Are we facing population overload?

With seven billion humans living on Earth and rising, Gaia Vince asks whether there is a limit to how many people can be sustained on a finite planet. Some 10,000 years ago, at the beginning of the Holocene geological age, there were only around five million of us on the planet. Although humans had a significant impact on the natural world – by using fires to clear forestry or hunting large mammals to extinction – their effects were localised. Boy, have things changed. In 1900, there were 1.6 billion of us; by 2000 the global population had shot up to 6.1 billion. Last year, we passed the seven billion mark, and best estimates have us reaching the nine billion mark before 2050. See full Article.