World Population and Consumption

It took almost all of human history – until the early 1800s – to reach a global population of 1 billion people on Earth, and today there are 6.5 billion of us! The population has grown more since 1950 than in the previous four million years! We are adding about 74 million people per year to the planet, and the United Nations predicts that we will reach approximately 9 billion people by mid-century.  

With just 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. consumes 25% of almost all global resources. Such a disproportionate "ecological footprint" means that a person born in the United States will have 280 times the environmental impact as a person born in Haiti.   

If the entire world consumed resources at the average consumption level of a citizen of the United Sates, we would need 4 Earths to support us all!   

Trees and Carbon

If every American family planted just one tree, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would be reduced by one billion pounds annually. This is almost 5% of the amount that human activity pumps into the atmosphere each year.

Planting trees remains one of the cheapest, most effective means of drawing excess CO2 from the atmosphere.

A single mature tree can absorb carbon dioxide at a rate of 48 lbs./year and release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support 2 human beings.  

Each person in the U.S. generates approximately 2.3 tons of CO2 each year. A healthy tree stores about 13 pounds of carbon annually -- or 2.6 tons per acre each year. An acre of trees absorbs enough CO2 over one year to equal the amount produced by driving a car 26,000 miles. An estimate of carbon emitted per vehicle mile is between 0.88 lb. CO2/mi. – 1.06 lb. CO2/mi. (Nowak, 1993). Thus, a car driven 26,000 miles will emit between 22,880 lbs CO2 and 27,647 lbs. CO2.


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