Curriculum Resource: Population Growth and Climate Change

I found another good resource related to the population growth topic I raised last week when our global population supposedly reached 7 billion people.  The website Population Action International has a lot of great information and resources on it, including an interactive chart where you can see where your birthday falls on the curve to reach 7 billion--and beyond!

But the most eye-opening section to me was a serious of maps that show the connection between population growth and climate change.   In short, it seems that the countries where population growth is the largest are also, in general, the countries who will be most hurt by global climate change, at least in terms of things like reduced agricultural productivity and water availability.  It makes sense when I saw the maps, but I hadn't thought of that before.  Check out this guided tour of the maps, and then you can also make your own maps or research a specific country.

These maps make it even more evident why we need to try to reduce rampant population growth before the full effects of global warming really hit us.  We may or may not be around to have to deal with all this, but our middle schoolers should be, so this is the kind of information about their future world they should know.