Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Many studies have tried to estimate the world's sustainable population for humans, that is, the maximum population the world can host. [5] A 2004 meta-analysis of 69 such studies from 1694 until 2001 found the average predicted maximum number of people the Earth would ever have was 7.7 billion people, with lower and upper meta-bounds at 0.65 and 9.8 billion people, respectively.
A country that consumes more than 1.73 gha per person has a resource demand that is not sustainable world-wide if every country were to exceed that consumption level simultaneously. Countries with a footprint below 1.73 gha per person might not be sustainable: the quality of the footprint may still lead to net long-term ecological destruction.
The notion that space is limited has been decried by skeptics, [174] who point out that the Earth's population of roughly 6.8 billion people could comfortably be housed an area comparable in size to the state of Texas in the United States (about 269,000 square miles or 696,706.80 square kilometres). [175]
The data from the Global Footprint Network has been used to create the graph below, it shows that since the 1970s the global population is increasingly compromising the Earth's ecosystem. The red section of the graph indicates that the global population have been accruing a global ecological overshoot since 1970.
Sustainability is regarded as a "normative concept".[5] [22] [23] [2] This means it is based on what people value or find desirable: "The quest for sustainability involves connecting what is known through scientific study to applications in pursuit of what people want for the future."
Estimates published in the early 2000s tended to predict that the population of Earth would stop increasing around 2070. [17] For example in a 2004 long-term prospective report, the United Nations Population Division projected that world population would peak at 9.2 billion in 2075 and then stabilize at a value close to 9 billion out to as far ...
Earth has a human population of over 8 billion as of 2024, with an overall population density of 50 people per km 2 (130 per sq. mile). Nearly 60% of the world's population lives in Asia, with more than 2.8 billion in the countries of India and China combined. The percentage shares of China, India and rest of South Asia of the world population ...
Global population size, estimates (1950–2022) and medium scenario with 95 percent prediction intervals, 2022–2100 [4] Amid global challenges such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic , several observers, including David Attenborough , have expressed concerns about the future of the planet and its inhabitants as the population grows.