22 February 2006
Earth Hurtles Toward 6.5 Billion
Posted by Mikhail Esteves under: General .
Earth Hurtles Toward 6.5 Billion
The planet’s population is projected to reach 6.5 billion at 7:16 p.m. EST Saturday, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and its World Population Clock.
Thomas Malthus, the 18th-century thinker who famously predicted the human population would outrun its food supply, would be astounded.
Back in 1798, when Malthus penned his classic An Essay on the Principle of Population, barely a billion Homo sapiens roamed the planet. Today, Earth’s population teeters on the brink of a new milestone: 6.5 billion living, breathing humans.
“Malthus would be astonished not only at the numbers of people, but at the real prosperity of about a fifth of them and the average prosperity of most of them,” said demographer Joel Cohen, a professor of populations at Rockefeller and Columbia universities. “He wouldn’t be surprised at the abject poverty of the lowest quarter or third.”
The clock, which operates continuously, estimates that each second 4.1 people are born and 1.8 people die. The clock figures are estimates, subject to error, given the difficulties of maintaining an accurate global population count.
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