World Population Day: Is Humanity Doomed?

At the beginning of our era, the world population was around 250 million. According to’National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), it will have taken 1,800 years to reach the billion from that moment, then 127 years to double the population and pass to 2 billion in 1927, then only 47 years to double again and pass this time to four billion in 1974 Since then, the rate of increase seems stable: the number of inhabitants on Earth increases by one billion every 12 years. Thus, we are today at almost 8 billion human beings, the latest data being at 7,953,950 inhabitants. Yet the amount of resources on Earth is not increasing, so Overshoot Day moves forward year after year, a symbolic day in the year that marks when humans have consumed more resources than what that the Earth can provide in a year. How to survive in the long term in the face of this? And what will become of humanity?

We will probably be 11 billion humans by 2100

The reason for this increase: development. A global term that designates both increased wealth, better security, better health systems, lower infant mortality and an increase in the birth rate… on average because this is not the case everywhere, humans live in better conditions than a few hundred years ago. But this increase is of course not without consequences. We are talking about overcrowding when the number of inhabitants is in excess of what the habitat can support, i.e. both the supply of the resources necessary for the survival of the species, and the capacity to repair itself in the face of attacks caused by the species. Many places on Earth are then overpopulated with humans. Even the whole Earth, if we consider the extinction of many species and the progressive destruction of ecosystems.

Predicting an evolution of the global population is then practically impossible. Researchers are working on it, creating many models, each with different hypotheses. They are based on gigantic quantities of data, which identify the population, the fertility, the rate of infant mortality but also migration, all for hundreds of countries. The predictions of the last three are then used to estimate the evolution of the number of people in each country and then in the world in general. The latest United Nations report predicts that by 2100, the population will have reached 11 billion!

Overpopulation, serious consequences

What consequences would this increase have? One of the first to ask the question was Thomas Malthusan English economist who published I’Essay on the principle of population in 1798 in which he discusses, at a time when poverty is increasing in England, the harmful consequences of an excessive increase in the number of inhabitants. According to him, “population grows geometrically, but food production grows arithmetically” : resources add up while people multiply. For him, only two possible solutions arise from this problem: limiting births, or producing more.

the lack of resources would first be felt by the water. Currently, one in five people does not have access to drinking water. A figure that is likely to increase. The same goes for food, unevenly distributed. Added to this is the question ofenergy : being more numerous with a rhythm of life means producing more food, but above all more energy. If the standard of living remains at the current level. However, in developing countries, energy consumption per capita is increasing. With all that, finally, pollution. It arises indirectly from all these parameters, and kills more and more people each year. A Harvard University study has calculated that one in five deaths worldwide is caused by fine particle pollution which come from combustions related to industrial operations, andagriculture.

But we’re doomed to dwindle in number

But this situation of demographic increase could not last. In particular by all these reasons which would cause many deaths or wars for the resources. Moreover, history has shown that the populations of developed countries tend to stabilize: in question, the increase in the standard of living and better access to education and contraception. The generation replacement threshold is set at 2.1 births per woman: however, in Europe, the birth rate has been falling since 1950, and is already well below this threshold. In 2015, there were 1.5 children per woman on average in the European Union. Japan, China, Canada and India are also below this threshold. Conversely, developing countries will increase their population in the future, with a birth rate that remains high, with infant mortality that decreases. From where a possibility of descent, in the long term, of the world population. Studies even imagine that the population could drop below one billion by 2200! Assuming an increase in the standard of living, therefore a sharp drop in the birth rate.