Federico Reyes Heroles
Carl Sagan had a brilliant and visionary mind. Humanity owes him a great deal. He is remembered as the great popularizer of astronomy and astrophysical phenomena, the author of the Cosmos series, which reached around 500 million human beings. Sagan was a man of action. He suggested sending messages of peace in space probes. He was among the first to record and warn about the greenhouse effect on a planetary scale. He is the one who suggested that Voyager 1 take the famous photo that gave rise to the Pale Blue Dot. Of Jewish-Ukrainian origin, raised in Brooklyn, whose father was a textile worker, Sagan rose to the top.
In Billions, another delightful, highly relevant book, Sagan confronted the human need to deal with enormous numbers. Interplanetary distances that did not fit into billions of kilometers had to be translated into light years. Nanotechnology also forces us to incursions into the many zeros after a dot. We live among large numbers.
In December 2022, the eight billionth citizen was symbolically welcomed. By 2024, 200 million more should be added. Population trends are stable. Let’s look at the new world in which Mexico is inserted. As predicted, 60% of the world’s population lives in Asia. The visionaries -such as Julio Millán and the University of Colima- who warned decades ago about the need for Mexico to read the commercial potential of that region were right. The next block is Africa (15 percent). In the 1970s, Africa threatened to displace everyone because of its high population growth rates. It didn’t. Migrations and high mortality rates played a role.
Below Africa – with 11 percent – is Europe. No surprises. Several countries lowered their Total Fertility Rate (TFR) below replacement level, 2.1 children per woman of childbearing age. Europe without migrants is doomed to shrink, and its aging process is now unstoppable. Pension systems and the productive apparatus without young arms are in danger. Slightly behind is South America, which has 9 percent. Hence, the trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur is relevant. The complementary nature of the regions is exciting. Finally comes North America, which has only 5 percent of the population. We are small, and no matter how much Mr. Trump boasts, the United States needs migrants. That country has long been below replacement (1.9), including migrants and their families with high growth. In 2022, the World Bank recorded a TFR of 1.8 for Mexico. Today, we could be around 1.75. It should be noted that we ate the demographic bonus without creating a solid pension system.
The 8.201 billion citizen, wherever he or she may be, will also bring about a review of who we are in linguistic terms. Sixty-two percent of the world’s population speaks a native language of their own. There are seven thousand languages – a large majority by far! Thus, 43% of the world’s population is bilingual and 17% multilingual. Chinese is the most spoken language, with 12 percent. What is fantastic is the number of Chinese who have learned English: 350 million and growing. Soon, there will be more English speakers in China than in the rest of the world. Very complex writing and language led that country to another route: to go to the world …learning English. Watch out, Mexico. The number of Chinese students in U.S. universities is staggering. After that, 62% of great diversity comes from two tied languages, English and …Spanish. A great heritage that we owe to Spain. Science imposes canons. Arabic, Hindi, Bengali, and Portuguese, 3 percent. Russian and Japanese, 2 percent. French, languishing.
Forty-nine percent still live in the countryside, but not necessarily from agriculture. Fifty-one percent are already urban, and twenty-three percent have nowhere to live.
2025. The world population will stabilize at 10.3 billion. Sustainability is the great challenge.
Welcome! to 8.2 billion + 1, if only for reflection.
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