Most Populous Countries in 1900

As a % increase that's not as impressive even if it was a much bigger increase arithmetically.

now where did you get from 420 to 1653? british made many countries that they took were independent today

@JHAssassin he's talking about the area that was apart of the BE in 1900 now has that population.

egypt, nigeria, south africa

You think it's great that there is tons of overcrowding, traffic, poverty, starvation.. that we are polluting and using resources at alarming and unsustainable levels that continue to increase.. that we're clearcutting huge swaths of tropical rainforest to make more farms, wiping out 100s of species along the way to give us more room for more roads and shopping malls? hm... if you say so. Personally I think a population of around 1 billion humans on Earth is more than enough and far from abysmal... if we get down to 10,000-100,000 or so like we've been during some previous ice ages then I guess there is cause for concern, if the perpetuation of human DNA is something that you feel is important though I don't see it as really that big of a deal.

The major problem the world has today is over-population. Where is it going to end?....... 8billion, 9 billion, 12 billion? Unfortunately it is in countries that can least afford the massive over-population that the increases are greatest. That means those peoples have no employment, medical facilities, insufficient food, poor living conditions etc. Now in the future what will hold these Billions of unfortunate peoples from flooding the more fortunate areas of the world and causing the same problems everywhere. Without (and I mean WITHOUT) a change in the population growth the world for humanity is doomed, unless you think that the growth can be sustained until the population weighs more than the earth itself.

Eh? We have enough water in the world today for everyone to drink, bathe, wash, etc. We grow enough food, even if you take off some reasonable amount of waste due to damage while being transported, pests, that sort of thing. If we spread out across the planet, even only in those places where it's reasonably comfortable to live (i.e. not the Himalayan summits, at the tips of marshy growing river deltas, Antarctica), then we wouldn't even have to hear each other unless we were absolutely blasting out music or shooting guns or something. We only need a tiny tiny proportion of the earth's area to be covered in solar panels to supply all our electricity needs. The earth can support all these people, and more, to a comfortable level; it's just that we insist on wasting huge amounts of food and water, on locking up wealth in bank accounts, on polluting and making profit at others' expense and thinking selfishly & short term. It's a problem of distribution and usage, not of the earth's ability

Agree with much of that, Allen, except that water will become a much bigger problem in the future as major aquifers begin to dry up. Also, even if the Earth can currently adequately support the humans who live upon it, it would still be much easier to deal with the damage those humans cause, and comfortably (or even lavishly) sustain them all if there were fewer of us.

The reason for the population boom is that in third-world countries, a process is occurring that has already finished in first-world countries like the U.S. and U.K. Most people in places like Africa, Asia, and the like have many children, few of whom survive because of illness. Now, because of medication dealing with such things reaching places like China and India, most of those children survive, leading to a massive bump in population growth. Then, after a couple of decades, the human body adapts to this and the number of children per person shrinks drastically, which is already starting to occur in China and India. Because of this, most experts predict that human population will level off in the future, and the widely accepted figure is that it will never quite reach 13 billion people.

The most optimistic projections have global populations actually starting to shrink within the next century, because of this "natural" predicted fall off after the introduction of education, medicine, and clean drinking water that then seems to lead to a cultural shift and a drop-off in birth rates.

That said, 13 billion people, or even 7 billion, is still an enormous strain to place on the world's environment. It remains to be seen if it will be too much. There's at least a reasonable chance that the damage homo sapiens are inflicting upon the Earth will prove great enough to cause a serious disruption to the food chain (from, for example, acidification of the oceans) which will lead to catastrophe the likes of which we haven't seen since pre-history. There's also the likelihood of wars, famines, etc as resources run out and these ballooning populations confined to inhospitable areas attempt to move to other areas.

AllenY, the only reason we are growing enough food is because, as Kal said, we are putting land into production which shouldn't be farmed. Also, we are irrigating arid land with water which may not be available in the future, and we have developed hybrids which produce many times more grain per plant. Those new superhybrids are creating many times more kernels of grain per plant, but there is an argument being made that those superhybrids still have the same root system, so even though a single acre of wheat may now be producing 300 bushels instead of 40, each plant is still taking up the same amount of nutrients from the surrounding soil, meaning that each kernel doesn't have near the amount of nutrition as formerly, meaning that people have to eat more of it to get the same nutrition. I can't say that is a fact, but it's something I read and it seemed sensible to me.I do know the corn we buy for animal feed now has a lower protein content.

Corn yields had been doubling about every 20 years even before the development of superhybrids, but the CP content (crude protein) has been decreasing. When we develop our feeding formulas we have to know the protein content to figure the ratios, and formerly corn had a protein content of nearly 10%. Now it is down to around 8% in this area. Corn now has more starch and less protein. Modern methods of growing high plant population is driving corn silage protein down, too, for dairy farmers. The same thing is happening with wheat. Wheat protein content should be 13% or more. We've heard that some hard red wheat tested as low as 8%. Other factors come into play, too, but there has been a general trend for high-yielding hybrids to have less protein. It seems reasonable that it would affect humans the same way it does farm animals. Feeding a hungry planet is more complicated than it might seem.

We also formerly used distiller's grain as a winter protein supplement with hay when grass wasn't available. Now the ethanol plants are stripping out more of the oil to convert to biodiesel, and the nutrition is now so poor that we no longer even use that supplement. Something that was formerly part of the food process has now become an energy resource. Another worry - some say bees are dying and crop yields will go down because of less pollination, although our beekeeper says he is growing extra queens to increase the number of his hives to combat the higher losses - he has 60 hives on our farm alone, so that may become less of an issue in the future if more hives can be produced to make up for the losses. But there is definitely a water problem. Some underground aquifers are silting in from crop erosion while others are being overpumped for irrigation. All in all, our food supply is not as stable as you'd like to think.

Overpopulation is a ... MYTH!

In fact, the world could easily handle billions of more people. What is a problem is overconsumption. People use all kinds of useless crap for a second and then buy new crap they don't need. Items are intentionally made to break real fast to force people to buy new ones. In the name of rich people want bigger profit because no amount of money is enough for some. Stick with the fashion, right? Also, food is under-produced and misused while then in certain places people overeat and throw unbelievable amounts of food to trash just, you know, because. Some of the better tech is intentionally prevented/blocked/slowed to milk the last of the possible cash out of the old and polluting/damaging tech... and so on.

There is no food thrown away, just, 'cause. It's a lot more complicated than that. It is true that the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone. It's not true that 7 billion people on Earth is not a problem for the environment. Even if we all started living in igloos tomorrow- but, of course, that will never happen unless some catastrophe forces us to. You can't say that overpopulation is not a problem if we change human nature. It is what it is.

What's wrong with 1 billion people? Isn't that enough? That's still an awful lot of people.

There are some quite interesting comments here. I think that the entire debate around overpopulation depends heavily on what you think is a desirable end or achievement. Obviously killing large numbers of people is bad, but nobody here is proposing anything like that. Birth control is a fairly clear way that population growth can be reduced, but when population was lower (as in 1900) it wasn't because of better birth control. It was because people were dying young of infectious diseases that are now happily much less common in many parts of the world due to antibiotics and vaccination. For this reason I don't see much reason why anything about world population in 1900 was "healthier". Ageing population is a separate issue to overpopulation, but I agree it is usually easier to handle. There is also an interesting debate about numbers here, and I think it is one of the times when statistics can be misleading if not considered carefully.

Because the numbers involved can be misleading, here is another way to think about population. For most of human history, the world population is thought to have been around 100 million (This might be quite far from exact, but I saw a figure of 150 million in 1AD, which I will go with). Since 1AD, the world population has doubled between 5 and 6 times. We are not seeing the apocalyptic scenarios that kalbahamut has been describing yet (except some traces of them through climate change, a problem that merits scientific research and should not be ignored, but one which so far has caused destruction mainly in small areas at one time). One more doubling is predicted to occur before a peak and subsequent reversal in population trends. For this reason I don't think these scenarios will play out, at least not in a way that will cause worldwide destruction beyond what happened in the last five put together.

Water aquifers are drying up, oil reserves are being depleted, global temperatures are rising, the oceans are filling up with plastic, species are being wiped out by the thousands- all as a direct result of human activity. No, we're not all dead yet, but by the time it becomes clear to the average person that we've gone too far it's going to be too late to save the millions or billions who will pay the price for this. There is a lot of reason to believe that current population levels are not sustainable long-term, not at the rate that we are currently consuming resources and polluting the environment, and of course if the population doubles and worldwide standards of living continue to go up there is even more cause to be concerned. If global population was still 150 million people we wouldn't even be talking about this. That's what I meant by healthier- sustainable and with less impact on the environment.

The growing number of human on the planet does increase the anthropogenic impacts on the environment. Quite simple logic. And given that we are not (yet?) able/willing to establish a sustainable economy/society, the growing number of human can indeed cause apocalyptic dimensions with a new "Migration Period" from India and Africa to Europe and elsewhere. However, even assuming that we will establish a sustainable society (e.g. 100% renewable energy + artifical sugar production - 'cause the natural efficiency sucks ;-) ) there is a philosophical question whether more people is really better. Given limited resources and a given "healty" population size any extra human on Earth (marginally) reduces the standard of living of all the other billions of humans (hopefully except for his nearest relatives).

This is certainly true. However, the population in 1900 was not sustainable, because it was growing rapidly and has now grown to very high levels with most of the factors for the growth having occurred before 1900 (except for better treatment of diseases and some reduction in war, both of which are desirable). Only when global population stops growing and is reduced to a number that is inherently sustainable ignoring possible growth will population be sustainable. Overpopulation and pollution are two separate problems. They impact each other, but it is at least in theory possible to have a very high population that doesn't cause much pollution or a low population creating a lot (the Industrial Revolution at least locally caused much worse pollution than the respective areas have now). If world population were to halt today and never get any higher or lower, we should be able to sustain ourselves for a long time with some technological advances.

(Replying to kalbahamut, didn't see LastFish). This doesn't necessarily mean it will happen. It is just possible in theory. As it stands, things look better than that. Population should peak this century and go down from there, limiting the time that anthropogenic climate change will carry on.

There is no point talking about how unhealthy or healthy the population because we cant change the fact there was a big population growth. Also it will be quite hard to reduce he population as it means we will have an aging population meaning the economy could collapse on itself so maybe we should try and stabilise the population but not deplete it.

(Just my opinion, don't get mad)

We can't change population growth? Has nobody talked to you about how babies are made?

Talking about overpopulation in 2021 is such a meme i cant believe how uninformed / out of date most people are. Look at current trends. not trends from 20 years ago. Only subsaharan africa is still "growing like mad", not even all of it anymore

Mark my words - the world will have negative population growth in 2050.

The world population doesn't need to grow at all for it to be overpopulated. It already is overpopulated. But, it indeed is still growing. In 2050 it might not be. That remains to be seen. However, whether it somehow magically stays under 8 billion (was a very short time ago that it surpassed 7 and we're already nearly at 8), or plateaus at 10, or at 15, or even if it starts falling precipitously and in 80 years is back at 5... in every one of those scenarios there are still too many people on the planet for us to continue existing as we currently are. And in some of them, there are way too many.

Comment threads like this are why I wish Jetpunk had a button to minimize threads so I can actually find any other comment

I think all of you, and especially kal, are forgetting an important factor here: progress. Speaking about overpopulation, you can't compare 1AD with today. In 1AD, most of the biggest cities just had a few tens of thousands people, because they couldn't handle a bigger population. There were only a few exceptions like e.g. Rome. But 1AD and 2022AD aren't the same. We're in a position rn where we can handle cities with millions of people and a world with billions. More humans don't only mean more problems, they also mean more progress. And progress won't stop. At the population peak in 2100, who knows, where science and technology will be. But just look back where we as humanity were 80 years ago, and imagine. If imperialism and nationalism don't destroy humanity, we could have technologies fighting climate change, we may even have the ability to travel to other planets and millions of people could live in self-sustainable arcologies with hydrocultural farms. That could be our future.

Your name is appropriate in this case.

Actually Brazil became independent in 1822.

at any rate before 1900

Actually Australia ceased to be part of Britain on 1/1/1901.

Canada and Australia were never 'part of Britain'.

That's why it's complicated. In theory, until the 1982 Canada Act, the UK Parliament could amend Canada's constitution to be whatever it wanted. It could dissolve the Ottawa parliament if it wanted to. In practice, it's obvious why this never happened because, in the event of a Canadian uprising, maple syrup is very sticky and hard to clean off the floor of the houses of parliament.

You have to wait for the October Revolution! These things don't just happen.