Big Cities Are Starting to Help the Environment

Of the world’s 7 billion-plus people, more than half live in cities. Ninety percent of these cities are in coastal areas, threatened by climate-induced sea-level rise and powerful storms. The United Nations’ latest projections put the world’s population at 10.9 billion by 2100, an increase of more than 3 billion people over current levels. This is a staggering increase, but it’s almost half a billion smaller than the UN’s projection just two years earlier, in 2017. This trend of shrinking forecasts is encouraging.

As early as 2050, per the UN’s estimates, 70 percent of people will live in cities. The thought of producing food, providing fresh water, and generating energy for this additional 40 percent growth is daunting. The planet is already facing a mass biodiversity extinction crisis. How can it possibly be reversed when we humans, the cause of this crisis, are increasing by billions? For there to be any hope, we are going to have to do a lot more with a lot less in the coming years.