• Question: How many people would be able to live on planet earth before serious problems?

    Asked by 454smag32 to Annette, Dave, Jaine, Julio, Mike on 14 Nov 2016. This question was also asked by Zuzanna.
    • Photo: Julio Gutierrez

      Julio Gutierrez answered on 14 Nov 2016:


      Today we are about 7.4 billion people in the world. Considering that we are already exploiting too many resources from nature, I would say that the human growth should slow down as soon as possible.

    • Photo: Jaine Blayney

      Jaine Blayney answered on 14 Nov 2016:


      We would need to look at what resources (land, food, medicine) we have now and what we should have in 10, 20, 30 years time. We would also need to take into consideration how long those alive will continue to live (will depend on country and income) before we look at births. I think we are over-populated now, we are taking away the land and resources from other species, forcing them to come into towns and cities to feed.

    • Photo: Annette Neill

      Annette Neill answered on 16 Nov 2016:


      The predicted figure is up near 10 billion but really, it depends on how these 1o billion people live. If everyone embraced the importance of sharing the resources, then it would not be as serious an issue. Unfortunately, not everyone believes in this concept and some people in the Western world use way more than their fair share. In addition to this, it is predicted that people will live longer so this will place a further drain on vital resources. There is an urgent need to slow down our population expansion.

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