James' World 2

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On November 15, 2022, according to the demographers at the United Nations Population Division, the 8 billionth person on the planet was born.

That 8 billion mark is an estimate — there is no real-time census of everyone alive on Earth at every given moment, which means there’s a margin of error. But someone is or will be Baby 8 Billion.

He or she is most likely to be born in India, which had more than 23 million births in 2021, and which is projected to pass China as the world’s most populous country by mid-2023, according to data released by the UN on Wednesday. And he stands a better than even chance of being a he, since boys naturally outnumber girls at birth by a rate of about 105 to 100; in India, due to a mix of cultural preference for boys and access to sex-selective abortion, that rate is closer to 108 to 100. With an average life expectancy in India of just under 70 years today and rising, our hypothetical Baby 8 Billion stands a decent chance of being alive to witness the dawn of the 22nd century.

How many other human beings will be there with him to see the calendar turn to 2100? If you think it’s tricky to count the number of people alive today, accurately projecting global population nearly 80 years into the future is near impossible, requiring countless estimates about birth rates, death rates, and movement — “sex, death, and migration,” in the words of the demographer Jennifer Sciubba. Estimated global population in 2000 stood at 6.09 billion, which would have been a surprise to the UN demographers of 1973, who projected that it would be almost 410 million larger by the turn of the millennium — an overestimate bigger than the current population of the United States.

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Violeta Encarnacion for Vox

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Back in 2018, my husband Nick and I traveled to Cambodia to teach English. At the time we were living out of our backpacks when I found van life videos on YouTube. I just remember thinking, wow, that would be such a cool way to travel.

It was a seed that was planted in our heads, and I knew when we came home, it was something we wanted to pursue. Then after arriving back home in Canada, we began to build out our van.
We loved the idea of being able to travel, and we knew it would allow us to cut down on the cost of living expenses.

To do it, we began to pick up seasonal jobs, including working in an office, house sitting, and working for a brick and mortar business. Then, when we had enough money saved up, we left our jobs and hit the road.

Now that we’ve lived out of our van for three years, we’ve learned a lot along the way. Although we wouldn’t trade van life for anything,

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Raychel and Nick living their lives in a van. Raychel

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Every week, an estimated 15 million used garments from North America, Europe, and Australia arrive in Ghana’s capital city of Accra. These are the unwanted clothes that well-meaning Westerners have donated to be reused or resold, bombarding countries such as Ghana with clothing waste.

The small country of 30 million is expected to receive, disseminate, and dispose of billions of garments a year that aren’t theirs to begin with. Items in poor condition that arrive in Accra are immediately thrown into landfills, while the rest are left for resellers to hawk in hopes of turning a profit. But as the quality of clothes has declined thanks to fast fashion, so too have resellers’ ability to earn a living. Accra has “become the dumping ground for textile waste,” the city’s waste manager told ABC News in August 2021. Local water systems have been polluted; landfills have become fuel for catastrophic fires.

Yet, no corporation or country has been keen to take responsibility for Ghana’s waste crisis. It exists seemingly out of sight and out of mind. In n Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism, fashion journalist and activist Aja Barber urges Western fashion companies and sustainability advocates to consider the workers and people of the Global South, who produce our clothes and contend with our waste. The pace of how fashion is produced, sold, and bought in the West has a direct impact in developing nations, Barber argues in the book: “This [fast fashion] cycle doesn’t just harm everyone within the supply chain, it harms those at the end of the supply chain as well.”

Consumed isn’t just a sustainability guidebook. It’s a much-needed history lesson and warning about how forces like colonialism and capitalism bleed into our consumer society, right down to the clothing we choose to wear and keep.

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An employee sorts through mounds of used clothing at one of China’s secondhand clothing facilities. Most of the garments are to be sold overseas. Photo by Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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It was the third Saturday of the month, which meant that Shala Waines was up early. In a few hours, she had to set up for the Soul Swapmeet, a monthly open-air market she founded in 2018 for Black entrepreneurs. To get to the swap meet that morning, Shala had to transport herself, her 17-year-old daughter, Damiyah, and Damiyah’s two friends, plus a large, A-frame plastic sign advertising the event, and a tent for her DJs. Shala drives a silver 2015 Hyundai Elantra, and fitting the kids and supplies in a compact four-door requires some creativity. She made it work by asking the teens to hold the tent in their laps.

To look at Shala’s car is to get a sense of the woman who drives it: a small business owner, a single mom, and the type of person who volunteers to bring all of the food for a friend’s lakeside birthday bash. There are the empty cups her teenager and friends left in the back seat right after she cleaned it; boxes and bags rolling around in the trunk. There’s a “minding my Black-owned business” sticker, and some scrapes and dents on the driver’s side doors and bumper that Shala hates but can’t afford to fix right now.

The Elantra has meant a lot to her. It’s how she’s built her business, driving around San Diego to meet with potential vendors and city officials, scouting locations for the swap meet, loading it up with supplies. It’s how she makes UberEats and DoorDash deliveries to supplement her income, making food deliveries and supermarket runs for other people. It’s how she transports her daughter to school, gets her groceries, and makes it to doctor’s appointments. It’s her constant companion as she hustles, creates opportunities for herself and her clients, and cares for her daughter. In other words, her car is her ticket to participating in American life. “It’s everything,” Shala says. It feels almost too obvious to say that for most people living in the United States, owning a car or having access to one is a necessity. Even after the pandemic tripled the number of Americans who primarily work from home, the vast majority of American workers — 68 percent — still drive to their jobs. Eighty-eight percent of households use cars to shop for food, according to one survey, and having a car or a ride can factor significantly into whether someone is able to get health care.

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Shala Waines uses her 2015 Hyundai Elantra to run her small business, to supplement her income making UberEats and DoorDash deliveries, and to get herself and her daughter to school, the store, and appointments. “It’s everything,” she says.

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We’ve all felt financial stress in our lives at one time or another. Dealing with that financial stress can feel like a daunting task when you’re not sure where to begin. 

If you’re looking for ways to manage a financially stressful situation, here are some suggestions for taking charge of your money and feeling better about your circumstances.

1. Figure out where the money stress is coming from

Start by identifying the main sources of money stress. Some common sources of financial stress include:

• Not being able to pay your bills, or not being able to pay your bills on time.
• High levels of debt.
• You don’t have money for emergency expenses, like if your car breaks down.
• You’ve lost your job, or you’re worried that you might be laid off.
• You’re worried that you won’t be able to pay for an upcoming expense.

When you understand the main sources of your financial stress, you’ll be able to better tackle the problem. List out your main stressors so you can brainstorm ways to start addressing those items.

Set aside time two or three times a year to review and revise your list. As you consciously tackle your biggest money stressors, you’re more likely to make positive progress.

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Our evaluations and opinions are not influenced by our advertising relationships, but we may earn a commission from our partners’ links. This content is created independently from TIME’s editorial staff.

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