For the past 200 years the global population has risen explosively. There were 1bn humans in 1850. There are 7.3bn today. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has lived in quiet dread that somewhere there is a limit, and the Malthusian horsemen of plague, starvation and war will one day punish our effrontery.
Demographic change is easy to miss, because it happens slowly, but we stand on the cusp of a profound change in the human condition. New projections from the UN suggest that, within just a few decades, we could secure a future of stable global population.
To be clear, the forecasts do not show an imminent end to population growth — far from it. The global population is growing steadily and it has the momentum of an elephant on an ice rink. The UN’s medium-variant projection shows a rise to 9.7bn people in 2050 and 11.2bn by 2100.