You see that number above me? It shows the global
population in real time. Pretty cool, right? It shows the number of
people that have been born and how many have died. But what makes the counter
significant right now is that we're about to hit eight
billion people on the planet. It might even happen
during this video. So keep watching it with me
because that's a lot of people. Let's get into it. This is KN Explains
Global Population. OK, first thing's first. How is this number
calculated? Like is there someone
literally counting everybody on the
planet every day? This count of the number
of people in the world is really an estimate. A lot of it comes from
censuses, and then we use information that we know about,
like how many births people are typically having
in one country, how many people are typically
dying in one country, and we use mathematical models
to combine that and

make these estimates or projections of the future population. Ainara: And get this, it took about 300,000 years to reach our first billion people. Our second billion came a lot faster in just 123 years. Then 33 years for our third billion. Since then, we've been tacking on a billion about every ten years. That's a huge spike in growth. What's the deal? The biggest factor that we can think about is improving health outcomes. So the fact that people are living longer and living healthier, in particular, that more babies survive. There were also improvements in agricultural techniques, which meant there was more food for people to eat. I guess that means it's probably going to be like what, five years to our next billion, maybe a billion a year after that? And will it keep going forever and ever? It doesn't look like it's going to

keep growing forever and ever. We think it is going to kind
of start to flatten out. So I think the best estimate
for that is something like maybe 2090 is when we'll
hit 10.4 billion people. That has something to do with
what's called fertility rate. The fertility rate
peaked in 1962, and it's been on
the decline since then. So what is it? It's this pretend number
that we throw around that can sort of be interpreted
as the average number of kids that women will
have in a lifetime. So why is that
number declining? Sarah: One main reason that
fertility rates are declining is an increase
in women's education. So it turns out when women
go to school for longer, they have fewer children. And also the increasing
availability of contraceptive methods. More educated women
equals less babies, but eight billion
people is still a lot. Isn't that a problem?

So there's this day each year,
called Earth Overshoot Day. It's basically a day that
marks when we use up all of the renewable resources our planet can provide
in a single year. This year, it fell
on July 28th. Sarah: We're kind of dipping
into the future for earnings. It's sort of like getting a loan,
like from your parents, right? Like, oh, I really
want to buy something, but I don't have
the money now. So you can kind of look to
the future and say, like, oh, well, I'll just, I'll
just take my allowance for the next three weeks and
have that now, and they'll figure out what to do in,
you know, three weeks from now. There was a study
done by researchers at Stanford University
that estimated the ideal population size for our current
consumption levels would be around
1.5 to 1.9 billion.

Let's just round up
and say two billion. Wait, what number are we at? [counter ticks] That's a lot more
than two billion.  So if the ideal population
 is two billion people, and we have eight
 billion people, how the heck are we
existing right now? The short answer is kind
of a combination of borrowing from the future - remember Earth Overshoot Day? - and innovation.  We're working to find ways
 to make all the stuff we need without using natural
 resources, but it's still a lot of people
for the resources we have. So what can we
do about it? Some people believe that we can
come up with even more ways to change how
and what we consume and make it more manageable
and sustainable. Thinking smartly about why
you're consuming certain things and what you really need is the
best thing for kids to do.  And to start pressuring their
parents to think about it too.

You know, to think about, do we really need that new thing, or are we OK with using this old one for longer, or just reducing the number of things that we need in our lives. Sarah says it's also important to speak up. For example, you can talk to your parents about voting for election candidates that are for a more sustainable, less consumption-heavy future. All right, looks like that number is above my head again, which means we're watching the global population grow. [party noisemakers blow] And wow, here we go. It just crossed eight billion people. Watching history happen right here. But wait, should we be celebrating that? Didn't we just talk about overconsumption? Maybe we should both go back and watch this video from the top one more time. [ding] That's it for KN Explains. For CBC Kids News, I'm Ainara Ali.

8 billion people on Earth, here’s what it means | CBC Kids News

Subscribe for deep dives, explainers and news from Canadian kids and teens. 

8 billion people on Earth, here’s what it means | CBC Kids News

8 billion people on Earth, here’s what it means | CBC Kids News

Scripts