A growing, more affluent¹ population competing for ever scarcer resources could make for an "unrecognizable" world by 2050, researchers warned at a major US science conference.

研究人员在一个大型美国科学会议上警告说，随着世界人口的不断增多，物质生活的不断富足，人们对匮乏资源的争夺可能会导致2050年的地球变得面目全非。

The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, "with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and South Asia," said John Bongaarts of the non-profit Population Council.

联合国已经预测，全球人口今年将会达到70亿，到 2050年更将能达到90亿。非营利性组织人口理事会的约翰·邦戈兹说大多数的人口增长都发生在贫穷地区，尤其是非洲和南亚地区的国家。"

To feed all those mouths, "we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000," said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement² of Science (AAAS). "By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognizable" if current trends continue, Clay said.

在美国科学增进会的年度会议上，世界野生生物基金会的詹森·克莱发言称，要养活这些人，我们需要在未来40年内，生产出过去8000年年产出粮食的总和。克莱说，如果一切还都按目前的趋势演化下去，那么到2050年我们的世界将不再是那个令人熟知的星球。

The swelling³ population will exacerbate⁴ problems, such as resource depletion⁵, said John Casterline, director of the Initiative in Population Research at Ohio State University. But incomes are also expected to rise over the next 40 years -tripling globally and quintupling in developing nations -and add more strain to global food supplies.

俄亥俄州州立大学的人口研究项目主任约翰·卡斯特林说，人口激增将会加剧资源损耗等一系列问题。不过，在接下来的40年中，人们的收入也会增长——全球人口平均收入会是现在的3倍，而发展中国家收入则会达到现在的5倍-一这会给全球食物的供应增加压力。

People tend to move up the food chain as their incomes rise, consuming more meat than they might have when they made less money, the experts said. It takes around seven pounds (3.4 kilograms) of grain to produce a pound of meat, and around three to four pounds of grain to produce a pound of cheese or eggs, experts said.

专家们说，随着收入的增长，人们会把目光转向食物链上层的东西，继而就会消耗比他们赚钱少的时候更多的肉类。专家们表示，生产1磅肉需要约7磅(合3.4千克)谷物，生产1磅奶酶或者鸡蛋需要3到4磅谷物。

"More people, more money, more consumption, but the same planet," Clay said , urging scientists and governments to start making changes now to how food is produced. Population experts, meanwhile, called for more funding for family planning programs to help control the growth in the number of humans, especially in developing nations.

克莱说我们会有更多的人口，更多的钱，更多的消耗，但是我们的地球就只有那么大。"克莱强烈建议所有的科学家和政府，现在应该尽快开始研究转变生产食物的方法。同时，人口专家们也呼吁为计划生青项目提供更多的资金，以便控制人口数量——尤其是发展中国家人口数量的增长。

"For 20 years, there's been very little investment in family planning, but there's a return of interest now, partly because of the environmental factors like global warming and food prices... said Bongaarts. "We want to minimize population growth, and the only viable⁶ way to do that is through more effective family planning," said Casterline.

邦戈兹说:"20年来，尽管我们对生育控制的投资少之又少，但现在我们还是收到了一些投资回报。虽然这种回报有一部分是由于全球变暖和食物价格飞涨等环境因素促成的。"他还说想要最大限度地减少人口增长，唯一可行的方法就是借助更有效的计划生育项目。"