Earth’s population to hit eight billion next week after ‘tripling since 1950’

EARTH’S population will grow to eight billion next week, the United Nations has revealed.

The UN Population Division said that by November 15, the world’s population will have tripled since 1950.

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Meanwhile, in eight years’ time, the world’s population will swell to 8.5 billion, 9.7 billion by 2050, and 10.4 billion by 2100.

Life expectancy is also due to increase to an average of 77.2 years by 2050.

Despite this growth in population, the population growth rate decelerated to below 1 percent in 2020, Rachel Snow of the UN Population Fund told the Daily Mail.

And this number has the potential to fall to around 0.5 percent by 2050 due to a decline in fertility rates.

“We’ve reached a stage in the world where the majority of countries and the majority of people in this world are living in a country that is below replacement fertility,” Snow said.

However, there are other factors driving global population growth, such as a continuous increase in life expectancy.

For example, in 2019 the global life expectancy was 72.8 years – this is an increase of nine years since 1990.

And by 2050, global life expectancy is only expected to increase to 77.2 years.

Other factors include advancements in public health and more women and babies surviving childbirth.

But as education has become more accessible and contraception is more readily available, birth rates have dropped – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

With fewer births, we can expect eventually to have less impact on our environment and perhaps slow climate change,” the Durango Herald reports.

“With smaller families, each child benefits from more time with their parents and more financial resources.”

Elon’s predictions

Billionaire Elon Musk has long been vocal about population collapse, predicting that the world’s population rates will soon drop to a dangerous level.

Just two months ago, the SpaceX CEO tweeted: “Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.”

And then again in January, Musk asserted that we “should be much more worried about population collapse” than we currently are.

He followed his statement with claims that we won’t be able to sustain a future civilization on Mars “if there aren’t enough people for Earth.”

However, experts quickly refuted Musk’s predictions, including consulting demographer and former director of the United Nations Population Division Joseph Chamie.

“He’s better off making cars and engineering than at predicting the trajectory of the population,” Chamie told CNN earlier this year.

“Yes, in some countries, their population is declining, but for the world, that’s just not the case.”