7 Billion!!!

Sometime today, somewhere in the world, the 7 billionth person will  be born, and the world's population size will be larger than it has ever been before! An awesome video and article from NPR lets us visualize just how much our population has grown from 1000 C.E. to 2011 C.E.  Using tubes that look eerily similar to medical drip bags, dripping liquid for each continent (and the countries of Asia and India) denotes the population size, birth rate, and death rate. By patching holes in the tubes with a health sticker and food sticker, Adam Cole and Maggie Starbard, the producers of the video illustrate some of the reasons why our population has grown, resulting in fewer deaths but still large numbers of births. People's life expectancy has grown. The article continues on to say how before much of the population growth was occurring in India and China but now it has shifted to sub-Saharan Africa. Better health care programs and higher standards of living in many areas of the world has reduced population growth, but the population is still going to continue growing into the unforseeable future. With this in mind, there is no doubt that we are going to have to be very practical and cautious in the use of many of our resources (such as food!) to ensure that future generations will be able to live and have as high (or higher) standard of living as we have today.