The human population has doubled in 48 years, and worsening climate change has left the world facing serious health risks, from infectious diseases to hunger and heat stress.
The UN estimates the global population will pass 8 billion people on Nov. 15, 2022. From the Stone Age to today, here’s how things spiraled out of control.
Matthew E. Kahn, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
A 1972 report warned that unchecked consumption could crater the world economy by 2100. Fifty years and much debate later, can humanity innovate quickly enough to avoid that fate?
According to the 2021 Census there are now almost one million Indigenous people in Australia. Although increase in population is a reason for this, there are some other factors to consider.
Peter Martin, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
India is now the third-largest birthplace of Australian residents behind Australia and England, while for the first time less than half of the population has identified as Christian.
A street-by-street analysis shows where the risks are rising fastest and also lays bare the inequities of who has to endure America’s crippling flood problem.
Humanity’s biggest challenges are not technical, but social, economic, political and behavioural. Effective actions are still possible to stabilise the climate and the planet, but must be taken now.
If rural communities plan carefully – and some already are – they can reinvent themselves as the perfect homes for people fleeing wildfire and hurricane zones.
Hot, humid population centers are becoming epicenters of heat risk as climate changes worsens. It’s calling into question the conventional wisdom that urbanization uniformly reduces poverty.
Youth unemployment in Nigeria is a skills mismatch problem – corporations can’t find suitable workers in the midst of a large pool of unemployed workers.
Anthropologue et démographe, professeur émérite au Muséum national d’histoire naturelle et conseiller de la direction de l'INED, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN)