That's a big number

So according to the UN the world's seven billionth resident is due to be born on October 31st. Statistics show that the world's population grows at a rate of 200,000 a day. There is talk that the earth's population could grow to be ten billion by the end of the century or even as high as 16 billion, with much of the growth taking place in poor countries.

 In 2011, the population of Ethiopia is approximately 80 million. In the next 50 years the country could see its population grow to 145 million.

 In contrast is Germany, with a 2011 population of approximately 80 million but rather than grow over the next 40 years, Germany could see its population decline to 75 million people over the next 40 years.

 There is a scenario from the UN in which the world's population in 2100, rather than being higher, is actually lower than it is today due to the decrease in fertility rates. Since 1950 the fertility rate has nearly halved, falling from 6.0 children per woman in 1950 to 2.5 children in 2011. If this trend was to take hold in places such as Ethiopia and other sub-Saharan African countries, which are said to drive the population growth, then the world's population would decrease by the end of the century.

"The world's population is going to continue to grow and we may as well be prepared for it, " says the editor, Richard Kollodge. "We may as well make sure that as many people as possible are healthy, that as many people as possible have access to education." "We have a chance right now in our world of seven billion to build a more stable, more socially just world by the time we reach 10 billion but that requires us to act now," he says.

So we need to act now or something is going to happen and I'm sure that according to them it will be disastrous. So what to do? One of the things that need tackling is fertility:

"Sex education has an impact in delaying the age at the first sexual intercourse, in increasing the use of contraception methods and condoms," says Gabriela Rivera from the Mexico City offices of the UN's population agency.

This is a fairly easy first step. It can be done for relatively low costs and can have an immediate impact. So women start having fewer children. Okay. Great. So, who looks after them when they are old?

Caring for the increasing number of elderly people will also present many challenges, says the report.

The rate in fertility in the West has declined as a result of economic prosperity. Modern Western countries have government programs that help to look after people when they are old and combine with a person's personal savings and pension to ensure that a large portion of the population is looked after by fewer and fewer children. This can't be said of the world's poor countries where people rely on their children to look after them when they are old. Children are their pension plan. So it would seem that in combination with sex education efforts and access to contraceptives the economic prosperity of these people needs to increase.

The UN has expressed concern that in many poor countries, such as in sub-Saharan Africa, the speed of population growth could hold back economic development and trap future generations in poverty and hunger.

But apparently this is a catch-22. They are too poor to be able to give up having children to look after them in their old age, but having more children keeps them poor. So in some way this cycle needs to be broken.

The challenges from the growth in population include the massive inequalities between different countries in access to food, water, housing and work.

The West and parts of Asia are far richer than vast portions of Africa, Asia, and South America. According to the CIA World Fact Book the world's GDP in 2010 was $74.54 trillion.

Here are the top ten in the world:
1 European Union $ 14,820,000,000,000
 2 United States $ 14,660,000,000,000
 3 China $ 10,090,000,000,000
 4 Japan $ 4,310,000,000,000
 5 India $ 4,060,000,000,000
 6 Germany $ 2,940,000,000,000
 7 Russia $ 2,223,000,000,000
 8 United Kingdom $ 2,173,000,000,000
 9 Brazil $ 2,172,000,000,000
 10 France $ 2,145,000,000,000

 This totals $59.593 trillion or 79.95% of the world's wealth. Of the 227 nations listed in the Fact Book, this translates into 4.4% of the countries controlling nearly 80% of the world's wealth.

 So if the economic realities of the poorer nations need to increase in order to combat population growth which will (insert something scary) allow them to ease up on having babies which will reduce the fertility rate of those nations driving the world's population growth which in turn will avoid (insert something scary). So what needs to happen is for the wealth of the richest nations to be diverted to the poorest nations.

 -insert thought bubble- I wonder what the UN would do with all the money that they gained from the carbon tax that has been proposed? -end of thought bubble-

 So you take a country like the US which had a GDP per capita of $47,200 in 2010. Then compare that to the GDP per capita for the world of $11,200. A big difference there. Heck, even China as the world's third largest economic entity had a GDP per capita of only $7,600 in 2010. India's was even worse at $3,500. 

As an aside, the US ranks 11th in terms of GDP per capita with Qatar being first at $179,000 and with the Congo and Burundi tied for last at $300. The number of countries equal to (St. Lucia) or above the $11,200 mark is 99, meaning that there are 128 countries below it.

 The point of the matter is that you will have a hard time convincing people living in countries like Qatar, the US, Canada, France, etc. to voluntarily give up their standard of living in terms of improving the standard of living of people in Burundi or Lesotho. It would either take a massive amount of robbery and collusion (hmmm, global warming is what again?) or violent and bloody conflict. You think that the world is a bloody place now, wait till you try and reduce the GDP per capita of the people in places like America or Germany or Kuwait to less than half of what they are used to and see what happens.