More than eight billion people live on Earth who need nutrition, health services, education, justice, and, most importantly, a viable planet.

DLNews Environment:

The world population has passed the eight billion mark. As beautiful as every single birth is, we must ask ourselves: More and more people - can the Earth still take care of us all?

Baby Damian from the Dominican Republic was chosen as the first registered newborn of the day, symbolic number 8,000,000,000. Since 1950, the number of people in the world has more than tripled!

More Planets like Earth needed

Of course, the suggestion does not go any further – but it is still impressive. The non-profit organization Global Footprint Network is already calculating that we would need more than one Earth to maintain our current standard of living.

If you take the way of life of the Europeans as a benchmark, according to the study, we will need three of our planets. If all lived as we do in America, even more than five piles of Earth would be required.

At the same time, however, a radical change toward a sustainable way of life would also have fatal consequences. In his book How the World Really Works, the physicist Vaclav Smil calculates that we can only feed eight billion people if we continue to use fossil fuels to produce our food.

We name the five biggest problems of the growing world population and possible solutions!

Consequences of high CO2 emissions

Global CO2 emissions are growing. Even if the fastest growing societies in the Global South make less of a contribution than we – the industrial nations in Europe, Asia, and North America – do.

The result: CO2 causes global warming (greenhouse effect) and thus climate change. Global droughts and natural disasters are becoming more frequent.

We currently still need fossil fuels to satisfy the hunger for energy of eight billion people. But it causes climate damage. UN Secretary-General Guterres summarizes: “The global climate battle will be won or lost in this decade.”

"More people do not necessarily mean a larger ecological footprint," says Frank Swiaczny from the Federal Institute for Population Research.

According to BP’s World Energy Report, 82 percent of the energy consumed worldwide comes from fossil fuels such as oil, coal, or gas. Instead, solutions are regenerative energy sources such as wind, water, or sun.

Nuclear fusion has been developing since the early 1980s, but experts do not expect the first functioning large reactors until the middle of the 21st century. Atomic fusion creates energy that has no adverse effects on the environment, does not radiate, and does not consume limited resources.

Lack of access to food

According to experts, fast-growing societies face the great challenge of providing for their growing population.

World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 800 million people suffer from hunger. At the same time, more than a third of food is thrown away in industrialized nations. That is why the food industry is working on plants that bear more, better, or longer-lasting fruit. The most critical research objects are maize, soya, sugar cane, and rice. Genetically modified plants are also used for this.

Greenpeace’s environmental protection organization concedes: “Acute effects of genetically modified plants on health, such as toxicity or the triggering of allergic reactions, are possible, but can largely be ruled out through tests.” However, she also points out that long-term effects are practically not examined: “Possible long-term health effects of GM food are not systematically monitored.”

Lack of access to education

Even Antonio Guterres (73), Secretary General of the United Nations, warns: “If we do not succeed in overcoming the division between rich and poor nations, we will have a world of eight billion people full of tension, mistrust, crises, and conflicts.”

The UN further projects that over half of the growth by 2050 will come from eight countries: Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Tanzania.

At the same time, there are already over 50 countries where the population is shrinking. Dr. Rachel Snow of the UN Population Fund explains: “Since the 1970s, we have observed that wherever women have a higher level of education, birth rates are falling.”

Conclusion: Education is a key to exploding birth rates!

Unequal treatment of men and women

“If we as humanity want to enable a good life for eight billion, then women and girls worldwide must be given equal rights. We know that empowering women and girls strengthens societies at large.”

This is a key to good development. And it also helps to steer population development “in healthy paths for the planet and us humans.” Better education for girls, better jobs for women, access to family planning, and financial security even in the event of illness, job loss, or old age - “all of this helps women to be able to decide on the number of children freely.”