Happy #7,000,000,000!

Happy birthday to the 7 billionth person walking Planet Earth.

With over half the world living in poverty, this really isn't a good thing. Compounding this problem is that obviously, population growth tends to be exponential.

It took over 100 years to reach 1 billion. It took only 12 to go from 6 to 7 billion.

Overpopulation is a huge drain on already scarce resources. So how do we curb this without implementing dangerously invasive laws like China's "one child policy?"

With ease. With education. Much of the population surge happens overseas where access to birth control (and knowledge of such things) is severely limited. "The UN estimates that there are 215 million women in the developing world who want to avoid a pregnancy, but who are not using a modern method of birth control" (CS Monitor). Two Hundred Fiften MILLION women. If we can help these women prevent unwanted pregnancy, perhaps we can stave off the 9 million mark (projected 2050 total - and that number keeps growing). Africa alone is expected to triple their population over the next century.

And stopping this excessive growth is as easy as teaching poorer villages about birth control methods, and providing access to these methods. Let's be honest here, even America, and its high teen pregnancy rate could do with more access to this knowledge and material.

It also wouldn't hurt if women were valued as daughters in some countries. Families with a first born daughter are more likely to have more children so as to breed a son (they also are more likely to abort any future possible daughters but that's irrelevant to population control).

Even with our current economic crisis, curbing this population surge needs to be more of a priority. More people drains the planet, including economically.

Plus, otherwise, we're looking at having to invade another planet (quite literally Earth cannot withstand too many billion people), and that will certainly be more costly than handing out a few condoms here or there.

So Happy Birthday to baby number 7 Billion. Hopefully you'll be the last billion milestone.