Between 1650 and 1850, the world’s population more than doubled, from half a billion to 1.13 billion. In the next 100 years, it more than doubled again, to 2.5 billion. Today some 5.8 billion people live on Earth. But a new study reports that though the population may hit 10.6 billion in the next 80 years, it will probably never double again. I don’t believe in a global doomsday scenario, says Wolfgang Lutz, a demographer at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria.
Lutz believes that most population projections are flawed. International agencies put together population projections that were rather mechanistic and did not include too many scientists, he says. A small in-house group defined what assumptions were going to be made. So Lutz assembled a panel of 20 experts in the fields of fertility, mortality, and migration--the three factors that immediately affect populations--to discuss future trends.
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