Global Population Expected to Continue Exploding

Posted on May 3, 2011

Flickr / FlyingSinger

The U.N. forecasts the world will hold more than 10 billion people by the end of the century, including a tripling of Africa’s population. The planet will reach 7 billion humans at the end of October, then keep spiraling upward as fertility rates remain higher than expected. Estimates assume that major social, economic and environmental disasters will not be severe enough to curb the growth.—KDG

The New York Times:

The population of the world, long expected to stabilize just above nine billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, the United Nations projected in a report released Tuesday morning.

Growth in Africa remains so high that the population there could more than triple in this century, rising from today’s one billion to 3.6 billion, the report said — a sobering forecast for a continent already struggling to provide food and water for its people.

The new report comes just ahead of a demographic milestone, with the world population expected to pass 7 billion in late October, only a dozen years after it surpassed 6 billion.

Read more

 

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.