Today, 15 November 2022, the global population has officially reached 8 billion, according to the United Nations (UN).
Also from that same source, it took 12 years for the global population to go from 7 billion to 8 billion. (The numbers are projected to reach 9 billion in 15 years, and that is with the prediction that the current rapid grow will slow down in the next decade).
In the past several years, I remember often using the reference of “7 billion” and later “7+ billion” in terms of the global population – and now it hit a whole 8 billion!
The great news on that is that in general, babies survive their infancies, childhood, and live to be adults, and adults tend to die at a much older age, and that many past diseases either have remedies or can be entirely avoided (often with vaccines). In other words, globally, we now live longer than ever – and that’s a great thing!
The somber news is that the increase in global population is affecting the Earth (and us in it) in terms of the scarcity or overstretching of some of our natural resources. The other major consequence of the combined over-population and the scarcity of resources is how it impacts global warming and continues to put pressure on the “climate crisis”.
Over-population is a global challenge that presses on many systems from the economy, to housing, to the health system, even social issues …, Not to mention, how this scarcity is affecting mostly developing countries already struggling.
And there is another important element to all this: and that is pollution – air, water, and land pollution, are mostly caused by humans, and the more people there are, the more pollution we cause.
Pollution can directly affect our quality of life and that of many of Earth’s species. And if there is anything harmful enough (in the air, water, or land) it can bring on more diseases, affect those with weaker systems or with health conditions, and even cause death.
The terms “climate change” or “global warming” are issues we hear about daily, but when I was young in school the main term was “pollution”, and we learned about the “Three Rs”: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle – that speaks mainly to water and land pollution, and especially to the situation in landfills and of garbage dumped in oceans.
But just recently I read about a new three “Rs”, and they are the: “solutions that aim not only to ‘Reduce’, but also to ‘Repair’ and ‘Restore’ a sense of balance in the Earths’ natural environment”, and that call to action was written by Richard Garriott in the Summer 2022 edition of the Explorers Journal (the official quarterly of the Explorers Club).
What a wonderful and important message that is and by the influential members of the Explorers Club, and although a sentiment many governments agree on world-wide, we need to put these three Rs into action and work very hard at them – now!
We can say that solving the now 8-billion-over-population global issue is to have less babies, but the truth of the matter is that it’s an environmental issue and that is one that needs to be dealt with right now.
Indirectly, there are many industries that are working on the issue: from within the food industry, such as Solar Foods, a biotechnology in Finland that are “Creating the future of sustainable food with an unlimited diversity of proteins”, to the global boom in the New Space sector, with countless start-ups researching and innovating on long-term crewed spaceflights and the human expansion in the solar system, and for us to be a “multiplanetary species”, a term mostly coined with Elon Musk.
In the history of our existence, and only just relatively recently, we, humans, began journeying outside of Earth, and even that, not all that far, and not all that many (approximately 600 people went to space) – this, in contrast to the eight billion currently with their feet on the Earth.
A lot of those who did experience spaceflight also experienced a cognitive shift of sort, the Overview Effect, and that is of seeing the Earth from a different perspective, from above, and realizing the preciousness of our planet. They learned a great lesson with their spaceflight, but we don’t all get to go to space.
We are still very much Earthlings, and whether we get to venture outside of our nurturing planet in the future is just that, the future. For now, Earth is our home, and all its various ecosystems need to be protected and sustained for how nature intended it to be, so we can keep up and even thrive with a global population of eight-billion-and-counting.
It can (and must) be done!
“Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune
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