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Some Hope For Climate Change

World population estimates from 1800 to 2100, based on "high", "medium" and "low" United Nations projections in 2015 and UN historical estimates for pre-1950 data
 
 
 
 
 
 

While there's been overwhelming evidence of increasing global temperatures—often referred to as climate change—have you stopped to consider what is the underlying force driving this climate change?

While there are natural causes, and these need to be addressed separately, there are also human causes.And the most important of these causes is so obvious, and so politically sensitive that it is hardly mentioned—glossed over by the media.

But it is incontestable. What is it? Human population growth.

At the dawn of agriculture around 12,000 years ago, the world's human population is estimated to be around 8 million.

By the Middle Ages around 1400, over 11,000 years later, the world's human population had inched upwards to around 400 million.

And by the dawn of the Industrial Age, the world's human population around 1800, just 400 years later, it had climbed by a factor of four to 1.6 billion people.

By 1900, it was about 1.7 billion. I
In 1960, it hit 3 billion.
In 1974, it hit 4 billion.
In 1987, it hit 5 billion.
In 1999, it hit 6 billion.
In 2012, it hit 7 billion.
And it's currently at 7.7 billion people.

 


 

Where are they? Obviously all over, but China and India have a combined 36% of the world's population.

What are we going to do about it? Well, perhaps not so surprisingly, the world population is responding to the pressure.

Back in 1960, when the world population began to skyrocket, the world fertility rate was about five children per family. Since then, it has been steadily reducing to around 2.7 children per family.

While the world's population remains high, and places high demands on the world's resources, there is a light at the end of the tunnel in the next generation—lower population at a time of increasing technology.

These combined will move the world toward doing more with less. And by less, there will be less demand for fossil fuels and the resulting global warming.

But probably not in our lifetimes.

~ Al Zagofsky

 

 

 

 

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