Which is it, Economist? 6B more people in 30 years or 2B in 40?
Sunday, March 6, 2011 at 12:01AM
Thomas P.M. Barnett in Citation Post, urbanization

Saw this ad and it jumped out at me?

6 billion more people in 30 years!

Nobody is predicting that level of growth anymore.  Virtually all the smart money says we're 6.7-8 now and we'll top out at roughly 9.2-3 around 2050, meaning we add 2.5B over 40 years.

Then I see the special report that the mag just puts out on ag:  it says we're almost 7B and we're going to add 2b more by 2050.

That, my friends, is one helluva delta.

True numbers on urbanization, though, say we go from about 1/2 urban now to more like 70% by 2050.  You can find all this on our "urbanization shift" page at Wikistrat.  You run those numbers and you get roughly 3B new urbanites by 2050, or 75m a year added, on average, for 40 years.

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