Odds are you'll never meet any of the estimated 247 human beings who were born in the past minute. in a population of 6 billion, 247 is a demographic hiccup. in the minute before last, however, there were another 247. in the minutes to come there will be another, then another, then another. By next year at this time, all those minutes will have produced nearly 130 million newcomers to the great human mosh pit. That kind of crowd is awfully hard to miss.
For folks inclined to fret that the earth is heading for the environmental abyss, the population problem has always been one of the biggest causes for worry--and with good reason. The last time humanity celebrated a new century there were 1.6 billion people here for the party--or a quarter as many as this time. In 1900 the average life expectancy was, in some places, as low as 23 years; now it's 65, meaning the extra billions are staying around longer and demanding more from the planet. The 130 million or so births registered annually--even after subtracting the 52 million deaths--is still the equivalent of adding nearly one new Germany to the world's population each year.
But things may not be as bleak as they seem. Lately demographers have come to the conclusion that the population locomotive--while still cannonballing ahead--may be chugging toward a stop. In country after country, birthrates are easing, and the population growth rate is falling.
To be sure, this kind of success is uneven. For every region in the world that has brought its population under control, there's another where things are still exploding. For every country that has figured out the art of sustainable agriculture, there are others that have worked their land to exhaustion. The population bomb may yet go off before governments can snuff the fuse, but for now, the news is better than it's been in a long time. "We could have an end in sight to population growth in the next century," says Carl Haub, a demographer with the nonprofit Population Research Bureau. "That's a major change."