Way back in 1950 when my parents were born there were 2,5 billion people on this planet. By the time I arrived in 1985, this had doubled to 5 billion people. Today, there are roughly 7 billion, and by the time I’ll retire it’s expected to be around 10 billion people. That means that it took from the beginning of humanity, 200.000 years ago, untill 1950 to reach 2,5 billion people, but it will only take one hundred more years to add three times that amount. In other words, the population is growing exponentially.
Let me put it differently. By the time you’ve reached the end of this video about 300 people have been added to the planet. In an hour from now there will be 8684 more people, and this time tomorrow we’ll have 208.434 new pride & joy. 1.4 million per week, 76 million per year.
And when there are more people, there are more mouths to be fed. In fact, there is more demand for all the stuff that we need to live: energy, water, food, and space. Imagine that the world’s population has tripled since the 1950’s. That means that we need three times as much oil, wood, coal, uranium, electricity, potable water, fish, meat, cereals, vegetables, and of course space. Space to live, but also to grow the food and produce the goods that we need.