Humanity is a force to be reckoned with. For better or worse, we've terraformed the world to our design.
It's interesting to see the ebbs and flows of populations – and how exponential today's growth is.
Watch the video.
American Museum of Natural History via Youtube
It took 200,000 years for our population to reach 1 billion. It took 200 years to reach 7 billion. Our population has doubled since 1971.
The video predicts that the earth's carrying capacity is about 11 billion and that we'll reach that by 2100.
Farming took humanity from a couple million to hundreds of millions. Modern medicine and the industrial revolution took us from hundreds of millions to billions ... and we're in the middle of a technological revolution.
When you think about how radically our population has grown in the past 200 years, it's no surprise the dynamics of our relationship with the world have changed.
You don't have to be an economist to predict the number of 18-year-olds in 15 years. You merely count the 3-year olds. India and China's influences are both going to grow due to the sheer number of people they have. Africa is slowly building megacities to accommodate the growing population with the help of China. How else do you think this is going to impact the world order in the coming decades?