12:01AM
Which is it, Economist? 6B more people in 30 years or 2B in 40?
Sunday, March 6, 2011 at 12:01AM 
Saw this ad and it jumped out at me?
6 billion more people in 30 years!
Nobody is predicting that level of growth anymore. Virtually all the smart money says we're 6.7-8 now and we'll top out at roughly 9.2-3 around 2050, meaning we add 2.5B over 40 years.
Then I see the special report that the mag just puts out on ag: it says we're almost 7B and we're going to add 2b more by 2050.
That, my friends, is one helluva delta.
True numbers on urbanization, though, say we go from about 1/2 urban now to more like 70% by 2050. You can find all this on our "urbanization shift" page at Wikistrat. You run those numbers and you get roughly 3B new urbanites by 2050, or 75m a year added, on average, for 40 years.
