World in the Balance examines the repercussions of global population growth and how that growth is spread around the world. What does it mean for our future?

It took all of human history until the year 1804 for our population to reach its first billion. Now a billion new people are added every dozen years. In the industrialized world—Japan, Europe, and the United States—birthrates are falling steeply while the senior citizen population is booming. In this two-hour Earth Day special, NOVA explores these and other trends in the relationship between people and the planet.

Media, Aging, Conservation, Media