Since the topic at hand is population, I thought it would be helpful if I provided some numbers and some insight to back up what I’ve been calling a crisis.

There are currently 6.7 billion people on the planet. Another 350,000 are born each day, another 150,000 die each day. The net result is 200,000 more humans with each passing twenty-four hours.

The US population stands at 305 million people and is climbing fast. Every hour, California alone adds 60 people. According to data from the Pew Research Center, if current trends continue, the US will reach 438 million by 2050.

According to the organization Population Environment Balance, 93 percent of the increase in energy use in the US since 1970 can be attributed to population growth.

In 1970, our population was 200 million. We used 67 quadrillion BTUs of energy and 14.7 million barrels of oil a day. Today, even after a massive rise in energy-efficient appliances, with a population over 300 million, we use 100 quadrillion BTUs a day and consume 20 million barrels of oil.

When I speak about concerns over peak oil—this is where those concerns originate.

In 1900, there were 25.6 Americans per square mile. Today it’s 83—a tripling of our density. In the past 20 years, we’ve converted 10 million acres of forest to suburbs—that’s an area twice as large as Yosemite, Yellowstone, Shenandoah and Everglades National Parks combined. Every minute, the US loses 2 acres of farmland. Every year, we pave over an area the size of Delaware. When we talk about species dying off at a rate 1000 greater than ever before in history—it’s partially because we keep stealing their land.

“Ecological Footprint” is a term used to measure an individual’s impact on the planet. As computed by the Global Footprint Network, the average American has a footprint equivalent to 9.4 global hectares (23.3 acres) or roughly 17 football fields. The average Haitian, by comparison, uses .5 global hectares—or 1.5 acres—to survive. Which is why exporting American culture and lifestyles is problematic. If the rest of the world wants to live like we do, then we need five planets worth of resources to make that happen.

This is also the reason I began calling for a 5 Year Global Moratorium on Childbirth and the reason I think that moratorium needs to emerge from the US first. As an American, I think it’s important to clean up my mess before telling the rest of the world how to live (I have no children, nor will I ever have any). Also because, as an American, I’m making the biggest mess.

But America is only part of the problem. By 2050 Uganda’s population will grow from 27 million to 131 million. Niger from 14 to 50 million, Afghanistan from 30 to 82 million. Asia will add 500 million people by 2015. Which means, according to new figures released by the Global Footprint Network, the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, at the rate we’re going, by the early 2030s we will require two planets worth of resources to meet our needs.

Interestingly, none of this knowledge is secret. It’s public data and widely available. So the better question is why is there so much psychological resistance to discussions about the dangers of our population explosion.

That question has lately come under some scrutiny. One of the better answers comes from “Why the Silence on Population,” a paper by UC Berkeley researcher Martha Campbell published in 2007 in the journal Population and Environment.

“In the 1960s and 70s,” she writes, “much attention was paid to the world’s rapidly growing human population. The number of people on this planet stood at three billion in 1960 and it was poised to double before the end of the century. Between 1999 and 2050 that number will likely expand by another three billion, yet in contrast there has been nothing but silence. The subject of population has all but disappeared from the media in the past 25 years.”

She then goes onto describe a perfect storm of six elements that have come together to create this silence:

1. Birth rates have actually dropped worldwide—and this shift has been widely described by the media. Family planning programs in less developed countries has dropped the average number of kids from 5 to 3 per woman. If you were wondering, 2.1 kids is the so-called “replacement rate,” the number at which we reach “zero-population growth.”

2. Much attention has now been placed on the high level of impact that consumption puts on the environment. Since there is a link between smaller families and better economic well-being, this drop in family size has actually increased the amount of consumption in the world.

3. “The third element in the perfect storm,” again I’m quoting Campbell, “has a different origin. Anti-abortion activists, religious leaders and conservative think tanks have been influential in reducing attention to population growth.” A great example of this being that most of us now believe the term “Malthusian”—after the English economist Thomas Malthus who warned of the dangers of population growth and resource scarcity almost 200 years ago—has become a dirty word. When I wrote my first post (the original Five Year Ban) my critics called me Malthusian. All I can say to that is ‘thank you very much.’

4. The incredible scale of the global AIDs epidemic has done two things. It has forced international health dollars, which were once directed towards family planning, into AIDs prevention and relief. Secondly, it has made many people believe that AIDs is “taking care” of the population problem. Uganda, which has a heartbreaking problem with AIDs, is still going to quadruple its population by 2050.

5. In 1994 the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) became the turning point in the removal of the subject from policy discourse. “In the run-up to ICPD,” writes Campbell, “and following the two-week conference in Cairo, talking about population became politically incorrect in many circles. Drawing attention to any connection between population and the environment became taboo—again, because it was viewed, or promoted, as disadvantageous to women.” The idea was that pre-Cairo, all discussion over family planning—partially because of what happened in India and China (infant girls being killed, wives beaten for birthing girls)—became seen as coercion. “Population control” became a non-subject. Instead, discussion about family planning, pregnancy, childbirth was bundled into the term “reproductive health” and talk of population and its negative impacts was essentially forbidden.

6. This last one is slightly harder to understand, but we've come to believe that economics is the main driver behind smaller family size. Essentially, we’ve been taught that when a couple achieves a certain level of economic stability, they will magically stop having as many children. In fact, the truth is that the real measure of how many children a woman will have is actually a woman’s access to information and birth control. It’s just that right now rich women have easier access to these things than poor women, so that’s where we see the greatest effect.

To this I would add something I mentioned in my last post—the fact that Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb,” predicted widespread starvation in the 70s and 80s. This was averted by the “Green Revolution,” which was nothing more than the massive application of petrochemicals to agriculture. This oil influx greatly increased food yields so mass starvation was averted. Unfortunately, since we’re now running out of those petrochemicals, things are going to start sliding in the other direction pretty fast. Which is to say, the crisis wasn’t averted at all. It was merely delayed a dew decades.