7.7 Billion came and went...

So, the world's population blew past 7.7 billion recently, and virtually no one noticed.  Certainly not the mainstream media.  Perhaps it is a sense of inevitability that makes it not newsworthy?  Or, as I suspect, most people don't even know what the human population currently is - or where it is going.  Kudos to Robin McKie for at least writing an article in The Guardian in advance of this Thursday's World Population Day.

His title says it all: "Global population of eight billion and growing: we can’t go on like this".  But his subtitle actually leads us toward a solution: "World Population Day will mark a global crisis – one that is best tackled by more access to birth control, particularly in Africa". 

​Yet, like most, McKie does not discuss the most important issue which is "How many people can the Earth support?"  If he did, and if his analysis came anywhere close to that in my book A Planet of 3 Billion, then the tone of his discussion would likely be very different.  Still, his conclusion is similar to mine - that women must be empowered, educated, integrated in to the workforce and given access to family planning technologies.  Perhaps we can work together to bend the population curve in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere downward to build a more humane planet for our species.

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