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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (20244)	2/21/2004 10:10:48 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81857

Searle, Re: "The Decline of the Middle Class" -- What I find curiously absent from Ms. Legum's otherwise fine article is a candid discussion of the role of population growth on the wealth of families and individuals. Historically, growing populations pushed into virgin lands and had the benefits of abundant natural resources to exploit. Today, there are no significant and fertile frontiers left in the world to accomodate the burgeoning population. Yet, there are one billion humans who are teenagers. This equals the entire number of human beings on the planet in the year 1800. atmos.umd.edu The implications for population growth and resource exploitation are phenomenal. *** Another astounding fact is that shown by the chart: Whereas it took approximately 100,000 to 200,000 years from the birth of the first members of homo sapiens en.wikipedia.org until 1800 to achieve the one billion mark in human population, currently the species is adding one billion more humans every 11 years. *** The exponential nature of the human population curve makes the hockey stick analogy too mild a comparison. Source of data: census.gov Pop. in Billions 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 x .5 x .25 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx .1 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Years 1 5 1, 5 T Ago: 0 0, 0 0 o 0, 0 0 0 d 0 0 0 a 0 0 y 0