True Left

This week, the world’s population ticks over a historic milestone. But in the next century, society will be reshaped dramatically — and soon we’ll hit a decline we’ll never reverse.

Eight billion. It’s a number too big to imagine but think of it this way: In the time it takes you to read this paragraph, the world’s population grew by around 20 people.

We’re getting older and older, which means there are fewer people able to work to support more people who can’t.

Cities are expanding, chewing up arable farmland as they go.

Where are we going?
The world is likely to have a couple more billion mouths to feed in just a few decades.

The UN’s latest projections, released earlier this year, suggest the world will house about 9.7 billion humans in 2050.

“Demographic projections are highly accurate, and it has to do with the fact that most of the people who will be alive in 30 years have already been born,” the UN’s population division director, John Willmoth, says.

“But when you start getting 70, 80 years down the road, there’s much more uncertainty.”

Under its most likely scenario, the UN projects the world population will reach about 10.4 billion in the 2080s.

From there, it’s set to plateau for a couple of decades, before falling around the turn of the 22nd century.

But the range of reasonable possibilities in 2100 is considerably wider, between 8.9 and 12.4 billion.