Remember back when there were only 6 billion people? It seems like it wasn’t all that long ago, but that was 1999. I’m sure you remember 1999, it was the era of Windows 98, we had the Y2K panic, Futurama and Family Guy premiered, and Star Wars Episode I, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, and The Mummy were all hit new movies. That’s also the year I started driving. Damn, that just makes me feel old and I’m only 27. Now, just 12 years later we are approaching 7 billion. The New York Times reports that under current forecasts by the UN that number will be 10.1 billion by the end of the century.

The population of the world, long expected to stabilize just above 9 billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, the United Nations projected in a report released Tuesday.

Growth in Africa remains so high that the population there could more than triple in this century, rising from today’s one billion to 3.6 billion, the report said — a sobering forecast for a continent already struggling to provide food and water for its people…

“Every billion more people makes life more difficult for everybody — it’s as simple as that,” said John Bongaarts, a demographer at the Population Council, a research group in New York. “Is it the end of the world? No. Can we feed 10 billion people? Probably. But we obviously would be better off with a smaller population…”

The director of the United Nations population division, Hania Zlotnik, said the world’s fastest-growing countries, and the wealthy Western nations that help finance their development, face a choice about whether to renew their emphasis on programs that encourage family planning.

Though they were a major focus of development policy in the 1970s and 1980s, such programs have stagnated in many countries, caught up in ideological battles over abortion, sex education and the role of women in society. Conservatives have attacked such programs as government meddling in private decisions, and in some countries, Catholic groups fought widespread availability of birth control. And some feminists called for less focus on population control and more on empowering women.

Over population is certainly one of the greatest dangers humanity faces now. We rely on far too many limited resources to go around, especially with the increased demand as rapidly developing nations explode in population. Billions are already suffer from hunger, with millions dying of starvation; this will only get worse, especially if farm land is lost due to climate change. The increased population density and rapid growth will also make it much easier for the rapid spread of emerging diseases, especially in cities in the developing world that are going too fast for the infrastructure to keep up.

We can be fixed.

1. The right to contraceptives and abortion should be universal.
2. Comprehensive sex ed should be mandatory. Religious kids from conservative families aren’t all that much less likely to have sex, but they are much more likely to not take the precautions to avoid pregnancy.
3. All development aid should be contingent on the above reforms.
4. Feminists, especially in the developing world, should incorporate family planing into their drive to empower women. A young woman is much more likely to be able to get an education and be able to support herself and her family, if she puts off having her first child until at least her mid 20s. Giving women control over their reproductive cycle is one the most effective ways to empower them.
5. The development and availability of GM crops needs to increase to solve the current hunger problem, let alone the problems coming up in the future.
6. Antivaxers needs to shut up, now. The fight against disease is going the wrong way, this can’t continue.
7. Catholics, Mormons, Evangelicals, and other religious people who have a problem with the rights of women and family planning need to get on board or get out of the way before there aren’t enough loaves and fishes to go around. Of course this one would require a miracle.

I sure hope I don’t live long enough to see the global population reach 10 billion.

(Via RichardDawkins.net)