Opinion: Boulder’s growth – by the numbers
Given the push for more development dominating the Opinion Page lately, I thought Daily Camera readers might find it useful if I laid out some of the numbers related to Boulder’s growth, since they provide a quantitative basis for evaluation. But these numbers also need to be embedded in a long-term historical perspective, especially in this age of rapid climate change, with its serious questions about the sustainability of human life at our current population level. As I said in my March 16, 2021 column about humans being the most invasive species , it’s worth looking at a graph of human population over the millennia ( https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth ). Human population grew very slowly from 10,000 BCE until 0 BCE, averaging around 0.04% per year. It then averaged around 0.09% per year until 1800. Since then, we humans have been growing at an average of almost 1% per year, increasing by around eight times to almost 8 billion humans on the planet. So it’s no s...