Population Growth

According to a recent CNN report, the world population is expected to hit 7 billion by the year 2011 with 97% of the growth over the next 40 years occuring in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

In order to appreciate just how massive this growth in population has been over the past 200 years, listen to this brief excerpt from this past Tuesday's Thom Hartmann Show:

As we are discussing health care reform and global warming legislation, I feel these stats must be taken into account. After all, if we think that scarcity of natural resources like food, water, and energy (all of which are essential for life on Earth) and the scale of greenhouse gas emissions are problems now, just wait until we have literally billions of more people to worry about.