It took 123 years to reach go from one to two billion, but it took only 12 years to go from five to six billion. Since 1950 the population growth rates of the less developed countries have risen very rapidly, and they are now much higher than those of the more developed countries . As a result, most population growth in the past 50 years has been in the poorer areas of the world. Today 98 percent of population growth occurs in the less developed countries, where the benefits of health care, education, family planning , and economic opportunities are least available. At first glance the effects of population growth on the environment seem obvious.
More people use more resources, damage more of the earth, and create more pollution.
As the population of a country increases, so does its consumption . Because of this, we might expect the poorer nations, which have the highest populations and the fastest rates of population growth, to cause the most damage to the environment. The truth is more complicated than that. The greatest danger to the environment comes not just from poor people in developing countries who damage their resources in order to find food and housing. An equally big danger comes from the richest people, who use the most resources and create the most pollution.