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Population

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Link: http://www.abc.net.au/btn/story/s3354554.htm

Last week we reached a significant point when the number of people on the planet reached 7 billion. It's a big number and it's going to get bigger still. Matt finds out what it could mean for you.
CLOSE TRANSCRIPT
KID 1: Seven billion.
KID 2: Seven billion.
KID 3: Seven billion.
KID 4: Seven billion.
KID 5: Seven billion people.
That's how many of us are living on this planet. If we were to all link hands we could wrap around the world 175 times. We could even reach to the moon and back eighteen times. The number of people on our planet is increasing all the time.
MATTHEW HOLBROOK, REPORTER: Imagine this grain of rice is one new person added to the planet. And each day our world's population grows by this much. That's 200,000 extra people in a single day. It's a huge number, but it's only in recent history that our population's really taken off.
At first, the world grew really slowly. Scientists reckon it took tens of thousands of years to reach the million mark. Over time, things started to speed up. So in the past few years you can see there's been huge growth in a short space of time. That growth is likely to continue towards ten billion by the end of the century.
So why is our population getting so high? Well, we have better healthcare and hygiene now than in the past. We've learnt to deal with some dangerous diseases, and more of us are living longer.
Australia is growing, too. In the last 50 years our population has more than doubled to twenty two million people. So what's it likely to mean to you if our population keeps getting a lot bigger? By 2050, our population is expected to grow to thirty six million people.
REPORTER: It might sound like a tight squeeze and you could imagine us being crammed together like sardines in a can. But in a country as big as Australia, space isn't going to be the biggest issue. There are other things we could run out of first.
The big issues are food and water, and whether there will be enough for everyone. There are already a lot of people in the world who don't have the basic necessities. And as the world gets bigger, problems like drought and famine could become much worse. Poorer countries are likely to be the most affected, but we're not immune here in Australia. We live on the world's driest inhabited continent, where drought is a problem. So it's likely that water restrictions will continue to be a big issue for a country like Australia.
So will we get to a point where our planet just can't cope with more people? Well, scientists say we have to be smarter about how we use our resources. And we have to look after the environment, because it gives us everything from food to the air we breathe.
While the earth's population is growing, some experts reckon that it will eventually stop. In the meantime, no-one's really sure just how big our population will get. But for now, it does mean we'll all have to get used to sharing a bit more of our planet.

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