Although the rumor was mathematically incorrect, it expressed a valid concern. That would be more than the total of all past human births. World population has not doubled eight times. This reduced number of doublings shows how important it was to point out, as Malthus did, factors that restrain population increase. Despite the Malthusian checks on population growth, the world is today burdened with a prodigiously huge human load.
Culture includes a population's technology and people's ways of organizing themselves.
Over all previous time, calculated estimates show that actually up to 20 times that many people were born and have died. Per capita energy use can serve as a reasonable index of the extent to which we are colossal. Depending on just what threshold we require for applying the label, it could well be true that there are more members of Homo colossus living than dead, even if that is not so for non-colossal Homo sapiens. But the Commission seemed oblivious to the fact this would require several additional Earths to provide the needed resources and absorb the end-products of so much Homo colossus metabolism. That is the issue modern Malthusians are striving to bring to public attention.