Category: Is the Population Bomb Finally Exploding?

  Yet we’ve had too much fecundity; it’s now no virtue; it’s eating us out of house and home. —Edward Hoagland The decision to develop this feature was taken before the economic meltdown, when prices for gasoline, agricultural products, and metals were at or near all-time highs. Food riots rocked the developing world, not because …

The quick answer to that question is “Yes.” But the finally requires qualification. The population bomb—the power of population size and its rapid growth to greatly darken the human future—has actually been exploding for many decades. It’s just that until recently people in general and the media in particular have not been paying attention. For …

The world’s population now exceeds 6.7 billion, and humankind’s consumption of fossil fuels, freshwater, crops, fish, and forests exceeds supply. These facts are connected. The annual increase in population of about 79 million means that every week an extra 1.5 million people need food and somewhere to live. This amounts to a huge new city …

About forty years ago, the world population was only 3.5 billion, or about half of the present population of 6.7 billion people. Most of us seem to ignore or be unaware of the magnitude of this rapid expansion and the vast changes that it is causing throughout the world. Indeed, the daily and even the …

“Human numbers are still rising in many countries. California’s population is growing faster than India’s; Americans born today will retire in a nation with more than half a billion inhabitants. This is frightening, given that even the present human population consumes 40 percent of Earth’s biological productivity.”* There seem to be some who still profess …