Elderly to outnumber the young
The residents of those cities will also see a generational shift, he said, as the aging start to outpace the young. By 2065, Cohen expects aging to have "gone global," with people over the age of 65 outnumbering children under the age of 15.
"The slowing population growth will not solve all of humanity's problems," he said. "But it will make it much easier to solve many of them by slowing growing demands for more teachers, jobs, schools, appliances, energy, land, water and food."
Cohen's lecture was the prologue here to a roundtable of Columbia academics brought together to discuss "the 7 billion challenge." In a video on the subject, Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs celebrated the upthrust in population as "a pivotal global moment" while calling it a threat to human existence as we know it.
Feeding 7 billion already requires so much fertilizer that fresh water around the globe is in danger, Sachs said. He also pointed to "huge dead zones" in estuaries of more than 100 rivers, the carbon costs of massive energy consumption and ongoing deforestation to feed the masses.
Sachs said he hopes the 7 billion moment will help bring attention to the "unprecedented, extremely dangerous and unsolved problems of human impact." On climate change, for instance, Sachs sees a planet "barreling forward" without much sense for "how objectively unsustainable we already are."
Fertility rate drops; consumption doesn't
"We have absolutely no evidence over the last 20 years that we've accomplished anything on climate change," he told the conference. "We're in a pretty serious state of affairs."
Others saw the moment in similarly mixed terms. Ruth DeFries, a professor of sustainable development at Columbia, said she chooses to view the population mark "as a success," because it is "the goal of any species to increase its numbers." But she also sees no end in sight for consumption increases.
Not even the lower fertility rate is expected to halt human consumption, because the output of a single human being continues to grow, she said.
"While we see a decline in fertility, we don't see a decline in the consumption of resources," she said. "We don't really have a clear pathway to deal with this."
Others were a touch less dire. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, director of Columbia's Center for International Conflict Resolution, said he would expect ongoing population growth to "trigger a lot of mobility" between nations, which could correspond to economic opportunity. Between Europe and Africa, for instance, Guéhenno senses "an enormous potential from a European standpoint."
"Here is next door a continent that can become a huge market," he said.
Klaus Lackner, a geophysics professor at Columbia, struck an equally evenhanded note. With population growth showing signs of slowing, Lackner said, it may actually come to a stop, at which point technology -- especially in energy -- might start to handle higher demand.
"Better wealth, better education ultimately solves the problem," he said. "We just might solve the resource question, in time."
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBecause the population of the world ultimately affects most of the issues that we all really care about, the 7 Billion: It's Time to Talk campaign is working to open up the conversation on population to new audiences around the globe. When everyone recognizes that there is a need to talk openly about population growth and the importance of family planning, the empowerment of women, and reproductive health and rights, we can more easily find the solutions to issues like global hunger and the environment. When people discover how a rapidly growing world population affects them and their hopes for the future, we know that more people, particularly young adults, will want to lend their voices to the global discussion.
"whether the Earth can sustain 7, 9 or 10 billion?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou'd better ask if the Earth can sustainably feed 1, 2 or 3 billion.
http://www.overpopulationisamyth.com/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven when the population was less than half of what it is today, people were still starving. At a higher per capita, even.
Check out the video series at the link above - very entertaining and educational.
"an enormous potential from a European standpoint." those who talk of great economic potential seem to be missing the boat. Market success is based on growth. How can we grow if we don't have the resources? We need to think of new economic paradigms that aren't growth and consumption based but instead are based on managing what we have, encouraging a more equitable distribution of wealth and significant reduction in resource intensive goods such cars and military spending. Greed is not good. It will leave with nothing in the end.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJP that is flawed logic. Reasoning that because a lower population in the past had an even harder time feeding themselves than we do now is evidence that the larger the population the fewer people will starve is begging the question. The green revolution and improvements in transportation and refrigeration made it possible to feed more people with the same piece of land. That does not prove that such improvements will continue ad-infinitum. Compare the increase of crop yields over the past 20 years with the increase in population. People who try to reduce problems down to simple geometric progressions are suffering from Dunning-Kruger and should leave the heavy intellectual lifting to those with more than a grade 5 education.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the increase of the world population is the main problem of the current world that has caused many other problems .As a result of overpopulation we have faced many other problems like lack of the nutrition supplies in some countries or having terrible traffics in most big cities around the world or increasing the percentage of unemployment and so forth. This has been started many years ago due to being unaware from the results of that by the people who never have thought that one day this will be a real problem and will threaten themselves and next generations.What should we do now to avoid the aggravating of this important issue?The only thing that we should do in this stage is that we have to inform the people all over the world and indicate them the affects of that in the next years.Although many western countries have done some measures ,but they were not sufficient to avoid this real problem .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is the duty of all governments to force mediums to do that .It should be done also by some worldwide organizations.
We are possibly heading into the biggest economic disruption that the world has seen for many a year. Food could become scarce just about everywhere for quite some time. So all planning for a huge increase in population size could have little benefit other than as an academic exercise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a very strong possibility that world population size could decrease by as much as 60% over the next 50-100 years which is the amount the European population reduced by in the 12 century alone.
Except for Australia there are very few places where another pandemic would not be disastrous once all the planes stop flying which should be one of the first things to happen when the world monetary system fails.
Alternatively should gold come back as money thereby reducing the size of governments then everyone might have a better chance of avoiding the four horsemen.
Let there be a global campaign to educate and persuade the people to turn to a plant-based food (vegetarianism) and then see how the food problem resolves itself. Meat is a criminal wastage of resources. How many kilos (lb) of grains are needed to produce 1 kilo of meat?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI expect a population crash as well as increased famine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBernardPalmer: The Gold Standard helped CAUSE the Great Depression in the U.S. in the early 1930's and going OFF the Gold Standard later helped revive the economy. Diamonds are more rare than gold. Why not go on a 'Diamond Standard'...only diamonds can be used as currency ?...this is ridiculous..tying currency value to some commodity is a recipe for disaster.
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