The current population of our planet. The number of uninhabited people on earth. How many people are there now?

Every moment on Earth someone dies or is born. Therefore, it is impossible to say for sure whether he is living right now, at this moment. Although the approximate number has been established. They even created a script - a special robot to calculate the number of people on Earth at the moment. When asked how many people live on planet Earth as of January 2014, he answers - 7.189 billion. This is confirmed by calculations of modern statistics.

As soon as man learned to think, calculate and write, he wanted to count the population and find out how many people there are on Earth. Even in the era of the development of civilization, the first calculations were carried out. The powers that be did this to control the payment of taxes. They counted the population in the city, county, and country. The census development was difficult and slow. Demographers say there were a billion people living on Earth in the 19th century. The number is again approximate. All population figures are based on mathematical calculations and assumptions. Over the past two centuries, the increase has been 600%, that is, more than 6 billion. However, these figures apply to civilized countries where the birth rate is taken into account. It is difficult to say how many people there really are on Earth.

The first more or less accurate data were obtained in the 1960s, after implementation by most countries. Today this figure has exceeded 7 billion. How was it obtained? By adding the population of different countries. However, does every state take the census with full responsibility? For example, a country like Ukraine, supposedly European and civilized, has already postponed the census three times due to lack of funds. Statisticians believe that only a small percentage accounts for the uncounted population. For lack of anything better, I have to agree.

The question of how many people were born on Earth in the entire history of mankind was named in 2008 the most interesting of all, proposed by the popular magazine Quest. Many scientists worked on it, and the numbers came out to be very different. Peter Grunwald, a specialist at the Center for Mathematics and Computer Science in the Netherlands, estimated 107 billion, and demographer Karl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) puts the figure at 108 billion. The run-up is not very big. If we accept these data, then those currently inhabiting the planet make up only 6% of those who lived previously. The calculation was carried out from 50,000 BC. e., the moment of appearance homo sapiens. By the 1st year AD e. There were already 300 million people living around the world. In 1650 the population reached half a billion, and in the 19th century - a billion.

We already know how many people are on Earth now. Consequently, over the entire history of existence, the total population of the Earth is 108 billion people. It turns out that the elegant saying of the ancient Romans about those who have passed on to another world is still true: “He has gone to the majority.”

Scientists suggest that in 2025 there will already be more than 8 billion people on Earth, and in 2050 - 9.7 billion. Despite any terrible predictions about the future, I want to believe that humanity, which has shown a significant margin of safety with all its development , has not exhausted its resources. According to S.P. Kapitsa, our planet is capable of feeding both 15 and 25 billion people. When the demographic transition ends, it will be able to balance at a level significantly below the critical level.

There are more than seven billion people on the planet. According to statistics from the American CIA, in July 2013, the number of people on Earth was approximately 7,095,217,980 people. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the 47th session of the UN Commission on Population and Development in early 2014 stated in his report that the population was 7.2 billion people.

According to experts, there is currently a slowdown in the growth rate of the planet's population.

How is the counting going?

To determine how many people live on Earth, it is necessary to determine their number in individual regions and countries of the planet. In many countries, for this purpose, general population censuses are carried out at a certain frequency - once every five, ten years, etc. But there are also countries where censuses were carried out a very long time ago, or were not carried out at all. Therefore, to determine total number population in the world, special calculations are used.

Dynamics

For more than one millennium, the population of earthlings was relatively small and grew slowly. Gradually, population growth accelerated, and in the 20th century its pace became especially rapid. On average, there are 250 thousand more people on the planet every day.

At the beginning of our era, the planet's population did not exceed 300 million people. This figure doubled only by the 17th century. Endless wars and epidemics significantly slowed down the demographic trend. The growth of production and industry contributed to the increase in population - at the beginning of the 19th century it was already a billion. By the 30s of the 20th century, this billion doubled, and after 30 years it tripled. As of October 12, 1999, there were 6 billion people living on Earth. In the 20th century, despite heavy human losses in the First and Second World Wars, the population increased rapidly due to a decrease in mortality from disease and hunger, and advances in science and medicine.

According to UN forecasts, by 2025 the world's population will exceed 8 billion, and by 2050 it will be 9 billion.

The value varies in different regions of the Earth at different periods. The level of birth rate, mortality and life expectancy of people plays a role here, which, in turn, depends on various factors - standard of living, crime rate, military conflicts, etc. In so-called developed countries, the birth rate is low and life expectancy is long. Conversely, countries that are considered underdeveloped have high birth rates, but high mortality rates and short life expectancies.

Many experts believe that there is currently a threat of overpopulation of the Earth, which will lead to mass famine. It will be aggravated by a global environmental catastrophe. And therefore, urgent measures are needed, thanks to which it would be possible to regulate the number of people. But before you do anything, you need to ask yourself: how many people can live on Earth?

The same environmental law applies to all living organisms inhabiting our planet. It consists of the following phases following each other: explosion, a crisis, collapse, stabilization. Any living species, once in a favorable environment, sharply increases its numbers. This is an explosion. But a huge number of individuals begin to destroy the habitat. Therefore, a crisis comes, followed by collapse. It is expressed in a catastrophic decline in population to a lower level than it was originally. During the collapse environment is restored, and the population size increases to a reasonable level. After this, stabilization occurs. Humanity is currently in a phase of crisis.

It should be noted that there are 3 periods of increase in the number of people. The first period dates back to the end of the Pleistocene (2.6 million years - 11.7 thousand years ago). It was characterized by the settlement of hunting tribes throughout the globe. The second period was observed 9 thousand years ago, when humanity mastered agriculture. The population of the Earth then increased 20 times. And the third period is associated with the industrial revolution. This process These days it has not died down, but is only gaining momentum. At the same time, the Earth's population increased 30 times. The area of ​​cultivated land increased by 3 times, and productivity by 7 times.

10 million people lived on our planet 10 thousand years ago. By the beginning of our era, there were already 200 million people. By the middle of the 17th century, when the industrial revolution began, the planet was inhabited by 500 million people. IN early XIX century was already 1 billion, and at the beginning of the 20th century 2 billion. At the beginning of 2016, 7.3 billion people lived on Earth. Every year the population increases by 2%. It took humanity 200 thousand years to reach the first billion. The second billion was achieved in 100 years, and the third in just 40. The fourth billion in 15 years, and the fifth in 10.

Nowadays, humanity doubles every 35 years. And the amount of food doubles every 30 years. This main indicator our existence. But it does not increase on its own, but due to the development of new lands. And every year it becomes more and more difficult to ensure crop growth. We must also not forget about electricity and water, which are required more and more. As a result, resources are depleted and the natural environment is destroyed. Reserves of coal, oil, gas, and mineral raw materials are being used to the limit. But these reserves are not renewed in any way.

Therefore, the present unlimited well-being is finite in time. It will end because the habitat will be destroyed, food production will fall, and after this the population will decrease to the level that the remaining resources can provide.

On this question ecologists answer quite definitely, since the biosphere exists according to a simple law. It relates the size of organically consuming species to their numbers. the main role in flows of energy and substances is allocated to small organisms. But the big ones play only a supporting role. Therefore, the main consumers in the biosphere are arthropods, mollusks, and worms. Wild vertebrates, which include amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds, consume only 1% of biosphere production.

A person with domestic animals should be part of the group of wild vertebrates, that is, consume less than 1%. But modern humanity consumes 7% of the biosphere's production. That is, much more than it should be. As a result of this, all biosphere patterns are violated. And how many people can live on Earth?

Here we must understand that the biosphere is a self-regulating system. Therefore, she strives to return the number of people to normal level. It is 25 times lower than the modern one, that is, about 300 million people. And this is for the entire planet. A maximum of 500 million people can live on Earth, but not 7, 8 or 10 billion. This is why the productivity of valuable ecosystems is falling, animals that people need are dying out, and essential plants are disappearing. All this is connected with the self-regulation of the biosphere, which seeks to limit the number of humanity.

Earth population in millions of people

What will the collapse be like?

A decrease in the Earth's population will certainly occur, since the biosphere will not allow its destruction. But this can happen in different scenarios. First scenario, which still works in some countries, is hunger. Today, only 500 million people on the planet have adequate nutrition, and 2 billion are regularly malnourished. 20 million people die from hunger every year, and the human population during the same time increases by an order of magnitude.

If there are 200 million people dying of hunger per year, then population growth will stop. And if the number of deaths increases further, then the population will begin to decline. But this is a terrible and inhumane process. It will bring so much grief that it’s even scary to think about.

Second scenario purely political. It is connected with a nuclear disaster. A global conflict over non-renewable resources will begin, and a nuclear war will break out. It is capable of completely destroying all of humanity, leaving only a few intelligent beings on Earth. And then civilization will begin to be reborn in a new way. And this may take thousands of years.

Third scenario designed for people's awareness. State governments will introduce birth restrictions, which will lead to a decrease in population. However this development events raises serious doubts, since so far birth control in some countries has not led to the desired results.

Fourth scenario connected directly to our planet. To save herself, she can weaken the Earth's magnetic field. In this case, we will find ourselves defenseless against solar plasma. It will burn everything out, but nature will quickly recover, but humanity will be almost completely destroyed. This scenario is similar to a nuclear war, only the Earth itself will be the initiator here.

There are also fifth scenario. IN in this case the biosphere will begin to send signals to people on a subconscious level. They will act on the mechanisms responsible for fertility, and humanity will begin to respond to them. This will be expressed in a natural decrease in population growth, as occurs in many animal species. But here it should be understood that a person has long been cut off from nature, and therefore may not perceive the corresponding signals entering the subconscious. Who knows, maybe they are already coming, but only a few react to them.

In a word, the situation is not very rosy. We learned how many people can live on Earth, and also realized that the current population has long surpassed all norms. All we have to do is wait further development events, because this situation can't go on forever. Let's hope that humanity will painlessly emerge from such a sensitive and critical situation.

Today, more than 7.5 billion people live on Earth, while 2.7 billion are citizens of just two countries - India and China. The demographic picture of the world is much more interesting than just dry numbers reflecting the size of the population. It includes information about national composition, age structure, migration processes, age parameters of the inhabitants of our planet.

More recently, at the beginning of the 20th century, the planet's population was about 1.6 billion people. Just 60 years later, the world celebrated the birth of the Earth's 3 billionth inhabitant. And starting from the mid-1960s, world leaders became seriously concerned about the problem of overpopulation, the world's population began to grow so quickly. According to experts, the number of residents globe by the end of the 21st century will cross the 11 billion mark.

But population growth is not observed in all parts of the planet. Over the past 20-30 years, regions with rapidly increasing rates include countries in Southeast Asia and Africa, such as India, China, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Egypt, Congo, Thailand, and the Philippines. Slightly less, but also stable growth is observed in the American countries: Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina.

This is what most trains in India look like

Despite the fact that India's population is currently smaller than China's (1.348 billion Indians and 1,412 Chinese), scientists predict that by 2020 India will rank first in the world in this indicator. This is partly due to the fact that China has had birth control measures in place for a long time. But today, due to a sharp decline in the share of children and youth in Chinese society, the country's leadership has decided to lift these bans.

But the indigenous population of Europe, on the contrary, is rapidly decreasing, which is associated with the demographic aging of the population. This process leads to an increase in the proportion of older people compared to children and youth. This problem is familiar to most developed countries of the world. In addition to Europe, a similar process is observed in Australia, Canada, the USA and Japan. This situation is partly smoothed out by the stable number of labor migrants arriving in the developed countries peace. Unfortunately, Russia is no exception, and our country also has a large number of elderly people compared to working population.

At the initiative of American researchers, an information project was created called Worldometers, which collected demographic and some other parameters for different countries peace. Of course, the data displayed here is often derived from modeling and forecasting, but either way it's very interesting. We offer you to see how quickly the world's population is growing in real time.

Based on data set out in UN projections of world population

Around 8000 BC, the world population was approximately 5 million people. Over the 8000 year period before 1 AD. it grew to 200 million people (some estimates say 300 million or even 600 million), with a growth rate of 0.05% per year. A huge change in population occurred with the advent of the Industrial Revolution:

• In 1800, the world population reached one billion.
• The second billion in population was reached in just 130 years in 1930.
• The third billion was reached in less than 30 years in 1959.
• Over the next 15 years, the fourth billion was reached in 1974.
• In just 13 years, in 1987 - the fifth billion.

During the 20th century alone, the world's population grew from 1.65 to 6 billion.

In 1970 the population was half what it is now. Due to declining population growth rates, it will take more than 200 years for the population to double from today's levels.

Table with population data by year and population growth dynamics in the world by year until 2017

The world population is currently (2017) growing at a rate of about 1.11% per year (up from 1.13% in 2016).

Currently, the average annual population growth is estimated at approximately 80 million people. The annual growth rate peaked in the late 1960s, when it was 2% or higher. The population growth rate peaked at 2.19 percent per year in 1963.

Annual growth rates are currently declining and are projected to continue declining in the coming years. Population growth is projected to be less than 1% per year by 2020 and less than 0.5% per year by 2050. This means that the world population will continue to grow in the 21st century, but at a slower rate compared to the recent past.

The world population doubled (100% increase) in the 40 years from 1959 (3 billion) to 1999 (6 billion). The world's population is currently projected to increase by another 50% in 39 years, to 9 billion by 2038.

Forecast of the world population (all countries of the world) and demographic data for the period until 2050:

Main stages of world population growth

10 billion (2056)

The United Nations projects a world population of 10 billion by 2056.

8 billion (2023)

The world population is expected to reach 8 billion in 2023 according to the United Nations (and in 2026 according to the US Census Bureau).

7.5 billion (2017)

The current world population is 7.5 billion as of January 2017, according to United Nations estimates.

7 billion (2011)

According to the United Nations, the world's population reached 7 billion on October 31, 2011. The US Census Bureau made a lower estimate - 7 billion was reached on March 12, 2012.

6 billion (1999)

According to the United Nations, on October 12, 1999, the world population was 6 billion. According to the US Census Bureau, this value was reached on July 22, 1999, at approximately 3:49 a.m. GMT.