How many of us can the earth sustain, and who is to decide?
The number of people on earth has grown more in two centuries than in all the time before. How many can the earth sustain, and whose business is it to say?
The picture
What the numbers show, read from the Data library each time the page opens.
How to read the chart above, and the words it uses (for population).
How to read the data
The figure is the number of people living in the place at the middle of the year, whatever their citizenship. It is an estimate drawn from censuses and registers, and it says nothing about how long people live or how they are fed.
Key terms
Population
All the residents of a place, counted regardless of legal status.
Census
A count of the whole population taken at intervals, usually every ten years.
Mid-year estimate
The population at the middle of the year, the usual way to give one figure for a year.
Who has a stake
Each interest, then readings from the Catholic library and the Classics library that bear on it, oldest first. Choose a group to read.
To bring children into the world as they judge best, in marriage, with the means to rear and educate them.
That the means of life, food, schooling and a decent home, grow with their numbers, and are not left to chance.
To judge what the land, the economy and the public services can carry, and to serve the common good without coercing any person.
To inherit a world that can feed them, and a people that has not been planned out of existence.
For discussion
Malthus feared that numbers would outrun food and Smith saw wages encouraging marriage. What would each need to see in the figures to change their view?
Plato fitted the number of citizens to the land. What do parents owe to the wider community in deciding how many children to have, and what does it owe to them?
The Council asks the wealthier nations to help peoples under pressure of numbers. How might the interests of the poor and of those who plan be weighed together?
