earth folks

Some facts I thought were interesting came to me this week:

in 1800 there were 1 billion people on earth.
next 150 years the number grew to 3 billion
then in the next 40 years it doubled to 6 billion.

There are three paradigm surrounding the international community about population growth:

1. Thomas Malthus
severly reduce birth rate

2. Karl Marx
The number of people is not the problem but resources are unequally distributed

3. Science/technology
science technology will save the day by reproducing whatever resources run out.

Death rate is primarily responsible for increase in world population
Not increase in birth rate but people just ain't dying (don't get any ideas now :-)

Currently population is in the exponential growth phase (1.3%)

It'll take 53.4 years to get to 12 billion if things don't change

Largest city in the world.....Mexico City with 16 million people.