It took all of human history up to the early 1800s for world population to reach 1 billion people, and until 1960 to reach 3 billion. Today, the world gains 1 billion people every 11 years.
The world’s human population currently numbers about 6.2 billion people, and the figure grows by nearly 90 million people each year, or around 240,000 each day. This annual addition to population is greater than ever before in history prior to the 1980s.
It stems in large part from the unprecedented size of current population. The growth rate itself has actually declined since 1970, from about 2 percent to about 1.5 percent today. However, because this rate is applied to a much larger population than in 1970—when world population stood at 3.7 billion people—the added yearly increments are larger.
If the population growth rate is not reduced further, world population will likely double to 12 billion by the year 2040. This growing global population affects the welfare of communities and ecosystems around the world.
Government attempts to control childbearing have sometimes led to coercive reproduction approaches that violate human rights. Instead, through education and expanding individuals’ power over their lives, especially enabling them to have better control over how many and when they have children to complement their personal preferences, population growth may stabilize.
Although the rate of world population growth is beginning
to decline, the total number of people could still double
or even triple from today’s 6.2 billion before stabilizing
a century or more from now. Yet there is reason for optimism.
The combination of access to family planning and reproductive
health services, education and economic opportunity for women
could lower birthrates enough to stabilize world population
well before a doubling of today’s total.
From the Population
Action International website
Some ecologists argue that in terms of resource use, the United States is the world’s most overpopulated nation.
"[The United States] is the world’s fourth largest nation in population, now numbering more than a quarter-billion people, and the average American consumes more of Earth’s riches than an average citizen of any of the “big ten” nations with more than 100 million people: China, India, the Soviet Union, Indonesia, Brazil, Japan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Pakistan . . . Because of this combination of a huge population, great affluence, and damaging technologies, the United States has the largest impact of any nation on Earth’s fragile environment and limited resources."
—Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, Healing the Planet
