When I was born, there were three billion people on the planet.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When I was born, the world's population was 3.5 billion. There are now 6.8 billion people on the planet. By 2050, that's expected to rise to 9.4 billion. What's more, the Earth's resources aren't growing; they're decreasing - and rapidly.
There is a statistic I heard a number of years ago: if you know somebody who is 85 years old, that person was born into a world that had a third as many people as the world does today. The population has tripled in the past 85 years.
Data from orbiting telescopes like NASA's Kepler Mission hint that the tally of habitable planets in our galaxy is many billion. If E.T.'s not out there, then Earth is more than merely special - it's some sort of miracle.
As a kid at the World's Fair in 1965, I missed seeing the big global population clock roll over from 2,999,999,999 to 3 billion - I was really disappointed.
We have three billion people, half the world's population today, living on less than two dollars a day.
Earth was not built for six billion people all running around and being passionate about things. The world was built for about two million people foraging for roots and grubs.
I was born on January 8, 1942, exactly three hundred years after the death of Galileo. I estimate, however, that about two hundred thousand other babies were also born that day. I don't know whether any of them was later interested in astronomy.
In the big experiments, Atlas and CMS, we have something like 3,000 scientists each, and over 60 nationalities.
When I arrived on the planet, there were only two billion. Wildlife was more abundant, we were less so; now the situation is reversed.
I never knew the word 'billion' when I was a kid.