A powerful look at Earth's population crisis, written by award-winning children's author Anna Claybourne

There are over 8 billion human beings living on Earth. That's a LOT of people! And the world's population is still growing, which leads to a big question ... are there too many of us? The human population has been rising since ancient times, but it has zoomed up especially fast over the last 100 years or so. While humans have been on Earth, we've made huge changes to the planet. We've built cities and roads and taken over wild areas, affecting the other living things we share our world with. We've polluted our skies, land and seas and are fast using up Earth's precious natural resources. How can we lessen our impact on Earth, before it's too late?

Contents

A world full of people / The rise of humans / Population explosion / CASE STUDY: Crowded Tokyo / Taking over the world / Food and water / Population and health / Harming wildlife / CASE STUDY: Palm oil plantations / Country populations / Moving around / How many children? / CASE STUDY: Girls' education in Kenya / Population pyramids / Ageing populations / Falling populations / CASE STUDY: Plummeting population in Puerto Rico / Up or down? / What can you do? / Into the future

Titles in this series:

Plastic Planet / Hot Planet / Pandemic Planet / Recycled Planet / Sustainable Planet / Extinction Planet / Peaceful Planet? / Unequal Planet / Watery Planet