Photo courtesy of NPR.

Forget the boogeyman and things that go bump in the night- the scariest thing this Halloween may be the number 7 billion.

That’s how many people the UN estimates are alive on Earth today (give or take 56 million, of course).

The number has many scared the growing population will place a strain on already limited resources- ranging from expected ones, like water, oil, and natural gas to the less well- known but equally important ones, like phosphorus and rare earth elements.

Joel Cohen of Rockefeller University points to a more hopeful outlook, however,

“In fact, the world is physically capable of feeding, sheltering and enriching many more people in the short term…the world’s population is growing at 1.1 percent per year, half the peak rate in the 1960s.”

With population growth projected to hit 9.3 billion by 2050, it seems we need to make sure the newest members of the plethora of people on the planet have a healthy planet to live on.