Does the average American have any idea what the global population is? Watch and see:
As Population Action International explains in this video, the world population will hit 7 billion this fall — on Oct. 31, to be specific. At least that’s the date the U.N. has specified, maybe because it’s scary — mwah-hah-hah. But seriously, the U.N.’s latest population projections are scary. Many demographers have been projecting that human numbers will stabilize at about 9 billion in 2050, but the U.N.’s new, more realistic analysis says the population could in fact keep on growing and hit 10.1 billion by 2100. That’s in part because there are still 215 million women around the world who want to avoid or delay pregnancy but don’t have good access to effective birth control, and the U.N. seems to have grown more pessimistic about remedying that situation any time soon.
While milestones like 7 billion focus the mind, big numbers don’t begin to tell the whole story. When women in developing countries aren’t able to limit the size of their families, they have worse prospects for climbing out of poverty and their local environments suffer (water shortages, degraded land, depleted wildlife, etc.). But it’s those of us wealthy Westerners who are causing environmental problems on a global scale (read: climate change) and who can make the most difference by having fewer (or no) kids. One woman in this video, at 1:25, is responding in the GINK fashion: When asked how the rising population will affect her, she says, “I feel like I actually don’t want to have children because of that issue.” Woman in pink jacket, welcome to the GINK (green inclinations, no kids) club.
This is the latest in a series of Saturday GINK videos about population and reproduction (or a lack thereof).
