While it’s no secret to sociologists, many of us don’t realize just how much the world population has grown in the past century. I was back in college in 2018 and taking an online general class when I found out that the world population had reached over 7.6 billion people. When I was a kid in the early 2000’s, the number I always heard in school was 6 billion. That seemed like a lot. According to the United Nations, we’ve reached 8 billion in 2022. Earth now has more than twice the population it had when my parents were children in the 1960’s.

Back in the sixties, science fiction was on the rise in mainstream popularity thanks to Arthur C. Clark’s and Stanley Kubrick’s story 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the novel, Clark’s character Dr. Heywood Floyd reminisces about how Earth had reached over 6 billion people and how it brought on challenges such as food shortages:

“Though birth control was cheap, reliable, and endorsed by all the main religions, it had come too late; the population of the world was now six billion…As a result, food was short in every country; even the United States had meatless days, and a widespread famine was predicted within fifteen years, despite heroic efforts to farm the sea and to develop synthetic foods.”

2001: A Space Odyssey Chapter 7: Page 44

First of all, major props to Arthur C. Clark for accurately predicting the world population growth by the new millennium. I often forget while reading this novel that it was written so long ago, and in the campy time of science fiction that brought us classics like Star Trek. Science fiction back during the Cold War often focused on the issue of overpopulation. People were afraid that the human race was having too many babies, and that too many babies were growing to live full lives and have even more babies. In Clark’s time, just over 3 billion people lived on the Earth, and that was 3 times more than the year 1800. Before that, the world had never seen more than a billion at a time. Naturally, this freaked scientists out, and provided wonderful story fuel for speculative authors.

I lived through the year 2001, and while it was a rocky year in terms of world events, we didn’t starve, and 22 years later I have yet to have any “meatless days” that weren’t an individual choice (Hey, I really like animals).

Now, before you start thinking that world population is going to soar into the double digit billions, you should know that the growth rate is actually plateauing. The United Nations predicts that it will take until 2037 to reach 9 billion and we will reach 10 billion during the late 2050’s. Population growth is on the decline. We’re still growing, but not at the rate of our grandparents’ generations.

10 billion people is a lot, and it’s crazy to think that I might witness the world get that dense during my lifetime. Climate change is on the rise, and we do feel that in my hometown where draughts have made the lakes I’ve swam in my whole life recede past recognition, and may even soon make the air poisonous. I wonder if part of the reason we can’t sustain our water supply is because so many more people are using the water. The world’s population is more than twice as big as it was when my parents were born. That’s nuts. In retrospect, perhaps world problems aren’t as dramatic as Clark predicted, but there are measurable effects.

If you want to educate yourself more on the history of population growth, visit the United Nations website on global issues, the website I used to write as a reference for this article. I believe it’s important to familiarize ourselves history like this so we can better understand where we are headed as the resident caretakers of our planet. My life goal is to enjoy and care for this world as much as I can during my short time on it. If you like this article and want to explore the outdoors and learn about life with me, consider reading more articles from my homepage where I talk about everything from hiking to dog training.