The United Nations has officially declared November 15, 2022 as the “Day of Eight Billion” — the day the Earth reached a population of eight billion inhabitants.
Revealing that the last jump from seven to eight billion people took a mere 12 years, the UN stressed that with more people comes an increased responsibility to take care of the planet as land, clean water, food, endangered wildlife, and carbon emissions have to be accounted for on an even higher level as the average human lifespan continues to increase.
The UN commented, “This unprecedented growth is due to the gradual increase in human lifespan owing to improvements in public health, nutrition, personal hygiene and medicine. It is also the result of high and persistent levels of fertility in some countries.”
As the National Geographic points out, it took Homo sapiens roughly 300,000 years to reach a population of one billion in 1804 then 155 more years to reach 3 billion in 1959, where the population then shot up an additional 5 billion to its current 8 billion in just 63 years.
The UN predicts the population to exceed 10 billion this century and has pointed out that the leaders in poplatuon growth are no longer China and India, but instead countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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