
These cities are facing huge problems. For example, Mexico City, which is located in the ancient lake sediments of the plateau basin, has an annual subsidence rate of over 0.5 meters or more in the city center because residents extract groundwater, and the subsidence in Tehran, Iran is also due to the over-utilization of groundwater. .
Mexico City
Another problem is pollution emissions. Although India’s emissions ranked third in 2019, accounting for 6% of global pollution emissions, their emissions are “high quality” because a large amount of smoke and dust is discharged into the atmosphere without desulfurization. This is much more serious than simply emitting carbon dioxide.
The problem under global warming: it is no longer life, but survival!
The rapid population expansion has several landmark events. One is the industrial revolution. From small-scale farming to the industrialized era, all kinds of production materials have begun to enter the era of large-scale industrialized production. This process is revolutionary in promoting the global economy.
The other is the advancement of medical technology. From the end of the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth century, the death rate at birth fell by more than an order of magnitude, and the average life expectancy of the population increased by more than 30 years. These are the key supports for population growth.
Another is the advancement of agricultural technology, such as the use of chemical fertilizers, the development of intensive agriculture, etc. Population expansion, food and clothing are the key, without the support of food, no matter how excellent technology can feed a huge population.
But another fact lies in front of mankind. Since the industrial revolution, the global temperature rise has reached 1.15℃. If emissions are uncontrolled, the temperature rise will exceed 2.5℃-3℃ by 2100, which will cause the earth’s ecology to fall into Unstoppable, the ice caps at the poles melted, sea levels rose, and the greenhouse effect was unstoppable. The earth returned to the era of high temperatures 240 million years ago, when a large number of species that could not adapt to the environment were replaced by dinosaurs.
So what species will replace humans this time? Of course, scientists have also proposed new solutions. For example, let’s not toss on the earth. With so many resources on asteroids, why don’t we go there to ask for them, colonize space and colonize the planets of the solar system?
On January 23, 2021, an interesting article was published on the PRB website. According to estimates of human traces in various eras discovered by archaeologists and technological advancements, the total population that has appeared in the history of the earth is counted. The data is 108 billion. , The current population of the earth is close to 7.9 billion, which means that about 100 billion people have died on the earth.
This extends to a very interesting question. It is said that human souls will be reincarnated, so where do these extra souls come from?
