Global population is eight billion and counting

The UN Population Division’s forecasts make grim reading, especially if you read between the lines. We are probably way past the long-term sustainable carrying capacity of our planet in terms of both population numbers and per capita energy use, and yet they will still be going up for most of this century.
The recent article about falling sperm counts in the journal Human Reproduction Update offers hope from an unexpected source. The rate of decline has been speeding up since 1973, and is now more than 2.6 per cent per year, writes Gwynne Dyer.

LONDON, U.K.—I must have missed the memo, because there was no newborn baby picked out at random on Nov. 8 to be the designated eight billionth human being. Perhaps they finally realized how tacky that journalistic device was, or maybe they just got tired of nagging us. An...

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