Reproduction is only one aspect of population growth, and not necessarily the major one these days. Improvements in health (especially perinatal), control of diseases, which both allow longer lives, improvement in living conditions and income levels which promote longer lives as well - all have impacts on population growth. And surely we wouldn't want to deny those benefits to the developing world ? Would we ?

As has been pointed out endlessly, better education for women is one key means of reducing birth rates. In Japan and much of Europe, birth rates are below replacement rates. If all the world had similar levels of affluence, including women's education and employment, the birth-rate would fall dramatically, i.e. if all the world had similar patterns of resource consumption.

So that shifts the debate from population to per-capita over-use of resources: the countries with the lowest domestic birth-rate seem to be the ones which use most resources. So it's not population per se, but sustainability of resource use, and especially in developed countries, including Australia.

Yes, populations grow with better life-conditions if only because people live longer. Population growth is a derivative of many factors, not just reproduction, and if the key issue is controlling resource-use, then the onus is on us to bring our lifestyle under sustainable control. Put money into women's education around the world and reproduction will no longer be a problem, but our lifestyles will be, for well into the future. It's up to us.

Joe

There have been quite a few, similar articles marking the birth of the 7 billionth person, but the only real test of these forecasts of doom, is how successful have they been in the past?

The answer is they have a negative score. These sort of warnings date from the 1930s, at least, with still nothing much happening except more people. Where famines have occured they have been due to political factors, not through limits on food production.

We are reaching a tipping point I hear you say? What are the indications? Food prices are high at the moment world-wide but that also has nothing to do with population, it has to do with China and India dumping ideology which held back economic growth, so that more of its citizens could buy more and better food. Another, major factor is thought to be crop land being used for biofuels.

Will those high prices last? No. Again, there is no indication that production can't be ramped up to meet demand. Those who doubt this should look at the history of agriculture subisidies in the EU and the vast over-production they caused.

The writer mentions Chinese buying land in Africa. One way the Chinese could greatly improve the productivity of their farmers is to give them ownership of their own land, and adopt rule of law. One constraint to production is that Chinese farmers won't invest in their land because it can be taken off them at any time - or at least that was the case a few years back.

Population is the 'Elephant in the room', we face not a problem, but a predicement. Problems can be solved, predicaments cannot.

World population is increasing by more than 200,000 (births over deaths) per day.

We live on a planet with finite resources.

We have the ability to increase efficiencies in agricultural production, substitute many resources for others, but due to the laws of diminishing returns we still will hit the limits to growth at some point in the future.

We are seeing these limits being hit right now, pollution, water scarcity, environmental damage, energy depletion etc.

You can take whatever view you like, the reality will be the same, as we move forward we will continue to see more instability, disruption, inequality as more people are added to the planet.

What is the solution? there are none, nature always bats last, there will be a die-off at some point into the future and nature will ensure that humans return to a sustainable level on this planent, the only question is when?

My two cents worth!

Well, we're getting the ball rolling, Curmudgeon :)

Better efficiencies in water use, improvements in soil care and plant species, etc. will go a long way to providing food security for the world's population. Corruption and civil wars get in the way of that happening in Africa, where there are vast areas under-utilised. So I cautiously agree, that food production may not be a major problem.

Women's education and access to birth control, and equal rights so that they have control over their own lives, will probably bring down the world birth-rate over the next few decades. But as people's lives improve accordingly, they will live longer. So the population will keep rising regardless for another few decades. But this raises another problem - amongst many others, particularly sustainability - that not much is talked about.

In developed countries, a stable or declining population is already raising issues about the proportion of the population in the work-force, and the public support of a growing post-work population. Watch Greece - if it survives bankruptcy, I'm betting that the government there, any government, will have to put up the retirement age, perhaps to as high as seventy. Watch other coutnries in Europe, and Japan - they will have to import labour as long as they do not have enough working people to keep their societies functionning.

If life expectancy increases to eighty and eighty five, unless pension ages are raised, the working population may be too small to support the rest of society. Hence mass immigration, particular of the skilled and professional people from developing countries. Jay may disagree but this may have the social benefit of allowing working-age 'natives' and immigrants to socialise and marry, producing a better class of children, multilingual and multicultural. I can't wait:)

Stable population, or declining population, may be a goal of the neo-Malthusians but it will bring its own novel issues. It may not come as something uniform around the world, but it probably will occur as relative 'over'-population in, and emigration from, developing countries is balanced out by declining population in developed countries.

Joe

Look, yes the world population has reached 7B. And no, the human world did not unravel, the cataclysm is not yet upon us, it is not obvious to most that the human adventure on this 4.6 billion year old planet is in serious trouble. This ominous milestone passed uneventfully for almost everybody.

And that's the problem. If you think there are limits to growth and feel compelled to say something about it there is a considerable body of evidence indicating that we are now hitting those limits, why should anybody listen to you? Why should anybody pay attention to your increasingly justified ranting and raving about peak oil, climate change, ruined ecosystems, dying species, fished-out oceans and all the rest?

The optimist's argument is basically always the same, although there are many variations on it. In short, all our experience after 1750 proves Thomas Malthus was wrong. The logic goes like this: if an assumption, limits to growth has been wrong for over 200 years, it is very likely wrong now in 2011. Many have cried wolf before. Current criers should be ignored. The fact that there are now seven billion of us as opposed to billions fewer in the past has no bearing on the outcome.

That's why I have no use for Paul Ehrlich. The Earth's human population was approximately half of what it is now in 1968 when he wrote The Population Bomb. Had Ehrlich been right, the population would have crashed a long time ago. In 1968 the astonishing power of the exponential function had not yet worked its magic. We were still in the early stages of what looked like exponential growth, but the issue was not yet settled. Once you are firmly on the exponential growth path, as we are now, you are entitled to say that such growth, in population, oil consumption, global GDP per-capita, wild-caught fish, and the rest must end, but you are not entitled to say when!

Geoff of Perth

Actually its not an expoential increase.. the peak is expected in the next few decades and then perhaps a decline for reasons Loudmouth and others have pointed out..

“Actually, its not an exponential increase--.”
How many times have we heard that from the “she’ll be right” brigade - whether it is Curmudgeon(Mark Lawson) or Fred Pearce, who have - strangely enough - made claims to some scientific training, especially in physics.
The world population grew by (best guesstimate?) about 83 million over the last year. As it is growing at an exponential rate of 1.2 per cent (approx), the number of that increase will be more next year - by about 84 million if the exponential rate remains the same. If the rate decreases to 1.1, 1.0, or 0.5 it will still be more than 83 million.
That exponential rate does fluctuate. It has been decreasing slightly over the past decade, but exponential it is.
If early-death rates in the less-developed countries can be minimized, and their present birth rates maintained (an unlikely combination due to the savagery of environmental constraints) - eventually the exponential rate of growth for the world will rise above the present 1.2 per cent, and we will (as Susan Greenfield fantasises) head for the stars and another planet to wreck.
Geoff of Perth

Curmudgeon I believe we’ve arrived at that point where there’s nothing left to say. Only choosing and doing (or not doing) exist anymore. The 800 pound gorilla (population) has been fully identified, acknowledged, and weighed. The pill has been swallowed. Reverse gear has been long since stripped.

Yes there may be a leveling off by mid century, however given the projections out of the UN for most African nations; some growth in population is inevitable going forward.

Energy (cheap) is the key to any meaningful future for us all.

Finite resources are just that, finite; Malthus will inevitably be proven right.

We are the world’s yeast people, the Petri-dish is almost full, the sugar is being eaten at an exponential rate, extinction beckons, tell that to the gorilla.

I feel there is a complacency setting in, boy who cried wolf style, that because Malthus et al have been wrong thus far that it will always remain so.
While a near doubling in wheat prices in 2008 had a marginal effect on production it wasn't staggering.
Govts around the world have reduced spending on agriculture research and development, reduced govt held stockpiles of foodstuffs and have been infringing on farming for the benefit of the environment - returning water to rivers and swamps, setting aside land for conservation and even buying farm land for national parks.
A push for plantation forestry, for wood or future carbon credits, residential and mining development continue to reduce available arable farmland.
Throw in some fishery depletion around the world and I'm a little concerned that another couple of billion mouths in the next few decades will stretch available resources. And I just can't see where the big improvement in yields that needs to
arrive is going to come from.

I don't think there is any room for complacency here. We are indeed beginning to hit limits, be it in oil, land or sinks (such as the ability of the atmosphere to absorb our wastes). There's no more time left for cheap point scoring. We have to start working together to achieve some kind of humane ecological sustainability. We not only must stabilise population but we must reduce it as well. We have to distribute resources better so we lift two billion out of poverty and supply their basic needs. Otherwise, there will be resource wars and they are not going to be pretty. In the end, it comes down to a balance between human numbers and the resources required to sustain them,leaving room for other species to not only survive but thrive and evolve.