Saving the Earth

Population Growth

As of 11 am on January 5, 2008, the estimated world population is 6,642,100,544 people – and growing. Net population growth is about 75 million per year, which is declining: during the 1980s, population growth was about 87 million per year. The United Nations estimates that world population will reach 9 billion by 2050. At current growth rates this is equivalent to adding 90 cities the size of New York per decade. Continue reading "Population Growth" essay »

As the world becomes more crowded, we are pressed to find meaningful responses to the issues outlined above. The recommended books in this section on offer objective data concerning population growth and resource depletion, and project current trends into the future. They provide reasoned approaches to meeting the challenges of population growth in the years ahead.

Recommended Books on Population Growth

Beyond Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge
Lester R. Brown

During the last half century world population has climbed from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 5.9 billion in 1998. The U.N. predicts that another 3.3 billion will be added by 2050. This Worldwatch Institute report evaluates the effects of the world's burgeoning population in 19 different areas, including water supply, biodiversity, waste control, food supply, education, housing, jobs, and more. Brown explores the interactions among the various issues: for example, insufficient water affects farmers' ability to produce food; insufficient food affects health and may contribute to social unrest. The book calls for the immediate expansion of international family planning assistance and educational efforts to help promote a shift to smaller families.
1999, W. W. Norton

The Collapse of Complex Societies
Joseph Tainter

This thought-provoking book looks at the issue of how societies address ever-increasing complexity. While not focused on population growth specifically, the ideas presented here are relevant. Tainter looks at 20 different societal collapses and focuses on three in particular: Rome, the Maya, and the Chacoan Indians of the American Southwest. Each of these cultures diversified to meet continually escaling complexity as they grew in wealth and power and population - and eventually overreached their ability to keep expanding. These societies wastefully expended their resources trying to maintain their bloated condition until they finally collapsed into smaller, simpler, more efficient units. While a historical study, there are disturbing parallels to the issues facing the world today.
1990, Cambridge University Press

A Concise History of World Population
Massimo Livi Bacci

This new edition of the standard history of world population has been updated to include projections to the year 2050. It includes the latest data on fertility and infant mortality and new sections on migration and the impact of HIV. The discussion of U.S. population growth has been completely rewritten to give a fuller view of historical developments, and coverage of China has been expanded. A Concise History of World Population offers an integrated and comprehensive look at global population, highlighting trends that are affecting population growth today, such as lowering of fertility among developed countries and current population movements.
2006, Wiley

The End of World Population Growth in the 21st Century: New Challenges for Human Capital Formation and Sustainable Development
Wolfgang Lutz

This volume provides new ways of thinking about population trends in the 21st century. While the 20th century was the century of population growth with the world's population increasing from 1.6 to 6.1 billion, the 21st century is likely to see the end of world population growth and become the century of population aging. At the moment we are at the crossroads of these two different demographic regimes, with some countries still experiencing high population growth while others are already faced with rapid aging. Lutz presents a new framework for discovering the underlying unity in this demographic diversity.
2004, Earthscan Publications

Feeding The Ten Billion
L.T. Evans

This fascinating book looks at the intimate links between population growth and agricultural innovation over the past 10,000 years, illustrating how the evolution of agriculture has both shaped and been shaped by the course of world population growth. This historical context serves to illuminate our current world food situation and to aid understanding of possible future paths to food security for the planet. 
1998, Cambridge University Press

The Growth of Humanity
Barry Bogin

This book provides an introduction to key concepts, methods of research, and essential discoveries in the fields of human demography and human growth and development, particularly in relation to disease, nutrition, and aging. It explores the relationships between food, demography, and growth; migration and human health; and explains how and why humans have had greater reproductive success than any other mammal.
2001, Wiley-Liss

How Many People Can the Earth Support?
Joel E. Cohen

This book does not directly answer the question posed in its title - but it does take a hard look at population realities and growth trends worldwide. Nobody really knows how many people can live on our planet, thanks to constant technological advances in areas like crop yield. Cohen is skeptical of the Malthusian doomsayers who constantly predict catastrophe, but he also shows that current rates of population growth cannot continue forever.
1995, W. W. Norton

Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update
Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows

Using extensive computer models based on population, food production, pollution and other data, the authors demonstrate why the world is in a potentially dangerous "overshoot" situation - we have been steadily using up more of the Earth's resources without replenishing its supplies. The consequences, according to the authors may be catastrophic: "We believe that if a profound correction is not made soon, a crash of some sort is certain. And it will occur within the lifetimes of many who are alive today." The book discusses population and industrial growth, the limits on available resources, pollution, technology and, importantly, ways to avoid overshoot.
2004, Chelsea Green

Outgrowing The Earth
Lester R. Brown

The author dramatically details how human demands are outstripping the earth's capacities - and what we need to do about it. Future security, Brown says, depends on raising water productivity, stabilizing climate by moving beyond fossil fuels, and slowing population growth.  
2005, W. W. Norton

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change
William R. Catton

Catton uses the term "Age of Exuberance" to characterize the period since 1492 when first a newly discovered hemisphere and its abundant resources and then the invention of fossil-fuel-driven machines allowed Old-World humans to excape the constraints imposed by a population roughly at Earth's carrying capacity. He then reminds us that we are soon to be squeezed by the twin jaws of excessive population and exhausted resources, as our current population is utterly dependent on the mining and burning of fossil energy. Overshoot provides a solid background of research and a realistic view of the likely consequences of humanity's failure to notice that we have overreached the limits of Earth's carrying capacity.
1982, University of Illinois Press

The Rapid Growth of Human Populations 1750-2000: Histories, Consequences, Issues, Nation by Nation
William Stanton

This book graphically illustrates the global population explosion of the past 250 years. Every nation with a recorded population history is represented among the graphs, which make a case for a fundamental shift from a Darwinian world of ruthless competition to a gentler one with weak restraints on growth. Ultimately this growth becomes self-destructive because the expanding population is rapidly devouring finite resources. Stanton concludes that this growth is unsustainable and will lead to dire consequences if not checked.
2004, Multi-Science Publishing Co.

Sparing Nature: The Conflict Between Human Population Growth And Earth's Biodiversity
Jeffrey K. McKee

Every day there is a net gain of more than 200,000 people on the planet. McKee explores the relationship between population growth and biodiversity, demonstrating that nature is too sparing to accommodate both a richly diverse living world and a rapidly expanding number of people. He shows that humans and their ancestors have had negative impacts on species biodiversity for nearly two million years, and that extinction rates have accelerated since the origins of agriculture. Today entire ecosystems are in peril due to the relentless growth of the human population. McKee concludes that the most effective measure to save Earth's biodiversity is to slow the growth of human populations.
2005, Rutgers University Press