One of the biggest concerns for the leaders of the world is figuring out how to feed all of us as the global population swells. Everything from eating bugs to restructuring the global agricultural system has been pitched as a solution to our food woes. And now an updated forecast of the future size of humanity is going to make this enterprise even trickier.
According to earlier projections by the United Nations, we were looking at feeding just under 9 billion people. Then, two years ago, this estimate was revised up, to 10 billion by 2100. Now we’re looking at closer to 11 billion people by the end of the century.
What’s 2 billion people? It’s about 2.7 Europes. Or 6.4 Americas.
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/06/the-world-is-heading-for-11-billion-people-this-century/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=20130628&utm_content=smartnewsworldpopulation2
Humanity's track record for predicting disasters - 0%, or wrong every time. Not that one shouldn't be concerned with these issues, but calling them "our" issues is a complete distortion of the issue. Folks just struggling to make their next meal don't have any concerns about issues like this. Tyrants hustling every day to keep the people down have no concerns about this. The presumption that "we" have common interests in these long term issues is absurd, many of us do not. Even more troubling is the notion that "we" should be trying to think of global mechanism of force to make big changes happen. These never work, but probably would make things worse.
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