NCIE
NCIE
There are 8 billion people on the planet. how long will the planet exist?
Scientists have named an important sign, after which there will be no resources left on the planet for survival. By 2080, we may be “too many”.
In mid-November 2022, the world's population exceeded 8 billion people. This has been confirmed by the United Nations. Online calculators are also available that show changes in real time.
Population history
Our planet has not always been so crowded. According to scientists, with the advent of Homo sapiens, from 100 to 10,000 people lived on Earth. It took 35,000 years for the human population to double.
Then came agriculture. Then the planet lived from 1 to 10 million people. It took 1500 years to double that figure. By the 16th century, the time needed for a population to double had been reduced to 300 years. And at the end of the 19th century, it took people no more than 130 years.
Between 1930 and 1974, the world's population doubled again in just 44 years. Will this chain continue? And is there a limit to how many people our planet can feed?
How long will the country last?
In 1679, Anthony Van Leeuwenhoek (a Dutch naturalist) predicted that our planet would not be able to feed more than 13.4 billion people. Modern scholars do not agree with this opinion, since Antony took into account only territorial features.
Now experts identify three factors that contribute to overpopulation of the Earth.
Simple - the ratio of the number of people to living space (as Anton Leeuwenhoek talked about);
Regenerator - calculates how much a person consumes resources and how much he restores for the future
Scalability is the ratio of the rate of population growth to the rate of progress that allows for the potential addition of new sources and resources.
We are interested in the second factor. The Earth's resources are limited, that's a fact. If there are more people, all energy, food and water will be used up, despite the ability to regenerate. Scientists note that in this case, the population limit will be 25 billion people. After crossing this threshold, food will run out and the population will naturally decrease.
According to the United Nations Population Division, the 10 billion mark will not be exceeded until 2100.
At the same time, scientists do not provide any data. Patrick Gerland (UN Representative) emphasized that the more future demographers look into the future, the more uncertain their forecasts become.
Until now, scientists have not dared to give exact figures for how many people the Earth will support. This number may change depending on how we produce, consume and manage our resources. Most people agree that there will be no more than 10 billion people on our planet.
