BIG DAY TODAY…! The world’s 7-billionth baby is born! As The Guardian reports, Danica May Camacho, a girl born in Philippine capital Manila, is chosen by UN to symbolically mark global population milestone. Danica May Camacho was chosen by the United Nations to be one of several children around the world who will symbolically represent the global population milestone.
As Kenneth R. Weiss, LA Times reports, it took only a dozen years for humanity to add another billion people to the planet, reaching the milestone of 7 billion Monday — give or take a few months.
Demographers at the United Nations Population Division set Oct. 31, 2011, as the “symbolic” date for hitting 7 billion, while acknowledging that it’s impossible to know for sure the specific time or day. Using slightly different calculations, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates the 7-billion threshold will not be reached until March.
Under any methodology, demographers agree that humanity remains on a steep growth curve, which is likely to keep climbing through the rest of this century. The U.N.’s best estimate is that population will march past 9.3 billion by 2050 and exceed 10.1 billion by the end of the century. It could be far more, if birthrates do not continue to drop as they have in the last half-century.
Nearly all the projected growth this century is expected to occur in developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, while the combined populations in Europe, North America and other wealthy industrialized nations will remain relatively flat. Some countries, such as Germany, Russia and Japan, are poised to edge downward, their loss made up mostly by ongoing growth in the United States, which is bolstered by waves of immigrants.
The buildup to Monday’s milestone has briefly turned up the flame on long-simmering debates about growth on a finite planet: Whether a growing population or growing consumption remains the biggest environmental challenge, how best to help lift a billion people out of poverty and misery, whether governments should provide contraception for those who cannot afford it.
The new leader of the United Nations Population Fund, Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, a Nigerian obstetrician-gynecologist, stepped gingerly into the fray. His agency remains a favorite punching bag of antiabortion activists in the United States for its role in supporting family planning clinics in developing countries.
“Instead of asking questions like, ‘Are we too many?’ we should instead be asking, ‘What can I do to make our world better?’ ” wrote Osotimehin in the annual State of the World Population report. The report chronicles disparities between rich nations and poor ones. Poor countries continue to have low education levels and startlingly high rates of teenage pregnancy and maternal and child deaths due to complications from childbirth.
“In many parts of the developing world, where population growth is outpacing economic growth, the need for reproductive health services, especially family planning, remains great,” Osotimehin concluded.
Some have used the occasion to celebrate the unrivaled success of the human species. Population grows when births exceed deaths. The 7-billion mark was reached because people are living longer and the number of infant deaths has dropped, because of a more secure food supply and because of advances in sanitation and medicine.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will hold a news conference Monday to mark the date and talk about challenges ahead, particularly how to reduce poverty, invest in the world’s 1.8 billion youth and help countries develop in a sustainable way.
In 1999, his predecessor, Kofi Annan, designated a boy born to refugee parents in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, as Baby 6 Billion. He had been plucked from the hundreds of thousands of babies born that day to put a face on global population growth. Adnan Mevic, now 12, has become something of a celebrity.
None of the estimated 382,000 babies born Monday will have such an honor.
There is no word yet on how the United Nations will handle the next milestone, when the globe’s population hits 8 billion — about 14 years from now.
How do you feel about the world carrying 7 billion people?
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http://www.ourbreathingplanet.com/happy-world-population-day-not/
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John,My impression has been the a siiprusrngly large percentage of those concerned about population growth are in the 50 and over age range. I’ve assumed that is because they have some concern left over from the ’70s when Ehrlich and others were featured prominently in the media.I’m in this group but don’t think my beliefs are driven by the media of the 1970 s. It may (and I grant this may be wishful thinking) have more to do with being of the New Math generation. That is, I was in second grade when the national educational curriculum became focused on science and math in response to Sputnik. My generation was steeped in science and engineering as a way to win the Cold War.No one anticipated the Flower Children, dodging the Draft, Bob Dylan, the Beetles, the Viet Nam War, etc. Still, many of us retained the science and engineering focus of show me the evidence for your position. We are the opposite of faith-based. Thank God. Jimmy Carter with his background in nuclear engineering was our great hope when he took the White House; we saw him as one of our own, an engineer holding the highest seat of power.But I wonder if, at 6.6 billion and climbing, the population issue seems more hopeless to young people today than it did to those who were in their 20s when world population was around 3.5 billion, leading them to embrace a comforting, cornucopian view. Thoughts?The world pop was at about 3 billion when I first learned of the concept (in the 1960 s). You have to start there, at the point when a person first considers how many people might be on the planet. Lot’s of people never bring that fact to mind.I think cornucopian views come from a misconception of what fossil fuels are all about and a lack of understanding about how they drive EVERYTHING in our society. It’s a nasty feedback loop. The less one knows/understands about energy and physics the easier it is to convince them that all is A OKAY.But those of us (now in our 50 s) subjected to the Cold War science and engineering regiments requiring evidence for one’s positions have a hard time looking the oher way when the government manipulates data. The approach we were taught put men on the Moon so we had some reason to be cautious about changing our methods.
Overpopulation is one of the darkest…as well as controversial…issues of our era. The issue must be addressed, and soon. Without some revolutionary breakthrough in food production, by continuing our unchecked procreation we doom our progeny to endure ever growing occurrences of starvation, malnutrition, and disease, as well as the resultant social upheavals that will be a corollary issue.
I don’t believe we have to be paiasrtes, but that when we blindly coast through life we are. I don’t see limited future resources slowing population growth at all. History shows that there are baby booms when people are poorest. There’s nothing better to do, sooo…. and all that sex meets emotional needs. I was just thinking today and earlier this week about having our third. I was telling my midwife friend that I never planned to have more than two because two was still zero population growth. I am a childbirth educator and know how reproduction works. I was taking all the precautions necessary (except celibacy), but we still ended up pregnant with number three. During this discussion I told my friend that in addition to my husband’s scheduled vasectomy, I have been thinking of getting an IUD after this one is born. My friend then told me (frighteningly) of how many clients she gets after one or both methods are being used. All this is making me feel like, basically, unless we are celibate, we have no real control over our reproduction. I know so many women who desperately want to have children, try everything and never get pregnant. And many who desperately don’t want to but do.So no – I don’t think it will slow. Like all animals here on earth, we are made to reproduce. Morally or religiously, it doesn’t really matter if you agree. As a whole, we’ll keep going. Either we’ll figure something out to make it work, or we’ll die off. I don’t see any solutions under the heading of “population control” though. (Shall we arrest people if they have too many children or a child without a permit? Do we sterilize at random (the only sure way for this is castration or hysterectomy – vasectomies and tubal is not 100%)? Do we just exterminate “excess people” like you would other paiasrtes?) I think not.