Do Now: Movie Clip While watching the clip answer the following; 1) How long did it take for the human population to reach 2 billion? 2) How long did the average person live in 1960: 2010: 3) What is a megacity? How many are there now?

Turn and Talk Why do you think human population has risen so quickly and what impact has this increase had on the environment?

Aim: How Many People Can the Earth Support?

Crowded Street in China Figure 6.1: Hundreds of people crowd a street in China. Almost one of every five persons on the planet lives in China, and the country’s resource use per person is projected to grow rapidly as China becomes more modernized and wealthy. Fig. 6-1, p. 125

Reasons for human population increase: Movement into new habitats and climate zones Modern agriculture methods Control of infectious diseases through Sanitation systems Antibiotics Vaccines Health care Most population growth over last 100 years due to drop in death rates

Human Population Growth Is Unevenly Distributed Population growth in developing countries is increasing 9 times faster than developed countries

Read A Loud How long can the human population keep growing?

Figure 6.B: This list describes eight major ways in which we humans have altered natural systems to meet our growing population’s resource needs and wants (Concept 6-1). See an animation based on this figure at CengageNOW. Questions: Which three of these impacts do you believe have been the most harmful? Explain. How does your lifestyle contribute directly or indirectly to each of these harmful impacts? Fig. 6-B, p. 129

Pause…Think…Write How close do you think we are to the environmental limits of human population growth: pretty close, moderately close, or far away? Explain using evidence from the text support your answer.

Take A Stand Because our population will soon be at seven billion people and continues to grow, we need to expand land area available for living and growing food by cutting down the rain forest.

Take A Stand With seven billion people commuting from one place to another, drilling for more oil is necessary to fuel more cars.

Take A Stand In order to feed our population, we must use pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and genetically modified crops to increase farm yields.

Take A Stand Governments in countries with fast-growing populations should make laws to limit the number of children that couples can have.

Take A Stand With seven billion people on the planet, water pollution is inevitable and we should not waste money trying to prevent it.

Take A Stand If China and India can each take care of over a billion people on relatively the same size land as the U.S., then the U.S. should accept immigrants until it reaches a billion people as well.

Summary: Can Earth support a population of 9 billion in the near future. Explain using evidence from the text support your answer.