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Articles on Global population

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Rising global temperatures are increasing heat risks for outdoor workers and the urban poor. Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images

Dangerous urban heat exposure has tripled since the 1980s, with the poor most at risk

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.
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

As Earth’s population heads to 10 billion, does anything Australians do on climate change matter?

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.
Melbourne is Australia’s fastest-growing city. Across Australia, the share of UK-born residents is declining, and the share of China-born and India-born residents has increased. AAP Image/Julian Smith

Three charts on Australia’s population shift and the big city squeeze

Melbourne is Australia’s most rapidly growing city, a title it wrested from Perth around 2013-14. Several of Australia’s big cities are growing well above the national average population growth rate.
Just another day in Nairobi’s Kibera slums. Slums are characterised by densely packed settlements with inadequate provision of services. Reuters/Noor Khamis

Slum health is not urban health: why we must distinguish between the two

Despite increased global awareness about poor conditions in slums, the health of their inhabitants is a little studied phenomenon.
The basic problem facing endangered species? Too many humans. David Parry/PA

Could the Pill save the polar bear?

Each new human on the planet makes extinctions more likely, yet birth control still isn’t seen as a big environmental issue.

Standing room only

Demography is destiny. It’s an old idea but it remains as true as ever, despite the fact that it doesn’t get anything like the attention it deserves. It’s not hard to see why: not only is there a crowded…

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