A Heck of a Lot of Birthday Parties

Photo by Sarah Cady, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sararah/4951417561/sizes/m/in/photostream/">via Flickr</a>.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The world population will hit seven billion by October 31, 2011*, the United Nations said Tuesday. If current fertility rates continue, there will be 9 billion of us Earth-dwellers by 2050, and 10 billion of us by 2100—mind-boggling when you consider that we just passed 6 billion in 1999.

This issue was on my mind at several points in the past week. On Friday I was discussing (yes, I’ll admit it) the royal wedding with someone a generation older than me. When I mentioned reports that 2 billion people watched the event (which seems a little far-fetched, to say the least), my older counterpart said that was impossible—half of the world couldn’t have been watching. I had to point out that, while the estimate was still silly, 2 billion is actually only a third of the world these days. The exchange highlighted just how fast the human community is growing. The pace of change is hard to keep up with, and must seem almost inconceivable for older folks who grew up with much more gradual increases in human population.

Population came up again yesterday as I was discussing climate and energy issues on a live radio show. A caller inquired about population issues and why environmentalists never talk about them anymore. No matter what forum I’m in, I always get asked this question, and it’s one that most environmental reporters dread. It’s not that I don’t have a good response. For me, the question isn’t necessarily about population, it’s about use of resources. And on that measure Americans consume far, far more than our more plentiful planet-mates in the developing world. But it’s also about family planning and women’s empowerment—when women have access to information and contraceptives and are able to use them, the number of children they have declines. (My colleague Julia Whitty did an excellent in-depth piece on what is often treated as a third-rail last year.)

For me, one of the most interesting elements of the UN’s latest projection is the indication that these numbers could vary pretty widely if fertility rates change. The Population Division at the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs states that “a small increase in fertility” could mean that the global population is as high as 15.8 billion by 2100. At the same time, a small decrease could cause an overall decline, to 6.2 billion by the end of the century.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress have revived the attack on funding for international family planning. But if we end up on the high-end of the UN’s projections, we will have a whole lot of birthday parties to plan for come 2100.

*Corrected from 2010. Thanks, SecularAnimist.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate