Seven billion

From the NPR story - Visualizing How A Population Grows To 7 Billion. I'm always interested in interesting visualizations. I can't decide if I like this or not. It is certainly quite striking but it raises some questions - what is the size of the glass? Is that a carrying capacity of the region - unlikely since the North America glass is so empty, or is it some constant number - I suppose it would have to be about 1.5 billion given the level in the India and China glasses. That makes sense given that the North American glass looks about a quarter full but it's a little misleading since every 'person' in that North America glass is using an order of magnitude more resources than every person in the India glass. Or maybe the point is to make us think about these things. Well played NPR, well played.