Seven Billion By Halloween - How Many People Were On The Planet When You Were Born? The Guardian Calculator

Ahhh, 7 billion to celebrate my birthday. However, on my birth birthday there were only 2,814,773,977 people.

However, since then I added 2 to the total.

EXCELLENT info on energy consumption PR. Here is a little more data I put together...

• Person - Year of Birth - Total World Population (in billions)
• Jesus Christ - 1 - 0.17
• Muhammad ibn Abdullah - 570 - 0.20
• Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone - 1181 - 0.35
• Isaac Newton - 1642 - 0.55
• Benjamin Franklin - 1706 - 0.62
• Marie Antoinette - 1755 - 0.73
• Chief Seattle - 1780 - 0.83
• Charles Darwin - 1809 - 0.95
• William Jennings Bryan - 1860 - 1.29
• Aimee Semple McPherson - 1890 - 1.54
• Mal - 1950 - 2.50

Between the birth of Christ and the birth of Mohammad the world population increased by 30 million people... in 570 years...

Today, it will take 4.5 MONTHS to acquire an increase of 30 million people. The rate of growth is declining... nonetheless, the rate of population growth is presently more than 1,500 times greater than it was in the first half of the first millennium AD.

I thought Darwin - Bryan - McPherson made a nice series... ;-}

MM,

It shouldn't be too hard to do if all energy measurements are converted to calories. Sounds like an interesting exercise.

Yes i noticed the the rate of increase has slowed. I took ten year chunks and since 52 in the 10 year chunks the increase was in billions:1952-2012: .512, .675, .759, .919, .825,.823(projected)

The short sample time period + the inherent inaccuracy of census results kind of leads one to believe that this might be statistically insignificant.

Damn Christians every sperm is a sacred sperm. Won't let me put a rubber thing on my John Thomas.

What we really need is to consume far less. Stop and think how much most of us have that we don't need, how much food we throw away (unless we have a pet minature pig to feed it to), how much energy we waste to enjoy our affluent lifestyles while crying poverty. As Americans how much more do we consume than peoplel living a simpler life? We have the right to tell others to have fewer children (which are a genuine joy in most traditional cultures) when we simplify our OWN lives first.

My shock at the growth since my own birth is the reason why I seeded this.

It is quite astonishing.

I think some of the old thinking had to do with survival (probably relevant for the time) though those days are long past. Seems we should be rethinking policies across the board because the days of ole are out of step with here and now.

Hmm, if you could reverse extrapolate the population in 1800, 1700, ... 1000, 500... (even further) The accomplishments of ancient civilizations are even more astonishing. People will step up when given the chance or necessity.

back to being PI, where is a good pandemic when you need one... Mother Nature is asleep at the switch.

Then tell the Pope to stay out of the third world.

Does having more, more, and more REALLY enhance your life? My family lives perfectly well on one income of a little over $40K. Most of my furniture is what college students throw away at the end of the year. Almost nothing we own is new except the computers (low end models purchased on sale) and a few of our large collection of books. We're in the middle of a big city so I don't need a car; my husband needs one due to his job but only buys used vehicles for cash and does a lot of his own maintenance and simpler repairs. I'm working toward getting our grocery costs down to about $350 a month for a family of three adults and one teenager, and since my backyard is concrete I plan to learn about container vegetable gardening. I'm also working toward a less meat-based diet. Please live the same way before you have the chutzpah to tell total strangers in a foreign country how many children they have the right to have! BTW, it has little nothing to do with the Pope, etc. I have shared my home with many people from third world countries including Catholic and Muslim countries. Trust me, they usually have children because they want them, not for lack of birth control. Of course in the case of the truly poor, they have many children because they fear not all of them will survive. Children are their "social security" for when they are old.

Funny, I've never heard anybody "clamoring for more and more casual sex among younger and younger teens" except for maybe the teens themselves (and teens have ALWAYS had sex).

Talk to the Bush administration and the far religious right about denying sex education and birth control to third world countries.

Actually it won't be the liberals that drag us down to third world status, it will be the multinational corporations that use this country as a toilet like they use all others that don't rein them in.

Talk to the Bush administration and the far religious right about denying sex education and birth control to third world countries.

I've lived with dozens of people from third world countries from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Have you? I assure you there is practically nobody on the planet over the age of 13 with an IQ above 80 who doesn't know where babies come from and how to avoid them, if only by coitus interuptus. (And from a statistical POV, birth control doesn't have to be all that foolproof to still prevent a lot of births.) Anyway, isn't it really the job of each country's government to provide birth control or make it available rather than relying on Americans? We can certainly include birth control in our foreign aid packages, but we have to take into account that people from other cultures do NOT necessarily think like us, and don't even want to. In the 1980, free thinking feminist Germaine Greer wrote a book called "Sex and Destiny" which explains how badly Western-oriented programs can backfire in other parts of the world. She is a very widely traveled woman and actually knows what she's talking about.

Yes, I have lived with those in third world countries.

Third world countries have the highest rates of HIV and STDs.

Coitus interuptus? Do you also believe in the tooth fairy?

Bush tied money to NO sex ed or birth control. The far right insisted.

You have faith in third world countries governments to do the right thing?

I would have insisted on birth control and disease prevention as a condition of foreign aid.

The far right hates birth control and family planning. Barefoot and pregnant is their motto.

"The management of fertility is one of the most important functions of adulthood". Germaine Greer.

A shame that she was consumed by misandry.

You misunderstand. I realize that for an individual couple, coitus interruptus isn't as reliable as more modern methods, but in terms of an entire population, it is reliable enough to lower the rate of population growth when practiced by large numbers of people. Actually there is evidence that it is as reliable in actual use as are condoms (not that this is saying much).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coitus_interruptus

Prolonged breastfeeding also lowers the birth rate if the woman's body fat is low enough--again, not so accurate for an individual couple, but accurate enough to keep the population under control. (Beware the fallacy of composition, that is, thinking that what's true of the part is therefore true of the whole.) Per Greer, most of the world's non-Western cultures also practice a lengthy "taboo period" banning sex for several months following childbirth, as opposed to the six weeks or so recommended by our OB/GYNs. All these things DO count. I'm not saying foreigners shouldn't have access to methods we consider "better" without gettng into the argument about how much we can help the world when so many in our own country are suffering, but you have to face the fact that MOST of the high birthrate in the third world is because they either WANT many children, or they realize they have to have many because not all of them will survive. Look at Asia. Aside from China with it's draconian laws, in most countries where population growth has declined, it's because their standard of living improved, not the other way around. Once you have sufficient food and clean water and medical care and job opportunities and you move to the city, you no longer want so many kids. I had Palestinian neighbors in DC who only had two children, but they admitted they would have had many more if they were still on their real or imagined "original family farm." This is a pretty commonplace attitude, as well as a rational one.

Look, if I'm wrong, then how do you explain the low birthrate of many European societies, especially England, long BEFORE most modern methods of birth control existed? Obviously when people decide they don't want more kids, they manage somehow. It is the height of cultural blindness to assume that everybody else in the world wants to be "just like this' only those "mean Republicans" are preventing them from doing so.

BTW, why do you consider Germaine Greer guilty of misandry? She was if anything hyper-heterosexual. She lived with and loved men.

No surprise at all, sadly. And no surprise that some among us are working so hard to maintain their disproportionate share of the available resources. Nor that they are trying so hard to direct attention away from environmental and resource contention issues.

So what are you saying, HollyKl? That due to overpopulation, human life has been deteriorating all over the planet since 1954? How is it that there is less starvation world wide, a higher standard of living, and increased life spans? I realize there are gross discrepancies from country to country, but look at the amazing rise in standard of living in places where people used to starve.

2.6 B. sense i was born..& counting..!!

The reason was He felt it was a sign of success (ignore the fact that many of those will die from lack of food) and HE wanted a guarantee of support in his old age. Not one statement on what can be provided for the children in this area that did not have enough food for its inhabitants. How do you counter this type of selfishness and ignorance?

You don't, because he is absolutely telling the truth about his own circumstances. Don't forget that the children won't just help their parents, but each other. A Jordanian boy I dated in college explained how that works. His brothers were helping him get an engineering degree, and eventually he would be expected to give back. You don't even have to go that far away--it happens in this country too, especially among immigrants or first generation Americans. A family of, say, six can easily start a small business, or at least help one of them get one started.

For the record, I only have two children. Large families make little sense in an American urban setting. They do in some other societies. Calling people "selfish and ignorant" because you don't understand their culture is hardly broad minded or tolerant.

I do agree that we can't let everybody come HERE just because they want to.

I understand your point OomYaa, but this article was from an area in Africa that did not have enough food or water to feed their children...and these conditions had existed for well over a decade. Now if you are looking at it from the standpoint of how many children would actually survive the unsanitary drought and famine conditions, then I guess it could be a numbers game. "Well, if I have 25 I have more of a chance of enough surviving to support me"... then one is using child abuse as a means to promote their own selfish desires.

Calling the giving of life "child abuse" is a bit much, Tchem. I'm not sure if it isn't borderline racism. Certainly coming from a person like yourself who lives in such relative affluence you can even afford a computer and an Internet service, it's a bit much. They simply have a different morality than you do over there, that's all. If you had been born and raised in that man's village, you would agree with him. All living things are driven to reproduce. Without this biological imperative, life would have disappeared millions of years before we even appeared on the planet. Please try to wrap your head around this rather obvious, but often forgotten fact.

The drought will presumably end eventually, but this family may not be in a position to wait. Even male fertility declines wth age, and female fertility eventually disappears altogether. I somehow doubt you would be so judgmental about a Western woman who decides to have a child out of wedlock on purpose because she fears she may not "find the right guy while I'm still able to have kids". Yet in many ways such a woman could also be viewed as a "child abuser" for intentionally denying her child a father.

Well, that's probably just as well, because Malta already has the highest population density in the EU and one of the highest in the world.There are 1,265 people per square kilometer. In the USA there are only 32 people per square kilometer. Malta only has 550 mm of rainfall per year, and that's during the five month rainy season; the rest of the year it's very dry. Yet, aside from being a popular tourist destination, the life expectancy for men is 77. For women, it's 81. Not too shabby.

The Chinese version of that lead to widespread female infanticide. Lots more males than females in China today. Many bad laws have even worse unintended consequences. The continued illegalization of marijuana and the growth of power in the Mexican cartels comes to mind.

I always found that interesting about female infanticide. Unless the Chinese have come up with some way to make males hermaphroditic (is that a word? :)), they are going to find that if they keep getting rid of females that eventually their entire society will be gone.

There is now a great shortage of females in China...all great plans and all...

Just in the US, we have fires, earthquakes, parching fields that destroyed a lot of crops, cattle dying due to no rain and a lot of flooding. Is someone trying to tell us something

Explain, please, how "too many people" caues earthquakes, drought, or flooding. Don't you think such things existed long before we existed on the planet?

Earthquakes no, but drought, flooding and other extreme weather events can be tied to AGW.

John, the dooms dayers will never read your article. Their population worry is based on discredited and antiquated Malthusian theories.

Pearce fails to acknowledge that the increased head count and increased consumption aren't mutually exclusive.

Castor,

I read the article and Pearce has a valid point. It still doesn't change the fact that even though the "rate of growth" is slowing that the overall numbers aren't flashing by faster than ever. Each and every person on this planet has a carbon footprint even if it isn't at the insane level it is for most of us in the Western world. Numbers have a way of adding up.

Thank you for that link, John Russell.

Naughty, the point is that reducing our consumption is one thing we CAN do something about. How many children people decide to have in Kuwait is not.

So were mine! Oh well, sometime this year, I'm not going to worry about it. There's not a thing any of us can do about it. Life finds a way!

So what will the seven billionth person win?

So what will the seven billionth person win?

An opinion, same as everybody else.