Tuesday Video II: Do you know how many people are in the world today?

Does the average American really know what the global population is? Watch this telling video:

How Many People Are In the World Today? from Population Action International on Vimeo .

As Population Action International explains to the interviewees in this clip, the world population will hit 7 billion this fall. Well, the actual prediction is on Oct. 31 which is spooky scary.

Lisa Hyams at Grist writes : “Many demographers have been projecting that human numbers will stabilize at about 9 billion in 2050, but the U.N.’s new, more realistic analysis says the population could in fact keep on growing and hit 10.1 billion by 2100 . That’s in part because there are still 215 million women around the world who want to avoid or delay pregnancy but don’t have good access to effective birth control, and the U.N. seems to have grown more pessimistic about remedying that situation any time soon.”

Even though these folks were off in the exact number, I was shocked that their take on the impacts of the population boom were spot on.

Hyams continues: While milestones like 7 billion focus the mind, big numbers don’t begin to tell the whole story. When women in developing countries aren’t able to limit the size of their families, they have worse prospects for climbing out of poverty and their local environments suffer (water shortages, degraded land, depleted wildlife, etc.). But it’s those of us wealthy Westerners who are causing environmental problems on a global scale (read: climate change) and who can make the most difference by having fewer (or no) kids. One woman in this video, at 1:25, is responding in the GINK fashion: When asked how the rising population will affect her, she says, “I feel like I actually don’t want to have children because of that issue.”

Having kids is your personal choice but it’s time to have an open and honest discussion about our global population: When we reach nine billion, we’ll be adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. Those billions will need food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate.