Earth’s Future, Now With 8 Billion Humans

Humanity has long been chasing that 8 billion number for our global population. As of November 2022, we have surpassed it with only increasing trends in sight. With such a large international population and growing numbers, what kind of new stressors will be placed on the planet? 

Global warming is already a direct indicator of influence on the planet. Humans have permanently changed how we interact with Earth's natural resources, but now it's clear that the reliance on those resources will be put to the utmost test. Populations will put immense pressure on nature, forcing humans to compete with other wildlife for water, food, and materials.

The problem not only arises with the total size of the global population but also with the rapid timeline to the astronomical number. Global population sizes previously always remained below 1 billion people on the planet at any given time until the late 18th century during the time of Napoleon. Rapid growth began to influence global numbers after the start of the Second World War when more than 1 billion people were added to the global population every 12 to 15 years. Key events spurred rapid growth over the last 300 years, including the industrial revolution, medical discoveries, technology, and global commerce trade. Currently, the human population is more than double what it was in 1970, doubling in just over 50 years.

Population analyses over the last few decades also draw attention to the uneven growth experienced worldwide. China and the USA are two places where population growth has been slowly leveling. At the same time, low-income regions like Sub-Saharan Africa and India are responsible for approximately 70 percent of the world’s population increases. There are difficulties to be faced in both scenarios because with leveling population growth, fewer individuals will support the enormous economies, and exponential growth in developing countries will continue to exacerbate already strained systems. The other caveat to increased global numbers is its likelihood to influence mass migrations and conflicts and further jeopardize at-risk environments. 

Experts are forecasting slower growth trends in the future, even though the population trends have been increasing exponentially. Their conclusions draw from increased knowledge and dispersal of contraceptives and safe sex to lower-income countries. Other factors influencing level growth trends include increased women’s rights worldwide, younger generations waiting to have families, and economic pressures driving living rates through the roof for most high-income countries. These forecasts are good news for slowing global population growth. Still, the world will likely not observe decreases until the latter half of this century, as fertility rates and population deaths will be important contributors to change. 
The urgency to allocate new green energy resources before it is too late is becoming increasingly evident. Experts agree that installing sustainable energy resources for low-income countries will greatly decrease their carbon emissions by supporting increasing population demands. Other changes must also be made in high-income countries responsible for more than double the carbon emissions released by the poorest half of the world.

EPA Designates Forever Chemicals as Hazardous Substances

Synthetic human-made chemicals called PFAS have been rapidly infiltrating many of the world’s vital water supplies, damaging Earth’s environment in the process. These per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are incredibly difficult to break down, often lasting for thousands of years, even contaminating rainfall in certain regions. With increasing knowledge over the last few decades, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has decided to submit an official proposal to classify many of these chemicals as hazardous substances, influencing many additional federal protocols associated with their use and disposal. The decision also comes as new research has been exploring better ways for PFAS management and disposal. 

Many PFAS are common household products like cooking pans, oils, cleaning supplies, and abrasives. PFAS chemicals often produce coatings and products that can repel water, oil, heat, and grease. The chemicals are dangerous because they break down slowly and have been observed leaching into water and soil, leaving trace amounts detectable in the blood of humans and animals. 

Recent studies about the effects of exposure to PFAS suggest earlier assumptions were incredibly limited concerning the risks and knowledge of dangerous exposure levels. Prolonged exposure can result in reproductive complications, heart issues, respiratory disease, cancer, and immunosuppressant responses in communities. PFAS causes various complications as they primarily settle in the body’s blood, kidneys, and liver. These chemicals have been in the commercial market since the 1940s, and previous studies suggest they are present in more than 98 percent of the US population. 

The EPA’s submitted proposal will list at least two of these harmful PFAS as hazardous substances, encouraging effective waste management at facilities that handle these chemicals, with much more likely to be added later. The Federal Drug Administration and many chemical manufacturers have already voluntarily phased out the use of these chemicals, especially in commodities that deal directly with food products. However, the unfortunate reality still suggests more than 70 percent of imported products still contain remnants of older PFAS. Since these chemicals are so slow to break down, they easily contaminate products transported into air, dust, food, ground soil, and water.  

The EPA’s decision to begin managing PFAS use and disposal has had to navigate complicated relationships with the prominent chemical industry leaders, but at the neglect of community and environmental health. Critics of the EPA’s new proposal claim the action is a little too late, without any real repercussions or plans to mitigate the damages from the prolonged incorporation of these harmful chemicals in American communities. The other misfall of the EPA’s new proposal is that it fails to address any future solutions, only acknowledging current problems and only a few harmful PFAS. 

There is little acknowledgment in the proposal to develop plans for future mitigation as these hazardous chemicals continue to leach into the environment and are already waning vital resources of fresh water. Although the proposal may lack future mitigation efforts, chemical scientists have been researching how to dispose of these chemicals effectively, and there may still be some good news. 

Scientists have discovered that effective use of heat in contaminated water can initiate a chemical reaction to break down the strong PFAS bonds, removing them from the water without any remaining byproducts. This new information means water processing plants can effectively remove the harmful PFAS from water without releasing any byproducts into the environment, gradually diminishing their communal effects globally.

New Environmental Frontiers in China’s First Vertical Home

Global populations have risen exponentially over the last two centuries, with numbers expected to increase past 9.8 billion in 2050 and more than 11 billion by 2100! The enormous global population has taken significant tolls on the Earth and its vital resources, expediting global warming and environmental stress. One of the most significant contributors to global warming is the occupied space and pollution generated by megacities dispersed worldwide in countries like China, India, USA, and more. Scientists have been working to develop strategies to better support growing urban populations, preventing further degradation of the environment. Vertical cities are a solution to those issues, and environmental sectors have been discussing their implementation for a long time. 

Vertical cities are a specific and purposeful redesign of how humans have lived throughout history. Instead of traditional outward expansion of cities by connecting additional infrastructure, these cities utilize the space for development above existing frameworks. Vertical cities are key to managing overpopulation and habitat degradation by confining large populations into sustainable units. By designing vertical developments, skyward cities will be able to preserve natural resources outside the city, protect critical wildlife habitats, and contribute to global environmental status. An ideal vertical city would allow people to live, work, go to school, recycle waste, and produce their food inside a single building.

Let us break down the pros and cons of designing, implementing, and operating one of these massive infrastructure projects because there are reasons why they are not popping up in every major city. The first notable benefit of establishing vertical cities is reducing natural resource acquisition based on land space and urban development. These cities can be installed within current urban boundaries and move many businesses and residential areas off the ground. Unfortunately, because these cities do not exist yet, and we do not have any current data to assess their success, designs receive large amounts of skepticism from funders.

Vertical cities are meant to host hundreds if not thousands of people, so establishing the necessary resources is vital to the building’s survival. These buildings need to be explicitly designed to deal with environmental hazards, evacuation procedures, and plans for any emergency. The biggest hurdle facing these cities is funding because there is no evidence to outweigh their costs with benefits, so installing the first of its kind in China is vital to supply research necessary for future vertical developments. 

China’s staggering 1.4 billion people have put immense stress on the country's space and resources. Most Chinese live and work inside urban developments that significantly lack the space necessary to accommodate large daily influxes of people adequately. That is why China is the first home to one of these vertical cities, designed to support 500 residents and more than 5,000 trees and shrubs on its various levels. This initial development is not meant to be an ideal vertical city but a trial into the environmental benefits of increasing urban greenery and attempting to reduce the spread of people throughout the city. 

The plants were chosen to contribute the most benefits to the region by introducing native, non-invasive species aiding atmospheric recycling of greenhouse gasses. The design is estimated to absorb more than 20 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and emit more than 10 tons of oxygen. These buildings are of paramount importance because their location inside urban settings will directly contribute to the city’s clean air. Either way, the first test of this new way of living will indicate if they are a viable and profitable solution to many of the climate changes Earth is currently facing. If successful, this type of architecture can be expected to show up in every major city around the world and reinvent how we design urban areas.