People, People Who Count People

Today is World Population Day.  It was established by the UN in 1989, when there were a lot less people.  According to the link, there was a big conference on population in 1994 and "Twenty-five years have passed since that landmark conference, where 179 governments recognized that reproductive health and gender equality are essential for achieving sustainable development."

I don't quite see the connection, but then, the UN tries to force its views onto everything it does, whether it makes sense or not.  I'm certainly not impressed by the number of signatories--nations love signing statements that don't force them to do anything but might increase their power.  What I want are serious arguments with as little cant as possible.

Moving beyond politics, the world's population is a fascinating subject.  There are over 7.7 billion people on the planet today.  China and India, both with well over a billion people, count for a combined 2.8 billion. The USA is third, but it's a big drop to 329 million.  There are 14 countries with over 100 million people, and none are European (unless you want to count Russia).

There are widely varied estimates as to how many people have lived on this planet.  One popular number is 106 billion.  That would mean around 7% of all people who ever lived are alive today.

The Earth reached a population of a billion for the first time around 1800.  That number doubled in 130 years (around 1930), doubled again in 45 years (1974) and will likely be doubling again before too soon.  This is a sign of success, at least in the short term--if humans at any time in the last several thousand years had the agricultural, hygienic and medical advances we enjoy today, they would have easily reached one billion people and beyond fairly quickly.