Human Population to Officially Hit 8 Billion in November

Human population is set to officially hit 8 billion people by the middle of this November, marking a new all-time high.

A comprehensive article in Newsweek about this milestone stated that the global human population has risen 300% from 2.5 billion people in 1950. The article states that global population levels will reach 9 billion by 2037, and will peak in the 2080’s at around 10.4 billion people.

While the article stated that this is a sign of progress in terms of public health and economic advancement, it warned that there are many challenges ahead for a world with this many people in it.

For starters, competition over resources like food and water will be fiercer than ever.

“Future population growth will be strongly concentrated in countries with high fertility today—especially in Sub-Saharan Africa—and a few lower and middle-income Asian countries. These are also the regions where the future pressure of population growth on resources, food production, and possible violent conflict will be strongest.”

The article was optimistic about the future but stressed that changes needed to be made to the way we currently live, in concurrence with an inevitable decrease in population growth.

“Population growth presents significant challenges for sustainable development and social and economic progress, and will further stretch the resources of our planet. However, a deceleration in global population growth rates and a switch to a more sustainable economy will hopefully mitigate some of these negative effects.”

CAPS has taken a stand on this important issue and is willing to start the conversation. We put out a press release this past Earth Day talking about overpopulation and the 8 billion population milestone.

A population of 8 billion people on the planet poses challenges at every level. Climate change, food scarcity, degradation of the environment, housing shortages, and mass migration are just a few of the many issues at play.

As mentioned in the article, we have to fundamentally change the way we live our lives if we want to preserve the planet we live on. If not, we’re going to exhaust our resources and ruin the only place we know of that’s habitable for human life.

As we hit 8 billion people, let’s get serious about overpopulation, because the future of our planet rests on how we approach this incredibly important issue. That’s something that all 8 billion of us should be able to agree on.