It is easy for people in the industrialised world to blame population growth elsewhere for environmental damage. But increased consumption is just as important – if more confronting.
Cellphone data can show who coronavirus patients interacted with, which can help isolate infected people before they feel ill. But how digital contact tracing is implemented matters.
Long before coronavirus hit Australia we were moving less between states and regions. Some worry about economic impacts, but a greater concern is inequality if some people find themselves ‘trapped’.
Many American women are having children later in life.
Sopotnicki/Shutterstock.com
The number of births in the United States have been falling for the last three decades, reaching their lowest number in 32 years.
The United Nations predicts the world will be home to nearly 10 billion people by 2050 – making global greenhouse emission cuts ever more urgent.
NASA/Joshua Stevens
To be clear, I’m not advocating compulsory population control, here or anywhere. But we do need to consider a future with billions more people, many of them aspiring to live as Australians do now.
The U.S. will undergo some significant shifts in the next decade.
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The government wants more people to live in Australia’s north. So we looked at three scenarios to increase the population and the results don’t always look good for the north.
Typhoon Faxai left many people without power and other services for several days when it hit the greater Tokyo region in September.
NASA/Worldview
Talk of moving people out of Japan’s cities into rural areas is changing after the recent cyclone hit near Tokyo. Smarter, more connected cities may be a safer way to go.
The UK is facing a population crisis with birth rates at an all-time low.
Government negligence, rampant development and illegal land clearing spark wildfires in Indonesia that annually ravage thousands of acres of forest.
AP Photo
July 29, 2019 is ‘Earth Overshoot Day,’ a date coined by the nonprofit Global Footprint Network to publicize overuse of Earth’s resources. But their estimates may actually understate the problem.
U.S. Border Patrol agents search for undocumented migrants after they illegally crossed the Rio Grande near Palmview, Texas.
REUTERS/Loren Elliott
Gilles Pison, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN)
The UN’s new global population projections include some surprises – in particular, that the global population in 2100 will be 3% less than they projected in 2017.
Whatever happens with Brexit, the UK population is projected to increase in size, become more ethnically diverse and shift to a structure which is older.
Screening millions of healthy people for their risk of disease can be cost-effective. But it raises ethical and regulatory concerns.
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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)