Population of people in the world. "Non-rubber": analysis of the size and density of the Earth's population

The population of the countries of the world does not belong to constant indicators: somewhere it grows, and in some countries it falls catastrophically. There are many reasons for this - economic, political, social, pressure from other powers. As practice shows, people are in constant search of a place to live with clean air, developed infrastructure, social guarantees... Natural increase and decrease are also influenced by the ratio of mortality and fertility, life expectancy, and other significant factors. Previously, experts predicted that the number of people on the globe would certainly exceed critical indicators and become uncontrollable. Today's realities show that this is not entirely true.

Generally, the population in the world is estimated by continents and superpowers, there are exceptions - the European Union, which unites states with at different levels economics and demography. We should not forget the migration processes activated as a result of military conflicts, as the events in Yugoslavia and Syria showed. And the development of the economy does not always accompany an increase in the number of people living in the country, and vice versa, which is proved by the example of India or individual African countries. But first things first. Consider the most large population in the world by country, according to official statistics.

The largest countries in terms of population

Leads in terms of population China- there, according to sociologists, almost 1.4 billion people are concentrated.

In second place India: Indians, in comparison with the Chinese, less than 40 million (1.36 billion). These are the countries with the largest population in the world, followed by other figures - hundreds of millions or less.

The third place is rightfully taken by USA... There are 328.8 million Americans in the world. After developed and well-to-do America, states that are not alike are pulling forward. These are Indonesia (266.4 million), Brazil (212.9), Pakistan (200.7), Nigeria (196.8), Bangladesh (166.7), the Russian Federation (143.3). Closes the top ten Mexico - "only" 131.8 million.

The second ten is opened by the island Japan, it is inhabited by 125.7 million citizens. The next participant in the ranking of the world's population is distant Ethiopia (106.9 million). Egypt and Vietnam are nothing alike, except for the indicators of the number of citizens living there - respectively 97 and 96.4 million people (14th and 15th place). Congo has 84.8 million inhabitants, Iran (17th position) and Turkey (18th) have almost the same number of citizens - 81.8 and 81.1 million.

After the prosperous Federal Republic of Germany with its 80.6 million law-abiding burghers, there is another decline in exactly two dozen: there are 68.4 million Thais in Thailand. Further, a combined hodgepodge begins, interspersed by developed European states.

Among other players, the Netherlands (17.1 million) and Belgium (81 positions, 11.5 million people) are in 68th place. In total, the list includes 201 states in the ranking by the population of the countries of the world, if you look in descending order, including the Virgin Islands, which are under US protectorate (106.7 thousand people).

How many people live on Earth

In 2017, the number of population in the countries of the world was 7.58 billion... At the same time, 148.78 were born, and 58.62 million people died. 54% of the total population lived in cities, 46% in towns and villages, respectively. The population of the countries of the world in 2018 was 7.66 billion with a natural increase of 79.36 million. The data are not final, because the year is not over yet.

Traditionally, the "inflow" is provided by states with no high level life, which lead in the ranking of the largest countries in the world in terms of population - China and India. If we take statistics for long periods, it is easy to see that the gradual growth in 1960-1970 (up to 2% annually) was replaced by a decline until 1980. Then there was a sharp jump (more than 2%) in the late eighties, after which the rate of increase in numbers began to decline. In 2016, the growth rate was about 1.2%, and now the number of people living on Earth is slowly but surely increasing.

TOP 10 countries with the largest population

Statistics refers to the exact sciences and allows, with minimal errors, to determine the fluctuations in the number of citizens permanently residing in a given territory, and to make a forecast for the future. Online counters and surveys are designed to take into account any changes as impartially as possible, but they are not sinless either.

For example, the UN Secretariat estimated the population of the countries of the world in the past year at 7.528 billion people (as of 01.06.2017), the American Census Bureau operates with an indicator of 7.444 billion (as of 01.01.2018), the independent DSW Foundation (Germany) believes that as of 01.01. 2018 the planet had 7.635 billion inhabitants. Which number to choose from the 3 given, everyone decides for himself.

World population descending (table)

The population of the countries of the world in 2020 is distributed unevenly across individual states, in accordance with other factors - mortality, fertility, and overall life expectancy. It is easy to track how the population of the countries of the world changed in 2020 using the following indicators from the table (according to Wikipedia):

Japan and Mexico are competing for the 10th place; statistical counters place them in the rating in different ways. In total, there are about 200 hundred participants in the list. Towards the end are island states and protectorates with conditional independence. There is also the Vatican. But their participation in the growth of the population of the countries of the world in 2020 is small - a fraction of a percent.

Rating forecast

According to analysts' calculations, in the future, the number of inhabitants of the largest and dwarf countries of the world will not change globally: the growth rate for 2020 is estimated at about 252 million 487 thousand people. Global changes, according to the tabular characteristics of the population of the countries of the world in 2020, do not threaten any of the states.

The last serious fluctuations, according to the UN, were noted in 1970 and 1986, when the growth reached 2-2.2% per year. After 2000, demographics show a gradual decline with a slight spike in 2016.

Population of European countries

Europe and the union formed in it are not going through better times: crisis, influx of refugees from other states, currency fluctuations. These factors are inevitably reflected in the population size for 2020 across the EU countries, being an indicator of political and economic processes.

Germany demonstrates enviable stability: 80.560 million citizens live in it, in 2017 there were 80.636, in 2019 there will be 80.475 million. The French Republic and the British Empire have similar figures - 65.206 and 65.913 million. Last year they stayed at the same level (65), next year they are expected to grow to 66.3 million people in the UK.

The number of Italians living in their territories remains unchanged - 59 million. For neighbors, the situation develops in different ways: some are worse, somewhere better. It is problematic to track the population of the countries of Europe and the world according to the table, because, in view of open borders, many citizens move freely around the continent, living in one country and working in another.

Population of Russia

The Russian Federation, if you look at the population data among the countries of the world in descending order in 2020, is confidently in the top ten. According to one of the think tanks, in 2020 there will be 160 thousand fewer Russians. Now there are 143.261 million of them. It is necessary to take into account the combination of regions with different densities, and there are enough of them in Russia (Siberia, the Urals, the Far East and the Far North).

Density of the Earth's population

The population density indicator of the countries of the world does not depend on the area occupied by the territory, but indirectly affects the assessment of the situation. On similar positions, there are both developed powers (Canada, USA, Scandinavian), in which certain areas are not inhabited, and representatives of the Third World with a critical standard of living. Or the micro-state of Monaco, showing a high density (due to minimum area occupied territory).

Why is density important?

Density determines the ratio of the area and population of the countries of the civilized world, as well as other states. It is not identical to the number or standard of living, but characterizes the development of infrastructure.

There are no clearly fixed areas with “normalized” density. More often, we observe a situation with an abrupt change from a metropolis to a suburb or in climatic regions. In fact, this is the ratio of the number of people to the area in which they permanently live. Even the largest countries in the world in terms of population (China and India) have sparsely populated (mountainous) areas adjacent to densely populated ones.

Countries with the highest and lowest population densities

As in every rating, there are leaders and outsiders here. Density is not tied to quantity settlements, the number of citizens living there or the rating of the country. An example of this is the densely populated Bangladesh, an agrarian power dependent on developed countries economy, where there are no more than 5 megacities with a population of one million people.

Therefore, the list contains polar economic performance players. Among the states of Europe and the world, the principality of Monaco takes the first place: 37.7 thousand people on an area of ​​2 square kilometers. In Singapore, with a population of 5 million, the density is 7389 people per square kilometer. The Vatican with its specific administrative division can hardly be called a state, but it is also on the list. Steppe Mongolia is minimally populated, completing the list: 2 inhabitants per unit area.

Table: population, area, density

The tabular form of estimating the population size by countries of the world is accepted as visual and comprehensible. The positions are distributed as follows:

There are 195 countries in total. Belgium - 24 positions, after Haiti (341 inhabitants per square kilometer), Great Britain - 34 (255).

Population density of Russia

The Russian Federation ranks 181, behind neighboring Ukraine (100) and Belarus (126). In Russia, the density indicator is 8.56, and in other Slavic states - 74 (Ukraine) and 46 (Belarus). At the same time, in terms of the occupied territory, the Russian Federation is by a margin ahead of both powers.

Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences S. KAPITSA (Institute for Physical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences).

Of all global problems, worrying mankind, the question of the growth of the world's population seems to be one of the main ones. Population size expresses the total result of all the economic, social and cultural activities of a person that makes up his history. Demography is able to provide only quantitative data, without describing the laws of human development. Sergey Petrovich Kapitsa tried to fill this gap by creating a mathematical model of the world demographic process. The model shows that the rate of population growth does not depend on external conditions, explains the reasons for the current surge in the birth rate ("demographic transition") and predicts that in the near future the Earth's population will stop growing, stopping at about 14 billion people. On the fourteenth of February, Sergei Petrovich turned 70 years old. The editorial board of the magazine congratulates its author on the anniversary and wishes him many years of fruitful work.

This is how the world population grew according to demographic data (1) and a theoretical model (2), starting from 1600 BC (R. Kh.).

World population growth from 1750 to 2150, averaged over decades: 1 - developing countries, 2 - developed countries.

Different scenarios for the development of mankind predict the nature of population growth in different ways.

The growth of the world's population from the emergence of man to the foreseeable future, according to demographers.

Demographers predict that after 2000, the age composition of the world's population will begin to undergo dramatic changes. The number of people under the age of 14 will begin to fall (1), and over 65 years old - to grow (2), and by the end of the next century, our planet will greatly "age".

The development of mankind on a logarithmic time scale.

History has always described the past as a chain of events and processes in which we were primarily interested in what exactly happened, the qualitative side of the matter, and quantitative characteristics were of secondary importance. This was primarily because the accumulation of facts and concepts must precede their quantitative characteristics. However, sooner or later they must penetrate into history, and not as an illustration of this or that event, but as a way of a deeper understanding of the historical process. For this, it is necessary to begin to consider history as a process of system development.

In recent decades, this so-called systemic approach has become widespread. It was developed first in physics to describe the behavior of systems of many particles, then it came to chemistry and biology, and later it began to be used to study social and economic phenomena. However, it was believed that it was not suitable for describing the development of mankind, because only having well understood the mechanism of demographic processes, one could explain them, measure their characteristics and move from the particular to the general.

But it was for humanity as a whole that this approach turned out to be unproductive. It was not clear what was to be measured, there were no clear quantitative data. Already in economics, fundamental difficulties arose in the quantitative comparison of dissimilar concepts, such as, for example, labor and goods, raw materials and information, and in history only the course of time in the past is well traced.

However, there is one parameter that is as universal as time and applies to all eras - population. In life, we turn to him very often. Arriving in another city, we are interested in how many inhabitants there are, and having gathered in an unfamiliar country, we will certainly find out what its population is. In the 1930s, there were two billion people on the planet, but now there are almost six billion of us. But we rarely remember the population size in the historical past. So, in 1700 there were ten times less people on Earth than today, and how many of them lived then in Russia, hardly anyone will answer right away, although almost everyone knows the years of the reign of Peter I.

But it is precisely the size of the population that is closely related to the entire economic, social and cultural activity of mankind, which constitutes its history. Thus, quantitative demographic data provide a universal key to understanding the past. They make it possible to find an answer, albeit a limited one, to a clearly posed question about the mechanism of human development as a whole.

In a world where 21 people are born every second and 18 people die every second, the world's population is increasing by two hundred and fifty thousand people every day, and this increase is almost entirely in developing countries. The growth rate is so high - it is approaching ninety million a year - that it has come to be seen as a population explosion that could shake the planet. It is the continuous increase in the world's population that requires an ever-increasing production of food and energy, the consumption of mineral resources and leads to an ever-increasing pressure on the biosphere of the planet. The image of unrestrained population growth, if naively extrapolated into the future, leads to alarming predictions and even apocalyptic scenarios for the global future of humanity. However, it is clear that it is possible to determine development in the foreseeable future - and this is precisely what is of the greatest interest - only by correctly describing the past of mankind.

Currently, humanity is going through the so-called demographic transition. This phenomenon consists in a sharp increase in the rate of population growth, then an equally rapid decrease and in the stabilization of the population. The demographic transition is accompanied by an increase in productive forces, the displacement of significant masses of the population from villages to cities, and a sharp change in the age composition of the population. In today's interconnected and interdependent world, it will be completed in less than a hundred years and will pass much faster than in Europe, where a similar process began at the end of the 18th century. Now the transition covers most of the world's population, it has already ended in the so-called developed countries ah, and now it goes only in developing countries.

WORLD POPULATION AS A SYSTEM

For a long time it was considered impossible to consider the world's population as a system, as a single closed object, which is sufficient to characterize the number of people at a given moment. Many demographers saw in humanity only the sum of the population of all countries, which does not make sense of an objective dynamic characteristic.

The key concept for the system is interaction. But it is the modern world, with its migration flows, transport, information and trade links that unite everyone into one whole, that can be considered as an interacting system. This approach is also valid in relation to the past: even when there were much fewer people and the world was largely divided, individual regions still slowly but surely interacted, remaining a system.

Applying the concept of a system, it is necessary to determine what processes and at what speed occur in it. So, the emergence of ethnic groups and the division of dialects and languages ​​occurs in its own time scale. The division of humanity into races took more time, and the formation of a global demographic system takes even longer. Finally, the processes of biological evolution, determined by the genetic nature of man, are the slowest. There are reasons to assert that over a million years man has biologically little changed, and the main development and self-organization of mankind took place in the social and technological sphere.

Almost all convenient parts of the Earth serve as the habitat of mankind. In terms of our numbers, we are ahead of all animals comparable to us in size and nutrition by five orders of magnitude (except, perhaps, only domestic animals, the number of which is artificially supported). Humanity has long created its own environment and separated from the rest of the biosphere. But now, when human activity has acquired a global scale, the question of its influence on nature has arisen with all the urgency. That is why it is very important to understand what factors determine the growth in the number of people on the planet.

MATHEMATICAL MODEL OF POPULATION GROWTH

The creation of a model does not consist in fitting formulas to certain numerical data, but in finding mathematical images that express the behavior of the system and correspond to the task at hand. This process of sequential model building is best developed in theoretical physics, which describes reality in the form of solving systems of certain equations (see "Science and Life" Nos. 2, 3, 1997).

The very possibility of using the methods of theoretical physics to build a demographic model capable of growing to the status of a theory seems far from obvious, rather even incredible. Nevertheless, for the population of the Earth, when many different factors and circumstances interact, such an approach is quite feasible precisely because of the complexity of the system. Random deviations in space and time will be averaged, and the main regularities will become visible, on which the dynamics of world population growth objectively depends.

We will characterize the world population at time T by the number of people N. We will consider the growth process over a significant period of time - a very large number of generations, so as not to take into account neither the human life span, nor the distribution of people by age and sex. Under such conditions, it can be assumed that population growth occurs self-similarly (or, as they say, self-similar), that is, according to the same law for different time scales and the number of people. And this means that the relative growth rate of the number of people on the planet is constant and it can be described not by the exponent underlying so many models, but only by the power law.

How exponential growth is inapplicable can be seen in the following example. Suppose that humanity in the past doubled in the same 40 years as it does today. Let us estimate when such a process could begin. To do this, we will express the world population as a power of two: 5.7. 10 9 ~ 10 32. Then 32 generations, or 40x32 = 1280 years ago, in the 7th century, two hundred years before the baptism of Russia, we all could have descended from Adam and Eve! Even if the doubling time is increased tenfold, this moment will move back to the beginning of the Neolithic, when in fact there were about 10 million people.

There is, however, a formula that describes with surprising accuracy the growth of the Earth's population over hundreds and even many thousands of years and has the necessary - power - form:

This expression was obtained by processing data over many centuries by a number of researchers (Mackendrick, Forster, Horner), who saw in it only an empirical relationship that has no deep meaning. The author of this article also received the same formula independently of them, but he regarded it as a physically and mathematically meaningful description of the process of self-similar development. It occurs according to the hyperbolic law of evolution, called the peaking regime. Such phenomena are characteristic precisely of the "explosive" behavior of systems and have been studied in detail in modern research on nonlinear dynamics.

Nevertheless, such formulas are fundamentally limited by their range of applicability. First, the formula implies that the world's population will tend to infinity as we approach 2025, forcing some to consider it the date of Doomsday, an apocalyptic consequence of the population explosion. Secondly, an equally absurd result is obtained for the distant past, since at the creation of the Universe 20 billion years ago ten people should have been present, undoubtedly discussing the greatness of what is happening. Thus, this solution is limited both in the future and in the past, and it is fair to raise the question of the limits of its applicability.

The factor that was not taken into account is the time that characterizes a person's life - his reproductive ability and life expectancy. This factor manifests itself during the passage through the demographic transition - a process characteristic of all populations, clearly visible both in the examples of individual countries and the whole world.

If we introduce into the model the time τ characteristic of human life, the features of population growth both in the past and in the present are excluded. The growth process begins at T 0 = = 4.4 million years ago and continues beyond the critical date T 1 into the foreseeable future. It is expressed by the formula

describing the era before the demographic transition and the transition itself. The value of the new constants is obtained by comparing modern demographic data with the calculation:

This formula becomes the original expression (1) in the past, and all solutions describe the growth of humanity over three eras. In the first - epoch A, with a duration of 2.8 million years - a linear growth occurs, which then turns into a hyperbolic growth of epoch B, which ends after 1965 with a demographic transition. After the demographic transition, the growth in the population over the course of a generation becomes comparable to the population of the world itself. And the number will begin to strive for the asymptotically stabilized regime of the C epoch, that is, it is steadily approaching the limit of 14 billion. This is 2.5 times more than at present.

Due to the introduction of the characteristic time, the critical year of the break T 1 is shifted from 2025 to 2007. The very same value τ = 42 years reflects quite well some average characteristic of a person's life, although it was obtained from the processing of demographic data, and not taken from life.

The main and only dynamic characteristic of the system that determines its development is the dimensionless constant K = 67,000. It serves as the internal scale of the size of a group of people and determines the collective nature of the interaction that describes growth. The numbers of this order determine the optimal size of a city or urban area and the number of a stably existing natural species.

The growth rate during time t in epoch B turns out to be equal to N 2 / K 2, where the meaning of the parameter K is clearly visible: it determines the growth rate per generation as a result of pairwise interaction of groups of K people. This simplest non-linear expression describes collective relationships, summing up all the processes and elementary interactions that take place in society. It only applies to all of humanity. As is well known from algebra, the square of the sum is always more amount squares; this is why it is not possible to summarize growth factors by region or country.

The meaning of the law is that development is self-accelerating, and each next step uses all the experience previously accumulated by mankind, which plays a major role in this process. A person's long childhood, mastery of speech, training, education and upbringing largely determine the only, specific for people, way of development and self-organization. One might think that it is not the rate of reproduction, but the cumulative experience, interaction, dissemination and transmission from generation to generation of knowledge, customs and culture that qualitatively distinguish the evolution of mankind and determine the rate of population growth. This interaction should be viewed as an intrinsic property of a dynamic system. Therefore, the time has come to abandon once and for all the presentation of social phenomena in the form of a simple sum of elementary cause-and-effect relationships, which, in principle, is not able to describe the behavior of complex systems over long periods of time and over a large space.

Based on the ideas of the theory, it is easy to determine the limit to which the number of humanity tends in the foreseeable future: 14 billion people, and the time of the beginning of growth in epoch A: 4.4 million years ago. You can also estimate the total number of people who have ever lived on Earth: P = 2K 2 lnK = 100 billion people.

In this estimate, the average life expectancy of a person is considered equal to τ / 2 = 21 years, as is customary among demographers and anthropologists, who have received values ​​for P from 80 to 150 billion people. Significantly, the entire growth pattern is best described on a double logarithmic scale. This is not only a matter of convenience, when it is necessary to imagine the behavior of quantities changing by ten orders of magnitude, there is a much deeper meaning here. On a double logarithmic scale, all power laws - the laws of self-similar development - look like straight lines, showing that the relative growth rate remains constant at all times. This allows you to take a fresh look at the rate of development and periodization of the entire history of mankind.

COMPARISON WITH ANTHROPOLOGY AND DEMOGRAPHY DATA

Comparison of the model with the data of paleoanthropology and paleodemography will make it possible to describe the development of mankind over a gigantic period of time. The initial epoch of linear growth of A begins 4.4 million years ago and continues with Kτ = 2.8 million years. So the model outlines the initial stage of human growth, which can be identified with the era of separation of hominids from hominoids, which began 4.5 million years ago. Towards the end of Age A, Homo habilis ("skillful man") appeared, and its population increased to 100 thousand people.

To check the calculations, it was required to compare the calculated values ​​with those already known. The famous French archaeologist and anthropologist Yves Coppens could have had such information. I went to him at the old building of the College de France on the Rue d'Ecole in the Latin Quarter of Paris and asked:

Professor, how many people lived on Earth 1.6 million years ago?

One hundred thousand, - the answer immediately followed, which completely amazed me, making me think that the researcher had calculated this figure. However, Coppens immediately rejected this assumption, saying that he was not a theoretician, but a field researcher. And his assessment is based on the fact that then in Africa there were about a thousand camps in which large families - about a hundred people each - lived. This figure consolidated an essential moment in the history of mankind, when a "skillful man" appeared in the Lower Paleolithic.

Age B of hyperbolic growth spans the Paleolithic, Neolithic and historical periods. During this most important period of time lasting 1.6 million years, the number of people has once again increased by K times. By the time of the onset of the demographic transition, which can be attributed to 1965, the estimated population of the Earth was already 3.5 billion.

During the Stone Age, mankind spread across the globe. At that time, the Pleistocene climate was changing dramatically, up to five glaciations passed, and the level of the World Ocean changed by a hundred meters. The geography of the Earth was reshaped, continents and islands were connected and diverged again, man occupied more and more new territories. Its number at first slowly, but then with an increasing rate, grew.

From the concept of the model, it follows that when connections between individual groups of the population and the bulk of humanity were interrupted for a long time, development slowed down in them. Anthropology is well aware that the isolation of small groups leads to a slowdown in their evolution: even today, communities can be found that are at the Neolithic and even Paleolithic stages of development. But in the Eurasian space, through which tribes roamed and peoples migrated, ethnic groups and languages ​​were formed, there was a systematic and constant growth. At a certain stage, the interaction proceeded along the Steppe Road, and later the Great Silk Road, connecting China, Europe and India, acquired the greatest importance. Since antiquity, there have been intensive intercontinental ties along it, world religions and new technologies have spread.

Data on the world's population over the entire time range fit well enough into the proposed model, but as we move into the past, the accuracy of the estimate decreases. So, already for the time of the Nativity of Christ, paleodemographers give figures for the world population from 100 to 250 million people, and from the calculation one should expect about 100 million.

Given the closeness of these estimates, they should be considered quite satisfactory up to the very beginning of the emergence of mankind. This is all the more surprising since the calculation implies the constancy of growth constants, which are determined on the basis of modern data, but nevertheless are applicable to the distant past. This means that the model correctly captures the main features of the growth of the world's population.

It will be instructive to compare model calculations with demographic forecasts for the near future. The mathematical model points to an asymptotic transition to the 14 billion limit, with 90% of the population limit - 12.5 billion - expected by 2135. And according to the optimal scenario of the UN, the population of the Earth by this time will reach the constant limit of 11 600 million. Note that over the past decades, demographic forecasts have been repeatedly revised upward. In the latest study, the estimated human population up to 2100 and the estimates made converge and essentially overlap.

DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION

Let us turn to the phenomenon of the demographic transition as a very special period that requires separate consideration. The duration of the transition is only 2τ = 84 years, but during this time, which is 1/50 000 of the entire history, a radical change in the nature of the development of mankind will take place. This time will outlive 1/10 of all people who have ever lived on Earth. The severity of the transition is largely due to the synchronization of development processes, to the strong interaction that is observed today in the world demographic system.

It is precisely the "shock", aggravated nature of the transition, with time less than the average life expectancy of 70 years, that leads to a violation of the value and ethical concepts developed over the millennia of our history. Today, this is seen as the cause of the disintegration of society, the growing disorder of life and the reasons for the stress so characteristic of our time.

With the demographic transition, the ratio between the younger and older generations is changing radically. From the point of view of a systems approach and statistical physics, the transition resembles a phase transformation, which should be associated with a change in the age distribution of the population.

TRANSFORMATION OF RATES OF DEVELOPMENT IN TIME

One more significant conclusion can be drawn from the developed concepts: the scale of historical time changes with the growth of humanity. Thus, the history of Ancient Egypt spans three millennia and ended 2700 years ago. The decline of the Roman Empire lasted 1,500 years, while the current empires were created over the centuries and disintegrated over the decades. This change in the time scale by hundreds and thousands of times clearly shows the scale invariance of the historical process, its self-similarity. On a logarithmic scale, each subsequent cycle is shorter than the previous one by e = 2.72 times and leads to an increase in the number by the same amount. In each of lnK = 11 periods of epoch B lived 2K 2 = 9 billion people, while the duration of the cycles varied from 1 million to 42 years.

ND Kondratyev first drew attention to such periodicity of large socio-technological cycles in the history of modern times in 1928, and since then such cycles have been associated with his name. However, this periodicity is clearly realized only in the logarithmic representation of development and covers the entire history of mankind. The stretching of time is clearly visible as one moves away from the critical date - 2007. So, a hundred years ago, in 1900, the population growth rate ∆N / N = 1% per year, 100 thousand years ago it was 0.001%. And at the beginning of the Paleolithic, 1.6 million years ago, a noticeable increase - by 150 thousand people (today this amount is added in half a day) - could have occurred in only a million years.

It was in the Paleolithic that that self-accelerated development began, which has since continued unchanged for a million years. By the beginning of the Neolithic, 10-12 thousand years ago, the growth rate was already 10 thousand times higher than at the beginning of the Stone Age, and the world population was 10-15 million. There is no Neolithic revolution as a leap within the framework of the model, since it describes only an average picture of development, which, on average, for mankind proceeded quite smoothly. Let's pay attention to the fact that by this time half of all people who have ever lived managed to live, and on a logarithmic scale, half of the time has passed from T 0 to T 1. Thus, in a sense, the past of humanity is much closer than it seems to us. After 2007, the population will stabilize, and in the future, the historical passage of time may again become more and more stretched.

It is interesting to note that recently the Russian historian I. M. Dyakonov in his review "The Paths of History. From the Most Ancient Man to the Present Day" clearly pointed out the exponential reduction in the duration of historical periods as we approach our time. The historian's thoughts fully correspond to our model, where the same conclusions are simply clothed in another - mathematical - form. This example shows how closely the vision of the traditional humanities and the images belonging to the exact sciences touch, even intersect.

IMPACT OF RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT ON POPULATION GROWTH

The human development model predicts that the population growth limit is not influenced by external factors - the environment and the availability of resources. It is determined only by internal factors that invariably operate for a million years. Indeed, humanity as a whole has always had sufficient resources, which man mastered by settling on the Earth and increasing the efficiency of production. When contacts ceased, resources and free space were left, local development ended, but the overall growth was steady. Today in developed countries 3-4 percent of the population can feed the entire country. According to experts The International Organization food, currently there is on the planet and in the foreseeable future there will be enough reserves to feed 20-25 billion people. This will allow humanity to safely bypass the demographic transition, in which the population will increase by only 2.5 times. Thus, the limit to population growth should be sought not in the global lack of resources, but in the laws of human development, which can be formulated as the principle of the demographic imperative, as a consequence of the law of population growth inherent in humanity itself. This conclusion requires deep and comprehensive discussion and is very significant, since the long-term strategy of humanity is associated with it.

Resources, however, are highly unevenly distributed across the planet. In overcrowded cities and countries, they are already depleted or close to being depleted. Argentina, for example, has an area of ​​only 30% less than India - the country of the most ancient civilization, whose population is 30 times larger and lives very poor. But Argentina, modern development which began 200 years ago, could, according to experts, feed the whole world.

But within the framework of this approach, there is no difference between developed and developing countries. All of them equally belong to the same system of humanity and are simply in different stages of the demographic transition. Moreover, now, primarily due to the exchange of information, the development of the so-called third world countries is going twice as fast as it did in developed countries, just as younger brothers often develop faster than the older ones, borrowing his experience.

In the foreseeable future, after the demographic transition, the question of the criteria for the development of mankind will arise. If in the past quantitative growth was the basis, then after the stabilization of the number, it should be the quality of the population. A change in the age structure will lead to a deep restructuring of the hierarchy of values, a greater burden on health care, social protection and education systems. These fundamental changes in the value attitudes of society will undoubtedly constitute the main problem in the near future, at a new stage in the evolution of mankind.

SUSTAINABILITY OF DEVELOPMENT

The sustainability of human development in the process of growth and especially during the transition period is of exceptional importance from a historical and social point of view. However, at the first stage of the demographic transition, as the calculation shows, stability is minimal, and at this moment there is a historically sudden appearance of a young and active generation. This was the case in Europe in the 19th century, where demographic prerequisites for rapid economic growth and powerful waves of emigration that led to the settlement of the New World, Siberia and Australia emerged. But they were unable to sufficiently stabilize the process of world development and prevent the crisis that led to world wars.

On the eve of World War I, Europe developed at an unprecedented and unsurpassed pace. The economies of Germany and Russia were growing at more than 10% per year. The flourishing of science and arts of that time predetermined the entire intellectual life of the twentieth century. But "Belle Epoque", this wonderful time of the heyday of Europe, was cut short by a fatal shot in Sarajevo.

World wars have led to the death of about 100 million people - 5% of the world's population. From the "black death" - a terrible plague epidemic - entire countries died out in the XIV century. But even then, humanity always very quickly made up for the losses and, what is remarkable, returned to the previous stable growth trajectory.

Currently, however, the potential for sustainability of growth may be lost, as the demographic transition in developing countries is going twice as fast as in Europe, and will involve ten times as many people. Comparing the dynamics of population growth in Europe and Asia, one can see that Europe will forever become a small outskirts, and the center of development will soon move to the Asia-Pacific region. Only taking into account the speed of its development, it is possible to understand what kind of world our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have to live in. Uneven settlement of territories on the borders of states and their economic inequality can also threaten global security. The vast expanses of Siberia, for example, are now losing population, while the northern provinces of China are rapidly populating. There is a constant northward migration across the US-Mexican border, and similar processes could occur with Indonesia's 200 million people north of vast Australia, where only 18 million live.

The rapidly growing unevenness of development can lead to a complete loss of stability in growth and, as a result, lead to armed conflicts. It is impossible to predict the course of events in principle, but it is not only possible, but also necessary to indicate their probability. Today, the world community faces an important task: to preserve peace in an era of drastic changes and to prevent local conflicts from flaring up into a global military conflagration similar to those that broke out in Europe in the early and mid-20th century. Without global sustainability, it is impossible to solve any other problems, no matter how significant they may seem. Therefore, their discussion, along with issues of military, economic and environmental security, should include, and not in the last place, the demographic factor, taking into account its quantitative, qualitative and ethnic aspects.

DEMOGRAPHIC SITUATION IN RUSSIA

As already mentioned, the fate of a single country cannot be considered by the methods developed to describe all of humanity. However, developed ideas allow us to consider each separately taken country as a part of the whole. This was all the more true for the Soviet Union and is true now for Russia (see "Science and Life" No.).

Due to the size and multinational composition, diversity of geographical conditions, historical paths of development and a closed economy, the regional processes taking place in the Union largely reflected and modeled global phenomena. At present, the demographic transition is nearing completion in Russia; population growth stops, its numbers stabilize. However, this secular process is superimposed on the events of the last ten years, and first of all - economic crisis... It led to profound shocks and resulted in a decrease in average life expectancy, especially for men, which is now less than 60 years.

With the birth rate, according to demographers, nothing so catastrophic is happening. Its systematic decline is quite natural and characteristic of all modern developed countries. Therefore, Russia will have to continue to live in conditions of low fertility, in which migration of the population has begun to play an important role. If before 1970 there was mainly emigration from Russia, now up to 800 thousand people arrive in the country every year. Migration directly affects demographic situation in the country and contributes to some compensation for losses.

Reducing the number of young citizens will require a transition to a professional army and an abandonment of universal conscription, a very wasteful form of use of human resources. Russia will face this situation by the beginning of the next century, and by that time the reform of the army should lead to new principles for the formation of the armed forces. A decrease in the share of unskilled labor will increase the requirements for the quality of education, for the early choice of vocational guidance and create incentives for creative growth.

In some regions of Russia and especially in the neighboring countries of Central Asia, population growth continues, due to the first stage of the demographic transition. It is accompanied by characteristic phenomena: an influx of population into cities, a growing mass of restless youth, an imbalance in the development of the country and, as a consequence, an increasing instability of society. It is very important for Russia to understand that these processes are fundamental and will drag on for a very long time. On the one hand, they are associated not only with world, but also with internal, specific to our history, circumstances. If we can and must cope with the latter, then global processes are outside our influence: it requires a global political will, which is not yet available. On the other hand, it is in the fate of our country that the complex nature of the demographic revolution taking place in the world is visible - a rapid transition, unique in its dynamics, which ends a million years of relentless quantitative growth of humanity.

CONCLUSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The proposed model makes it possible to cover a huge range of time and a range of phenomena, which, in fact, includes the entire history of mankind. It is not applicable to individual regions and countries, but it shows that the course of world development affects every country, every demographic subsystem, as a part of a whole. The model provides only a general, macroscopic description of the phenomena and cannot pretend to explain the mechanisms leading to population growth. The validity of the modeling principles should be seen not only and not so much in how closely the calculation coincides with the observed data, but in the validity of the basic assumptions and in the successful application of nonlinear mechanics methods to the analysis of population growth.

The theory established the line from which time should be counted, and the scale of time, which stretches with distance into the past, responding to the intuitive ideas of anthropologists and historians about the periodization of development and giving them a quantitative meaning.

An analysis of the theoretical equation shows that population growth has always followed a quadratic law, and now humanity is undergoing an unprecedented change in the development paradigm. The end of an extremely vast era is approaching, and the time of the transition, of which we have become witnesses and participants, is very compressed.

The model paradoxically indicates that throughout history, the development of mankind has depended not on external parameters, but on the internal properties of the system. This circumstance made it possible to reasonably refute the principle of Malthus, who asserted that it is resources that determine the rate and limit of population growth. Therefore, it should be considered expedient to deploy interdisciplinary complex studies of demographic and related problems, in which mathematical modeling should be involved along with other methods.

Mathematical models are not only a means for quantitatively describing phenomena. They should be seen as a source of images and analogies that can expand the range of ideas to which the strict concepts of the exact sciences cannot be applied. This primarily applies to demography, since the number of people as a characteristic of a community has a clear and universal meaning. Thus, in demographic problem one should see a new object for theoretical research in physics and mathematics.

If the ideas developed above help to offer some kind of common development perspective for mankind, a picture suitable for anthropology and demography, sociology and history, and if doctors and politicians will allow them to see the prerequisites of the current transition period as a source of stress for an individual and a critical state for the entire world community, the author will consider the experience of their interdisciplinary research justified.

Literature

Kapitsa S.P. Phenomenological theory of the growth of the Earth's population. "Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk", vol. 166, no. 1, 1996.

Kapitsa S.P., Kurdyumov S.P., Malinetskiy G.G. The world of the future. Moscow: Nauka, 1997.

King A. and Schneider A. The first global revolution. Moscow: Progress, 1992.

In fact, there are not 7 billion people on earth, but at most 900 million

Cheating exists because you are used to taking everything in finished form... Without their own research and analysis, well, at least a critical look at the essence of the issue. It is very easy to manipulate you when you stop thinking about what is happening around you. A huge empire of lies is built on your trust.

To begin with, I suggest you open the information at least on Wikipedia. Of course, the first explanation that comes to mind is that all people live in multi-storey buildings and therefore the area increases. But in fact, our planet is not one continuous city. It is only an illusion that houses have greatly increased the area suitable for human habitation on Earth. We are being told that in the miserable last 200 years of human existence, the population has grown by 6 billion people. For about 200 years, what can be called the means of mass dibilization has existed. At first, these were newspapers and magazines, then radio, finally television and the Internet. And the faster the influence and quantity of these media increases, the faster the number of people on our beautiful planet, mysticism, magically increases.

Of course, the population is overstated. This is done for various purposes, including for world and state economic purposes.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were only a billion of us. The population cannot grow 7 times in 100 years! Before that, it did not grow at such a pace for many centuries, although earlier they gave birth to 16 children each, of which many survived.

How many people are there on Earth?

According to the most adequate assumptions, there are now from 700 to 900 million people on earth.

Scientist opinion

Most of the 7.5 billion of the world's population does not actually exist, according to physicist V. Rogozhkin. Here's what he said about this: “The population of the Earth is 7.5 billion, and where do they come from? If the soul undergoes rebirth in the next incarnation, then according to the estimates of our cosmists, such as Vernadsky and Chizhevsky, they believed that there could be a maximum of 600 million people on Earth."

How to check? On the example of China.

It is quite easy to check this: you need to go to Wikipedia and sum up the population of the 20 largest cities in China. And you get an impressive number of about 230 million people (taking into account the population of the districts). Where do the rest of the people live? Where do the rest of the billion live? V countryside? Does he live in cottages? Where do they grow food then? In the mountains of Tibet, which occupy almost half of the country's territory? But they need a lot of food, if you believe that China is home to 1 billion 340 million people!

We look further. Duropedia reports that in 2010, China produced 546 million tons of grain, while the cultivated area in China is 155.7 million hectares. And to ensure normal nutrition for the population, the country needs to grow on average about 1 ton of grain per person per year. Part of this grain is used for livestock feed, and part for bread making and other needs. So China is clearly not providing itself with grain, if you believe that it has such a large population. Or it provides, if the population there is 3 times less than it is believed.

By the way, you can easily check this by the indicators of the United States. And everything will be clear and understandable right away! Look: in the United States, an average of about 60 million tons of wheat is harvested per year from an area of ​​about 20 million hectares. In addition, 334 million tons of corn are harvested there from 37.8 million hectares, and 91.47 million tons of soybeans from an area of ​​30.9 million hectares. Thus, the total grain harvest is about 485 million tons from an area of ​​about 89 million hectares. And the population of the United States is only about 300 million people! Surplus cereals are exported.

This immediately shows that the lack of grain production in China is about 800 million tons per year, which is practically nowhere to buy, if you believe that the population is 1.4 billion people. And if you do not believe in this fairy tale, then everything falls into place, and the population of China should be no more than 500 million people!

And one more clue: Wikipedia reports that the share of the urban population in 2011 for the first time was 51.27%, which also confirms the hypothesis that real population China does not exceed 500 million.

an interesting table is given in the monograph by Korotaev, Malkov, Khalturin "Historical Macrodynamics of China"

• 1845 - 430 million;
• 1870 - 350;
• 1890 - 380;
• 1920 - 430;
• 1940 - 430,
• 1945 - 490.

rather strange spikes and falls? During the world war, China lost 20 million and h.z maybe more, and then there was a cultural revolution and population growth of a billion! Isn't that too much?

I came across an old atlas, which said that in 1939, i.e. before the 2nd World War, in China there were 350 million people. You don't need to be an expert to see the huge discrepancies and the absence of any coherent system in the behavior of the Chinese population.

That fall on 80 million over 25 years, then growth by 50 million over 30 years, then no change over 20 years. The main thing is that the initial number 430 million taken absolutely from the ceiling who considered their adversaries. But the fact seems to be obvious - for 95 years from 1845 to 1940, the number of Chinese did not change, as it was, and remains.

But over the next 72 years (taking into account the destructive wars, hunger and poverty, more than 20 years of containment policy), the growth is almost a billion!

Surprisingly, despite the government's policy of limiting the birth rate (one family - one child) that has been pursued for the last 20 years, the population is still growing by 12 million people a year, according to experts, due to the huge baseline (i.e. initial) digits. If you have 100 people: two died in a year, one was born, in a year 99.

I think they their Chinese, like Fed dollars, just draw out of thin air... Nobody argues, there are a lot of Chinese, as well as Indians and Indonesians, there are still plenty of Nigerians, Iranians, Pakistanis. But there are many, many are strife. And the Indians are great, they picked up the initiative in time.

How to count in India?

The same is happening with India! Let's count the population of the 20 largest cities in India. The answer will surprise you very much: it is only about 75 million people. 75 million people! And where do the rest of the billion two hundred million live? The country's territory is slightly more than 3 million square meters. km. Apparently, they live in nature with a density of about 400 people per 1 sq. km.

The population density in India is twice that of Germany. But in Germany there are solid cities all over the territory. And in India, allegedly about 5% of the population lives in cities. For comparison: in Russia, the share of the urban population is 73%, with a population density of 8.56 people / sq. Km. But in the United States, the share of the urban population is 81.4%, with a population density of 34 people / sq. km.

Can official information across India to be true? Of course not! The population density in rural areas is always only a few people per sq. km, i.e. 100 times lower than in India. And this is a clear confirmation that the population in India is 5-10 times less than what is written in official sources.

In addition, according to Wikipedia, almost 70% of Indians live in rural areas, so our estimated 75 million urban residents make up about 30% of India's population. Consequently, the total population of this proportion will be about 250 million people, which is much more true than the tale of a billion.

Video

Image copyright Thinkstock

Does the Earth have enough resources to support the rapidly growing human population? Now it is over 7 billion. What is the maximum number of inhabitants, when exceeding which the sustainable development of our planet will become impossible? The correspondent undertook to find out what the researchers think about this.

Overpopulation. At this word, modern politicians frown; in discussions about the future of planet Earth, he is often referred to as the "elephant in the room."

The growing population is often spoken of as the greatest threat to the existence of the Earth. But is it right to consider this problem in isolation from other contemporary global challenges? And are there really so many people living on our planet now?

• What the giant cities are sick with
• Seva Novgorodtsev on overpopulation of the Earth
• Obesity is more dangerous than overcrowding

It is clear that the Earth does not increase in size. Its space is limited, and the resources needed to sustain life are finite. Food, water and energy may simply not be enough for everyone.

It turns out that demographic growth is a real threat to the well-being of our planet? Not at all necessary.

“The problem is not the number of people living on the planet, but the number of consumers and the scale and nature of consumption,” says David Satterthwaite, senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London.

In support of his thesis, he cites a consonant statement by the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, who believed that "there are enough [resources] in the world to satisfy the needs of every person, but not universal greed."

The global impact of a multi-billion increase in urban population may turn out to be much smaller than we anticipate.

Until recently, the number of representatives living on Earth modern look human (Homo sapiens) was relatively small. Just 10 thousand years ago, no more than a few million people lived on our planet.

It wasn't until the early 1800s that the human population reached a billion. And two billion - only in the 20s of the twentieth century.

The current population of the Earth is over 7.3 billion people. According to UN forecasts, by 2050 it may reach 9.7 billion, and by 2100 it is expected to exceed 11 billion.

Population has grown rapidly only in the last few decades, so we do not yet have historical examples, based on which we could make predictions about the possible consequences of this growth in the future.

In other words, if it is true that more than 11 billion people will already live on our planet by the end of the century, our current level of knowledge does not allow us to say whether sustainable development is possible with such a population - simply because there have been no precedents in history.

However, we can better imagine the future picture if we analyze where the most significant population growth is expected in the coming years.

The problem is not in the number of people living on Earth, but in the number of consumers and in the scale and nature of their consumption of non-renewable resources.

David Satterthwaite says that most of the demographic growth in the next two decades will take place in the metropolitan areas of those countries where the level of income of the population at the current stage is assessed as low or medium.

At first glance, an increase in the number of inhabitants of such cities, even by several billion, should not have serious consequences on a global scale. This is due to the historically low level of consumption among urban dwellers in low- and middle-income countries.

Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases are good indicator how high consumption can be in a particular city. “For cities in low-income countries, we know that emissions of carbon dioxide (carbon dioxide) and its equivalents are less than a ton per person per year,” says David Satterthwaite. ranging from 6 to 30 tons ".

People living in more economically prosperous countries pollute the environment much more than people living in poor countries.

However, there are exceptions. Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark, a high-income country, and Porto Allegre is in Brazil, an upper-middle-income country. Living standards are high in both cities, but emissions (per capita) are relatively small in volume.

According to the scientist, if we look at the lifestyle of one individual taken, the difference between the rich and the poor will be even more significant.

There are many low-income urban dwellers whose consumption is so low that it has little or no effect on greenhouse gas emissions.

When the world's population reaches 11 billion, the additional burden on its resources may be relatively small.

However, the world is changing. And it is entirely possible that carbon dioxide emissions in low-income metropolitan areas will soon begin to rise.

Another concern is the desire of people in poor countries to live and consume at levels that are now considered normal for high-income countries (many would argue that this would be a kind of restoration of social justice).

But in this case, the growth of the urban population will bring with it a more serious burden on the environment.

Will Steffen, Professor Emeritus of the Fenner School environment and the Society at Australian State University, says this is in line with a general trend that has emerged over the past century.

According to him, the problem is not population growth, but the growth - even more rapid - of world consumption (which, of course, is unevenly distributed around the world).

If so, then humanity may find itself in an even more difficult position.

People living in high-income countries must do their part to keep the Earth sustainable with a growing population.

Only if wealthier communities are willing to reduce their consumption and allow their governments to support unpopular policies can the world as a whole be able to reduce the negative human impact on the global climate and more effectively address challenges such as economical use resources and waste processing.

In a 2015 study, the Journal of Industrial Ecology looked at ecological problems from the point of view of the household, where the focus is on consumption.

By adopting smarter consumption habits, the environment could improve significantly

The study showed that private consumers account for more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions, and in the use of land, water and other raw materials, their share is up to 80%.

Moreover, scientists have concluded that environmental pressure differs from region to region and that, per household, it is highest in economically prosperous countries.

Diana Ivanova of the Trondheim University of Science and Technology, Norway, who developed the concept for the study, explains that it has changed the traditional view of who should be responsible for industrial emissions associated with consumer goods.

“We all strive to shift the blame to someone else, to the state or to enterprises,” she notes.

In the West, for example, consumers often argue that China and other countries that produce consumer goods in industrial quantities should also be held responsible for the emissions associated with manufacturing.

But Diana and her colleagues believe that an equal share of responsibility lies with the consumers themselves: "If we begin to follow smarter consumption habits, the state of the environment can improve significantly." According to this logic, radical changes are needed in the basic values ​​of developed countries: the emphasis should shift from material wealth to a model where the most important thing is personal and social well-being.

But even if in mass consumer behavior and favorable changes will occur, it is unlikely that our planet will be able to maintain a population of 11 billion people for a long time.

Therefore, Will Steffen proposes to stabilize the population somewhere in the region of nine billion, and then begin to gradually reduce it by reducing the birth rate.

Stabilizing the world's population implies both reducing resource consumption and empowering women

In fact, there are signs that some stabilization is already taking place, even if the population is statistically growing.

Population growth has slowed since the 1960s, and fertility studies by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs show that globally, the fertility rate per woman fell from 4.7 children in 1970-75. years to 2.6 in 2005-10.

However, it will take centuries for any truly meaningful change in this area to occur, said Corey Bradshaw of the University of Adelaide in Australia.

The trend towards an increase in the birth rate is so deeply rooted that even a major catastrophe will not be able to radically change the state of affairs, the scientist believes.

According to a study in 2014, Corey concluded that even if the world's population were reduced by two billion tomorrow due to increased mortality, or if governments of all countries, like China, passed unpopular laws limiting the number of children, by 2100 the number of people on our planet, at best, would remain at the current level.

Therefore, it is necessary to look for alternative ways to reduce the birth rate, and look urgently.

If some or all of us increase consumption, then the upper limit for an acceptable (from the point of view of sustainable development) population of the Earth will decrease.

One relatively simple way is to raise the status of women, especially in terms of their educational and employment opportunities, says Will Steffen.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that 350 million women poorest countries did not intend to give birth to their last child, but they did not have the opportunity to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

If the basic needs of these women in terms of personal development were met, the problem of overpopulation of the Earth due to excessively high birth rates would not be so acute.

Following this logic, stabilizing the population of our planet implies both a reduction in resource consumption and an expansion of women's rights.

But if the population of 11 billion is unstable, how many people - theoretically - our Earth is capable of feeding?

Corey Bradshaw believes that it is nearly impossible to put a specific number as it will depend on technology in areas such as Agriculture, energy and transport, as well as on how many people we are ready to sentence to a life full of hardships and restrictions, including food.

It is quite common to believe that humanity has already exceeded the permissible limit, given the wasteful lifestyle that many of its representatives lead and which they are unlikely to want to give up.

Environmental trends such as global warming, declining biodiversity and ocean pollution are cited as arguments in support of this view.

Social statistics also come to the rescue, according to which currently one billion people in the world are actually starving, and another billion suffer from chronic malnutrition.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the problem of population was associated equally with female fertility and soil fertility.

The most common option is 8 billion, i.e. slightly more than the current level. The lowest figure is 2 billion. The highest is 1,024 billion.

And since assumptions about an acceptable population maximum depend on a number of assumptions, it is difficult to say which of these estimates is closest to reality.

But ultimately the determining factor will be how society organizes its consumption.

If some of us - or all of us - increase consumption, then the upper limit for an acceptable (in terms of sustainable development) population of the Earth will decrease.

If we find opportunities to consume less, ideally without giving up the benefits of civilization, then our planet will be able to support more people.

The acceptable population limit will also depend on the development of technology, an area in which it is difficult to predict something.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the problem of population was associated equally with both female fertility and the fertility of agricultural lands.

In his 1928 book The Shadow of the World to Come, George Knibbs suggested that if the world's population reached 7.8 billion, much higher efficiency in the cultivation and use of land would be required from humanity.

And three years later, Karl Bosch received the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the development of chemical fertilizers, the production of which was, presumably, the most important factor in the population boom that occurred in the twentieth century.

In the distant future, scientific and technological progress can significantly raise the upper bar of the permissible population of the Earth.

Since the first time people visited space, mankind is no longer content with observing stars from the Earth, but seriously discusses the possibility of resettlement to other planets.

Many prominent scientific thinkers, including the physicist Stephen Hawking, even claim that colonization of other worlds will be critical for the survival of humans and other species on Earth.

Although NASA's exoplanetary program launched in 2009 revealed a large number of planets similar to the Earth, all of them are too far from us and little studied. (As part of this program, the US space agency created the Kepler satellite equipped with a supersensitive photometer to search for Earth-like planets outside the solar system, the so-called exoplanets.)

So resettlement of people to another planet is not a solution yet. For the foreseeable future, the Earth will be our only home, and we must learn to live in it ecologically.

This implies, of course, an overall reduction in consumption, in particular a shift to a low-CO2 lifestyle, as well as an improvement in the status of women around the world.

Only by taking some steps in this direction, we can roughly calculate how much the planet Earth is able to support the people.

• You can read it in English on the website.

This spring, American demographers calculated the growth rate of the earth's population, starting with the first representative Homo Sapiens. The figure turned out to be impressive: 108 billion.

Journalist and filmmaker Paul Ratner made a short video about the study and described its results for the portal "Big Think ".

Many take it for granted that we are living in a unique time - at the cutting edge of history. But one has only to think about how many people have already lived on the planet, and no trace of our arrogance remains. AND main question not even how many people lived, but how many died.

According to estimates by demographers from the Bureau of Population Data, an NGO based in Washington, as of 2015, the total population of the Earth in its entire history is 108.2 billion people. If you subtract the roughly 7.4 billion that trample the planet today, we get the 100.8 billion earthlings who died before us.

So, the dead are almost 14 times more than the living! The result would be an impressive army of zombies, ghosts or White Walkers from Game of Thrones. If you consider yourself to be an optimist, then you can consider that your contemporaries are about 6.8% of all who have ever lived in the world. For the sake of simplicity (and to account for people born after Last year), round up the figure to 7%. We are 7%. Let's not lose face!

How did scientists get this result? The Washington bureau website has a demographer's report. It tells that the fifty thousandth year before the birth of Christ was taken as the starting point. It is then that modern Homo Sapiens are believed to have emerged. The dating can be disputed: the early hominids walked the Earth millions of years ago. But 50,000 BC is the date that the UN uses when calculating demographic trends.

Of course, no one knows exactly how many people have been born since then. The estimate is based on "knowledgeable speculation". Experts take into account many factors, for example, high mortality in the early stages of the evolution of our species (during the Iron Age, the average life expectancy was 10 years), lack of medicines and food, climate change, and much more. When all this is taken into account, it is not surprising that the world's population has grown so slowly. In our ancestors, infant mortality could be as high as 500 cases per 1000 births.

The organization's specialists have collected all their data on population growth rates in one table.

Population growth rates from 50,000 BC to 2011; also shows the number of births per thousand people and the total number of births between every two marks

Interestingly, the rate of growth slows down between the beginning of our era and 1650. In the Middle Ages, a plague epidemic raged in Europe - the "Black Death". There is also a population explosion after industrial revolution... For a century and a half since 1850, the world's population has increased by about 6 times!

Of course, some of the estimates can be challenged. Scientists were forced to guess at every turn, especially in the upper half of the table. Also, statistics were compiled on the assumption of constant growth rates, although it is obvious that they have changed. And yet this speculative data is a great reminder of the place we occupy in the life of our planet.

Demographer Karl Hob talks about the research methodology and its results.