After a particularly harsh break-up, a friend of mine once consoled another by saying, "don't worry, there are another 6 billion people out there to meet."

By the end of this month, he may have to revise his clichéd consolation: the UN Population Fund is claiming that the world population will surpass 7 billion on October 31 of this year.

Being aware that there were barely a billion people on Earth just two hundred years ago, the recent population explosion is a cause for some concern. With poverty rates across the world very high, and access to food and water being constrained in lots of areas, does the world have enough resources to sustain this rapid growth in the number of people that depend on it to survive?

Probably not. Scientists have been warning about the dangers of population growth for decades, and their concerns have only amplified in the past 15 years, during which we've added another billion people to the planet.

Lots of people are calling for population control, but before we take any drastic measures, there are better ways to ensure that we, as Canadians, can help the world during its population burst.

First, we can invest some more of our foreign aid money into family planning. While this has been a controversial topic in North America for some time, it's clear that helping people make smarter choices about reproduction not only helps the population issue, but helps those in need get access to other services they need, as well.

Second, and perhaps most important, we can start to reduce our footprint on the world. Recent patterns of consumption have increased our reliance on valuable natural resources; these patterns of consumption are not sustainable if more and more people need access to those same resources. Reducing our consumption footprint, even by a little, makes things like food, water, fossil fuels, and medication more readily available to those that need it most.

The occasion of the world's new population milestone may not be a reason for alarm, but it should give us pause to think about how we live and what it means to the planet. With 7 billion neighbors to live with, we all need to start thinking about how we treat the neighborhood.