According to the United Nations, today marks the birth of the world’s 7 billionth person, an event sure to cause great angst among the many surviving Malthusians who still believe that humanity’s ingenuity and the planet’s resources are both finite. But thanks to globalization’s continued advance and the modernization it enables, roughly four-fifths of humans live in societies with falling birth rates and half live in societies featuring lower than replacement-rate fertility. So we now know that the trajectory of global population growth will proceed somewhat more slowly toward our eighth and ninth billions, and that we may never reach the 10th.
Read the entire column at World Politics Review.
Monday, October 31, 2011 at 10:36AM 
Reader Comments (2)
I can see how the Congo and Niger River basins could feed the whole of Africa. Damming the Congo could solve a quarter of our electricity problems, advances in solar technology could deal another quarter and we have enough fossil fuels to take care of the rest.
We have almost zero irrigation and very little by the way of infrastructure.
We don't really need any new advances in technology, what is needed is political will, education, investment and trade.
Our wish is for the US to help us achieve these attainable goals. If we start now, we can make it happen in two generations.
Next time you have time for pleasure reading, you might want to track down Joan Slonzcewski's science fiction books. The one I've read so far, The Highest Frontier, suggests another pitfall with this technology--the term 'computer virus' takes on a much nastier meaning!