Planet Earth is facing a multitude of problems. They are: water shortage, climate change, melting ice- caps and global warming to name a few. The root of all her problems can be traced to the injury caused to her by the enormous population of the human species. The problem has arisen because Man is successfully defeating her efforts to reduce the population. Till the nineteenth century, she had a huge mortality of infants and children with hardly a few of them surviving to become adults. Adults faced epidemic diseases and famines which killed millions of them. She occasionally caused natural calamities like floods to wipe out hundreds of villages. She created illnesses that caused most of the people to die at an early age. This effectively limited the population on the planet. The consumption of her resources by the small population did not challenge her in any way.
US Census estimates that the population of the World in 1 AD was about 170 million and after 1804 years it had grown to about 1 billion. The second billion was added in about 123 years and the population had grown to 2 billion in 1927. The next billion was added in only 32 years and the population had grown to 3 billion in 1959. Thereafter its growth accelerated and the planet added a billion people in each of the 3 periods of 15, 13 and 12 years. Thus by 1999 the population had grown to 6 billion people. We are now 6.8 billion in 2009, projected to grow to 9.4 billion by 2050. As against average yearly addition of less than half a million prior to 1804 AD, the World population is now growing at an alarming rate of 80 million per year!
As you can see from the above figures, planet Earth was doing a pretty good job at controlling the population growth until Man began to defeat her in her efforts in the twentieth century. He built dams to control floods, developed medical science and produced medicines to reduce infant and child mortality and to cure diseases. This resulted in more infants becoming adults and in more adults living a long life. Life expectancy thereby increased rapidly and has gone over 75 years in most of the countries of the World. Japan leads with a life expectancy of 82 years! That means the children born 82 years ago are still alive as grandparents!
World population, with its present growth rate, will more than double to reach 14 billion people by 2100. At that level of population, the resources of the planet, particularly rain water and arable land area would have to be worked twice as efficiently. If we do not succeed, the quality of life would be compromised.
