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What Every Citizen Should Know About Our Planet
by August Anson
Light years better than Beyond Six Billion
Ecology, thresholds, tipping points, limiting
factors, feedback loops,
overpopulation, conservation biology, and planetary
carrying capacity
Targeting world leaders, scholars, conservationists,
teachers,
journalists, the general public, first year college undergraduates,
and citizens everywhere
See navigation bar for PowerPoints
and PDF excerpts
Despite an unwarranted complacency by many, humanity's central problems today include, among
other things, (a) the impending arrival of our 7th, 8th, and 9th billions by mid-century, along with (b) the extreme levels
of overpopulation and environmental impacts that we already exhibit. As a result, a continuation of today's demographic
tidal wave
may constitute the greatest single risk
that our species has ever undertaken.
| Human Population Growth - 8000 B.C. to 2050 A.D. |
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| Click image to enlarge graph |
HUMAN POPULATION 8000 B.C. - PRESENT
If today is Friday, by
this same time on Monday, earth will be home to more than 681,000 additional
persons.***
(Hopefully, someone, somewhere, is planning to
grow
a lot of extra food over the weekend.)
Despite a prevailing sense of complacency seen
in some economic and political circles, world population now grows by approximately 227,000 extra
persons per day.***
Notice that virtually all of our growth has occurred since 1800 and that we
are currently adding an additional billion to our numbers every twelve to fifteen years.
*** Each day there are approximately
380,683 births around the world. During the same twenty-four hours, there are approximately
153,653 deaths (after World Population Data Sheet 2009, Populatiion Reference Bureau).
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