This crowded world
It took an awfully long time — from creation until 1800 — to get to 1 billion people on earth. It took until 1930 to get to 2 billion. Next year there will be 7 billion on the planet:
The slope of that increase is impressive to behold:
In recent days we’ve had occasion to observe the world from vantages in Europe, Asia and all over the US. The world has become one endless traffic jam. It is more than a little disconcerting.
The US would appear to be in a somewhat different position than it was in the last century. When FDR was elected, Americans numbered 122 million and were over 6% of the planet’s relatively tiny population. Now the population of this crowded world is almost 7 billion, and the relative US share of its population has fallen by almost a third to the 4% range. Americans are awash in a sea of other humans.