Читать книгу The State of the World Atlas [ff] - Dan Smith - Страница 19

PART ONE

WHO WE

ARE

This is the age of more, most, and never before. There are more people, living

in more countries, and more of us living in cities, than at any time in the past.

It is only 200 years ago – less than a blink of an eye in the timescale of the

planet, and not much more than a blink in the timescale of human beings

walking the planet – that the world’s human population passed the 1 billion

mark. Today there are just over 7 billion of us. At that time, some 3 per cent –

just 30 million people – lived in cities. Today, the corresponding figure is about

50 per cent, or some 3.5 billion people.

Current projections are that these figures and percentages will all increase.

World population is expected to grow, as will the proportion of us who live

in cities. The total expected population increase by 2030 – about another

2 billion people – is about the same as the expected rise in the urban

population, as increasing numbers are born in cities or move there.

Humanity has never before experienced demographic change on such a

huge scale. The movement from the countryside to the cities in the industrial

revolution two centuries ago has nothing on this. The migration from Europe

to the New World of the Americas from the mid-19th century to the early

20th numbered some 30 million. In the first ten years of this century, global

population grew by some 100 million a year and urban population even faster.

But the issue is not just population increase. There is the matter of resources.

According to one estimate, our seven-times-larger population compared to

1810 produces 50 times as much in economic output, and uses 60 times

as much water and 75 times as much energy. Seen in a longer timescale

going back to the beginning of recorded history some 5,000 years ago, that

astonishing increase in the production of wealth is as wholly unprecedented

and wildly abnormal as the increase in population itself.

The figures testify to the creativity unleashed through the industrial revolution.

They are the evidence against fears, widely expressed over the past two

centuries, that population increase must end in starvation and mass misery.

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