22nd century voices: 350+ million already today, half a billion by 2017, a billion by 2023, two billion by 2025...

Is it time to start an initiative to gather 22nd century voices? They are already more than 250 million alive today that still will be alive 2100... I put a counter on this webpage, www.22nd-century-voices.net, and hope to take this further soon. The total failure in Rio to deliver anything substantial is just the latest example of the lack of capacity for long-term thinking/action demonstrated by governments today. Unfortunately companies are, in most cases, even more shortsighted and NGOs struggle to present anything that is relevant for a 22nd century agenda. In many areas NGOs (and sustainability consultants) are actually the most shortsighted, with simplistic fundraising/labeling and attempts to offset/price nature/people without any consideration/assessment of the long-term consequences.

In order to encourage a slightly longer perspective I have begun to set up an initiative to encourage the implementation of structures that ensure that all major decisions are screened for their 22nd century impact.

As part of the preparations for this initiative I wanted to create a count-up timer that shows how many people that are alive today that still will be alive in 2100.

I was surprised when I saw that already more than 300 million people (children of course) that are alive today will still be alive in 2100. This will increase to half a billion by 2017, then exploding to a billion by 2023 and two billion by 2025 , i.e of all the people living 2017 half a billion will still be alive 2100, of all the people living in 2023 a billion will still be alive in 2100, of all the people living in 2025 two billion will still be alive in 2100. So this might be the fastest growing movement ever...

This is a group that no one listen to, but the fact that so many will still be alive in 2100 is something that makes the way politicians and business leaders behave even more unacceptable.

Below is a graph and I also pasted the actual numbers. The data is the medium scenario from the UN World Population Prospects, the 2010 Revision (Updated: 28 June 2011). Available here.

Obviously these numbers are very rough estimations and if science moves ahead at the current speed we could see a lot more people living a lot longer, increasing the numbers. On the other hand if nothing is done to curb the unsustainable trends today the risk for a collapse could reduce the number significantly, there are even a risk that humanity will not make it to 2100 if we do not address the major challenges today.

Below is the data (will update in better format when I have time, but for the sake of transparency): Birth date Before 2000 2000-2005 2005-2010 2010-2015 2015-2020 2020-2025 2025-2030 2030-2035 2035-2040 2040-2045 2045-2050 2050-2055 2055-2060 2060-2065 2065-2070 2070-2075 2075-2080 2080-2085 2085-2090 2090-2095 2095-2100 Age of those alive in 2100 100+ 95-99 90-94 85-89 80-84 75-79 70-74 65-69 60-64 55-59 50-54 45-49 40-44 35-39 30-34 25-29 20-24 15-19 10-14 5-9 0-4 Alive in each age group 17 795 53 688 132 521 240 653 347 676 433 268 495 013 539 358 571 055 591 456 602 682 607 791 610 462 612 791 614 667 615 142 613 758 610 966 607 573 604 385 602 226 Accumulated number of people 17 795 71 484 204 004 444 658 792 333 2 017 934 2 512 947 3 052 305 3 623 360 4 214 816 4 817 498 5 425 289 6 035 751 6 648 542 7 263 209 7 878 351 8 492 108 9 103 075 9 710 648 10 315 033 10 917 259