Earth at seven billion
National Post - Canada
“Every indicator of human well-being that you can measure … there’s no question it’s better today, no matter how many people we have,” said Hania Zlotnik, head of the UN’s Population Division. “On the whole, society has been extremely successful, both in reducing population growth from its peak and making life better for most people.”[...]At the same time, more efforts are needed to lower the birth rate in high-fertility regions to avoid worst-case population scenarios, and potentially to slow growth even more than expected, said Ms. Zlotnik. The UN population czar rejects the conventional economic wisdom that fertility starts falling only as affluence in a country rises, saying there are many examples where birth rates have shrunk independent of an economic boom. Bangladesh, for instance, is moving fast toward replacement-level fertility because of robust programs that encourage child and maternal health and family planning. (13 August 2011)