Seven Billion People

[liveonearth]

We're slated to hit 7,000,000,000 in 2012.
We hit 6 billion in 1999.
Thirteen years to add a billion.
We hit 1 billion in 1800.
In 1930, 130 years later, we made 2 billion.
(data from the AP)
So between 1930 and 1999 we added 4 billion in 69 years.

Comments

not Bertrand Russell

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

It was George Carlin (how on earth did I swap those two?).
"Scratch any cynic, and you'll find a disappointed idealist."

Re: not Bertrand Russell

[gavin6942.livejournal.com]

It's not Carlin, either... he was quoting someone else at the time.

Re: not Bertrand Russell

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

Any notion who it might have been?

Re: not Bertrand Russell

[gavin6942.livejournal.com]

Sadly, no. But he called it "an old adage", and I've seen it reproduced elsewhere... so I have to suspect he wasn't the first.

Re: not Bertrand Russell

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

The way I figure it, if you believe and propagate an "old adage", it becomes yours. You can find a biblical parallel for much of the wisdom that is passed down by sayings in our culture, but that doesn't mean that anyone who discovers that wisdom got it from the bible....or that the writers of the bible were the first to discover the wisdom that they wrote.....wisdom gets rediscovered many times, and explained in many ways.....just as musical themes tend to repeat....

Re: not Bertrand Russell

[gavin6942.livejournal.com]

I suppose.

I need to find myself an old adage to appropriate.

Re: not Bertrand Russell

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

Have you read much Nietzsche?

Re: not Bertrand Russell

[gavin6942.livejournal.com]

Of course. Nietzsche and Russell were the two I read in high school. I don't think there's a book N wrote that I don't have, including his unpublished notebooks and numerous books about him.

He's not particularly mature, however.