• 7 billion people tax the world's environment

    David Gray / Reuters

    A garbage collector walks atop a massive pile of garbage at the Bloemendhal dump in central Colombo, Sri Lanka, on April 23, 2009.

    Will the sheer scale of 7 billion people living on the planet doom human existence to extinction?

    Not likely, many scientists say, but they do worry about how many people a disturbed and soiled Earth will support.

    The United Nations Population Fund predicts not only that the planet’s population will reach 7 billion by Oct. 31, but another billion will be here by 2025, and the total will reach 10 billion before the end of the century.

    China Daily via Reuters

    A worker cleans away dead fish at a lake in Wuhan, central China's Hubei province, on July 11, 2007. More than 110,000 pounds of fish died due to pollution and hot weather, local media reported.

    Beawiharta Beawiharta / Reuters

    Deforestation is evident on Indonesia's Sumatra island on Aug. 5, 2010. Indonesia, like Brazil, is on the front line of efforts to curb deforestation, a major contributor to mankind's greenhouse gas emissions that scientists blame for heating up the planet.

    All those people will need water, food, clothing, shelter, energy – all of which take resources to create or distribute and which can foul the environment as they’re processed and used up.

    In 1798, when the world’s population was close to 1 billion, British-born economist Thomas Malthus wrote, "The power of population is so superior to the power of the Earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race."

    Malthus did not take into account the then-coming industrial age and people’s inventions and ingenuity that meant more efficient use of Earth’s resources. However, population growth could be catching up to problems it creates.

    Reinhard Krause / Reuters

    Cars jam a Beijing road on Jan. 15, 2008. More than 400,000 new cars, or more than 1,000 a day, hit the roads in China's capital in 2006, state media said.

    Asahi Shimbun / Reuters

    Medical staff use a Geiger counter to screen a woman for possible radiation exposure at a public welfare center in Hitachi City, Japan, on March 16, 2011. The woman tested negative for radiation exposure after she was evacuated from an area within 12.4 miles of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which leaked radiation when it was badly damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

    Modern scientists warn that the Earth’s climate is warming and access to clean water is dwindling. Oil spills contaminate beaches and oceans; poisons leach from dumped waste into soil and water; the burning of fossil fuels pumps more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than it can absorb.

    New energy sources will be needed as known sources of fossil fuels are depleted or remain locked away.

    Reuters

    A man works at the site of a rare earth metals mine at Nancheng county, China, on Oct. 20, 2010. China reportedly produced 118,900 metric tons of rare earth in 2010, well above the 89,200 metric ton official production quota. The production figure exceeded 96 percent of global output, The Wall Street Journal reported .

    Pawel Kopczynski / Reuters

    Steam emerges from the cooling towers of Vattenfall's Jaenschwalde brown coal power station near Cottbus, Germany, on Dec. 2, 2009.

    "Hunger and poverty are challenges we all face together - we must act now," said Pierre Ferrari, president of Heifer International, which provides cows, goats, water buffalo and other livestock to thousands of people in more than 50 countries. The charity focuses on helping the poor become self-sufficient and urges the people it helps to go on to train others.

    "Our global agricultural system can feed 7 billion people today," Ferrari said. "It is a matter of equity and distribution."

    "The real issue to be faced is the next 30 years when another 2 billion people will be with us," he said. "It is forecasted that the global food supply will need to double to meet the needs of the global population.  The small holder farmer (650 million of them) produces 70 percent of the world food today."

    Heifer is an example of a non-government organization that works to improve agricultural productivity.

    But will such efforts be enough?

    "The constraints of the biosphere are fixed," Harvard University sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson wrote in his 2002 book, "The Future of Life."

    As reported by Life’s Little Mysteries, Wilson predicted the Earth’s resources could be stretched to support a population of 10 billion, just about where UN population estimators say growth will level out by the end of the century.

    - msnbc.com editors Natalia Jimenez and Jim Gold, with wire service reports.

    See more posts and images related to the seven billion population milestone

    Michael B. Watkins/U.S. Navy via Reuters

    Oil is seen on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico in an aerial view of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill off the coast of Mobile, Alabama, on May 6, 2010.

  • Dave Marin / AP

    Harrison Wallace of Montgomery, Ala., plays his upright bass on the beach just after dawn in Destin, Fla., Monday, June 28.

    Hearing a picture

    Fellow photo editor Jim Seida often comments on pictures you can hear. I bet the scene captured in this frame sounded great.

    This picture also reminds me again of how what we've experienced in the past becomes part of what we see and appreciate in pictures. This picture jumped out at me because I once stumbled upon a cello being played in a big archway of a centuries-old courtyard. The mellow sound of the cello was perfect for the time of day, when a muted, pastel sunset was lighting up the old stones. I appreciated the moment of random beauty coming together. I wonder if some beach walkers encountered this bass player and thought the same thing?

  • Daniel Beltra / Greenpeace via EPA

    A Greenpeace handout photo shows adult brown pelicans waiting in a holding pen to be cleaned by volunteers at the Fort Jackson International Bird Rescue Research Center in Buras, Louisiana, USA, 21 June 2010. Members of the Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research team work to clean birds covered in oil from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead.

    Oiled brown pelicans undergo rehab

    I hope these pelicans fully recover. We've previously discussed the challenges of picture editing for the Gulf Oil Spill story here, and have also specifically addressed here how we strive for transparency when publishing handout pictures like this one, from Greenpeace.

  • Petty Officer 3rd Class John Walker / US Coast Guard via Reuters

    One of two, one-ton masses of tarball material, that was recovered June 11, 2010, south of Perdido Pass, Florida, is seen on the deck of the liftboat Sailfish, a Vessel of Opportunity working in the largest oil spill response in U.S. history, June 11, 2010. U.S. President Barack Obama and top BP executives are set for a showdown over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill this week, as the likely damages bill piles more pressure on the oil giant's shares. Picture taken June 11, 2010.

    One-ton "mass of tarball material" recovered from Gulf

    Updated at 2:18 p.m. ET: Lisa Novak, a civilian employee of the Coast Guard, returned our call to clarify that the one ton of "tarball material" was not, in fact, "found" as the first version of this post's headline said. Instead, it is an aggregation of material collected from the Gulf of Mexico by Vessels of Opportunity, private boats contracted by BP to assist in the cleanup effort. A press release from the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command, "Innovation Improves Tar Ball Removal Capability," describes the process:

    "The crew of one of the thousands of Vessels of Opportunity (VOO) working in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill recently recovered approximately two tons of tarball material in the Gulf of Mexico.

    The recovery was the result of the kind of creative thought and innovation at work among the more than 27,000 people working around the clock in the Gulf of Mexico in the largest oil spill response in U.S. history.

    Designed by Gerry Matherne, a BP contractor and nearshore task force leader, the idea is simple. A shrimp boat with outriggers on each side drags mesh oil-collection bags made of perforated webbing near the ocean surface. As the boat trawls to collect oil patches, the bags, attached to an aluminum frame, collect oil. When filled, the bags are disconnected from the frame by crew on support vessels, and then towed to a lift barge for hoisting into a collection barge."

    Updated at 1:01 p.m. ET: While we have calls out to the Coast Guard, there is still some uncertainty about exactly how this was recovered. It appears it might have been "collected" by the Sailfish rather than "found," given information about the Vessel of Opportunity program on the Web. Again, we'll update you here as we learn more.

    Original post: The caption doesn't directly say this tarball consists of oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, so we have called and emailed the Coast Guard to see what else they can tell us. They have promised to update us. When they do, we'll update you here.