Size matters: Earth now 7 billion strong

Globes
We've got just one Earth to share among the 7 billion of us.
(Flickr photo cc by Greg Robbins)

The same week the church celebrates all who have died in the history of the world, the entire globe reached a major milestone: surpassing a population of 7 billion. I remember being in elementary school and marveling at the thought that there were 5 billion of us on this big old blue and green marble floating around in space. To think that we’ve increased our size by 2 billion boggles my mind even more.

Population is a tricky topic for the church. There are obvious problems with population growth, but today the Vatican reported that the concern should not be how to quell growth, rather how to “find ways to ensure the continued growth can benefit all humanity.”

With an increasingly smaller percentage of the population hoarding the majority of the words financial and natural resources combined by this enormous growth, perhaps the recent document from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace on the world economy should maybe be taken more seriously by all sides. We have to share this planet, after all, no matter how many of us there are. Critics claim class warfare. I say that class warfare has already been waged and it's the poor who are losing.

About the author

Meghan Murphy-Gill

Meghan Murphy-Gill is a writer living in Chicago. Read more from her at meghanmurphygill.com.