考研阅读精选：世界人口到10月底将会达到70亿
世界人口到10月底将会达到70亿The world’s population will reach 7 billion at the end of October. Don’t panic
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IN 1950 the whole population of the earth—2.5 billion—could havesqueezed, shoulder to shoulder, onto the Isle of Wight, a381-square-kilometre rock off southern England. By 1968 John Brunner, aBritish novelist, observed that the earth’s people—by then 3.5billion—would have required the Isle of Man, 572 square kilometres inthe Irish Sea, for its standing room. Brunner forecast that by 2010 theworld’s population would have reached 7 billion, and would need a biggerisland. Hence the title of his 1968 novel about over-population, “Standon Zanzibar” (1,554 square kilometres off east Africa).
Brunner’s prediction was only a year out. The United Nations’ populationdivision now says the world will reach 7 billion on October 31st 2011(America’s Census Bureau delays the date until March 2012). The UN willeven identify someone born that day as the world’s 7 billionth livingperson. The 6 billionth, Adnan Nevic, was born on October 12th 1999 inSarajevo, in Bosnia. He will be just past his 12th birthday when thenext billion clicks over.
That makes the world’s populationlook as if it is rising as fast as ever. It took 250,000 years to reach 1billion, around 1800; over a century more to reach 2 billion (in 1927);and 32 years more to reach 3 billion. But to rise from 5 billion (in1987) to 6 billion took only 12 years; and now, another 12 years later,it is at 7 billion (see chart 1). By 2050, the UN thinks, there will be9.3 billion people, requiring an island the size of Tenerife or Maui tostand on.
Odd though it seems, however, the growth in theworld’s population is actually slowing. The peak of population growthwas in the late 1960s, when the total was rising by almost 2% a year.Now the rate is half that. The last time it was so low was in 1950, whenthe death rate was much higher. The result is that the next billionpeople, according to the UN, will take 14 years to arrive, the firsttime that a billion milestone has taken longer to reach than the onebefore. The billion after that will take 18 years.
Once upon atime, the passing of population milestones might have been cause forcelebration. Now it gives rise to jeremiads. As Hillary Clinton’sscience adviser, Nina Fedoroff, told the BBC in 2009, “There areprobably already too many people on the planet.” But the notion of “toomany” is more flexible than it seems. The earth could certainly notsupport 10 billion hunter-gatherers, who used much more land per headthan modern farm-fed people do. But it does not have to. The earth mightwell not be able to support 10 billion people if they had exactly thesame impact per person as 7 billion do today. But that does notnecessarily spell Malthusian doom, because the impact humans have on theearth and on each other can change.
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