Today, 31 October 2011, the 7th billion person is scheduled to be born, at least according to the United Nations Population Fund. Current estimates have the earth's population reaching 9.3 billion by 2050.
While I, and probably every other genealogist alive, complains about so many dead people with the same name (Alexander McIntosh, John Smith, etc), at least we know that there really weren't so many people alive in the past. Armed with this knowledge, we know that some of these individuals must be the same. I'm not so sure that will be true in the future as there will be too many options.
Take my name, Amanda Epperson, for example. Epperson, is not a very common surname. In fact, many people upon hearing it for the first time think it is Apperson or Emerson. Amanda was one of the ten most popular names for girls for about 15 years or so. There are lots of Amandas around today, but when I was little there was only one other one in my elementary school. However, you wouldn't think there would be THAT many Amanda Eppersons. But there are; I searched for "Amanda Epperson" on Facebook and stopped counting when I got to 30. I can't even imagine the multitudes of John Smiths that must be out there today. I suppose the only hope genealogists of the future have is that we are much better documented today, then people of the past.
I'm sure there will be much coverage of this population milestone in the coming weeks. For now you can read this story from Time on overpopulation and the environment here, two stories from NPR here and here; listen to Melvin Bragg and his panelists discuss Malthusianism (In Our Time, 22 June 2011) here, or if you were born after 1951 you can see how many people were alive the day you here born, here, courtesy of the Guardian. On my birthday, there were 3,456,018,429 people, or about half the number that there is now.
How many were alive on your birthday?
1 comment:
Oh MY! You inspired me to go to Facebook and check my own name and I found 52 Lisa Wallens listed (although some of them were married to Wallens vs it being their maiden name). I am shocked! LOL! Thanks for a fun and interesting post!
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