The human species has topped 8 billion, with longer lifespans offsetting fewer births, but world population growth continues a long-term trend of slowing down, the US Census Bureau said Thursday.

The bureau estimates that the global population exceeded the threshold on 26 September, though the agency said to take this precise date with a grain of salt.

The United Nations estimated the number was passed 10 months earlier, having declared 22 November 2022, the “Day of 8 Billion”, the Census Bureau pointed out in a statement.

The discrepancy is due to countries counting people differently — or not at all. Many lack systems to record births and deaths. Some of the most populous countries, such as India and Nigeria, haven’t conducted censuses in over a decade, according to the bureau.

While world population growth remains brisk, growing from 6 billion to 8 billion since the turn of the millennium, the rate has slowed since doubling between 1960 and 2000.

  • @BellaDonna@mujico.org
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    1 year ago

    Absolutely untrue and dangerous thinking, we’ve already done almost incomprehensible damage to what we call the ecosystem and biosphere, and we frame everything in human terms.

    Human activity is a major problem, and that problem scales tremendously with population. I’ve watched the natural world decline dramatically in my lifetime, the world that gave rise to human civilization doesn’t exist anymore and it’s bounty plundered.

    It used to be everyone understood human population was a problem, now it’s considered problematic to discuss, but it’s more true. I’ve watched the human population more than double, our biosphere is devastated, humans are just one species, and the world lies plundered and dying because humans think they should be allowed to live in major excess to the rest of the species in the world.

    • @RedditWanderer
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      11 year ago

      You’re swallowing the pill that we need cruise ships, private jets, immense shipping containers etc… to sustain a modern life. Which are all the major polluters.

      War and economic competition hinders energy developments and sustainability, which is multiplied by each person. You’ll get much more out of making the live of 12b people more efficient than you will killing half of them to keep pace with what we are doing now, only to end up in a further economic problem and likely to keep growing the population while destroying what’s left.

      • @BellaDonna@mujico.org
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        1 year ago

        I’m actually not. I’m anti capitalist and pro communist, I’m still actually aware of the massive amount of farmland and logging operations needed for basic housing and food, I know how long it takes to grow trees, and understand that we can’t realistically replace old growth forests and their natural canopies. I understand how much water is available in the Middle East, Northwest Africa, and the Midwest United States, and the already absurdly unsustainable cities in those geographic areas, I understand climate change and the monumental and existential threat that poses.

        I promise, we cannot sustain this many humans, we cannot sustainably produce consumable fuel for this many humans even now, it is actually going to effectively ‘run out’ ( being infeasible and hugely damaging to the flora and fauna of the area )

        You must be young and inexperienced, untravelled and in an informational and cultural bubble, it should actually be impossible for you to be so wrong otherwise.