World population 1960: about 3 billion
Population 2009: about 6.5 billion
Population 2025: about 8.5 billion
Population 2050: about 11.5 billion
And, oh yes, you know those things called the Colorado River and Rio Grande that you learned about in grade school? Those big wandering blue lines that reached from the mountains to the sea on a map of the U.S.? Well, they don’t reach the sea anymore! We drain them off for agriculture, drinking water, etc. before they get there. (Factoid courtesy of The Economist, April 11, 2009). For river aficionados: the same goes for the Indus River in India, Murray-Darling in Australia, and the Yellow River in China.
