Elbow Room

This past weekend my friends Joe & Ernesto brought up the question of what would happen if we ran out of non-renewable energy. The discussion took several turns, diversions and sidetracks and eventually the topic turned to the world population. Joe said that the world population had doubled since World War II. Upon hearing this I immediately questioned the legitimacy of this fact as I knew that the population was presently over 6 billion and could not believe that three billion people had entered the world in 60 years or so. My thinking was that a billion is such a huge number that it wouldn't be possible. However, later that night I traversed the interweb and found that Joe was indeed correct.

Simply search 'world population' on any search engine and several websites with statistics on the ever growing population of the world will show up. Some staggering numbers:

• Since 1950 the population has grown by over 3.9 billion.
• The population is expected to reach 9 billion sometime in the '40s.

Those specifics stats were based on research and assumptions of the United Nations.

Now maybe most people are aware of these facts. Obviously a few of my friends were. Personally, I was aware of the 6 billion mark and knew that China and India were huge, but these numbers are scary.

First of all, there are already way too many people on the bus every morning when I'm on my way to work. But in all seriousness can our planet sustain the increasing population? Most likely the answer is no and we will eventually reach some sort of breaking point. Depressing indeed, but something will eventually give.