TORONTO – There will be 77,381,246 more people breathing the world’s air on New Year’s Day, according to new statistics released Monday. That’s almost the same number of people currently living in Germany.
The world’s population is projected to reach 7,214,958,996 on January 1, 2015, an increase of 77,381,246, or 1.08 per cent from 2014, according to the United States Census Bureau.
According to the data, it is estimated that about 4.3 births and 1.8 deaths will occur every second, worldwide in January.
According to latest data from Statistics Canada, our nation’s estimated population reached 35,675,834 in October, beating yearly projections by almost 160,000.
Based on what Statics Canada calls a “medium growth scenario,” Canada’s population is projected to reach 35,872,600 in 2015, a growth of about 200,000 people.
So, how many people can Earth support?
According to a 2011 Live Science article, the answer is about 10 billion people.
The article cites research by a Harvard University sociobiologist estimate based on calculations of Earth’s available resources, more specifically the amount of food the planet can produce.
“If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving little or nothing for livestock, the present 1.4 billion hectares of arable land (3.5 billion acres) would support about 10 billion people,” Edward O. Wilson, said in his book The Future of Life.
The United Nations predicts the world’s population will reach 9 billion by 2050. Not everyone is going to stop eating meat, so how will we survive?
No one really knows.
According to the United Nations, even though population is expected to rise, population will decrease in more than 40 countries in the next 30 years. Some European countries will see a decline in population within the next five years.
“There are very few factors that will shape the future of global development situation as fundamentally as population patterns and trends,” Thomas Gass, UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Inter-Agency Affairs said in a September interview. “At the same time, the world is an increasingly complex place to live, with governments facing quite different demographic opportunities and challenges.
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