Next Monday, population experts predict that one of this year's 78 million new babies will be the planet's 7 billionth person. It's just 12 years since the 6 billionth was born, and only a little over two centuries ago that we reached the first billion.
In 1999, the Guardian asked the Indian-British novelist Salman Rushdie to write a letter to the 6 billionth child, in which he meditated on the role religion would play in their life:
There are those who say that the great wars of the new century will once again be wars of religion, jihads and crusades, as they were in the middle ages. I don't believe them, or not in the way they mean it ... The real wars of religion are the wars religions unleash against ordinary citizens within their 'sphere of influence'. They are wars of the godly against the largely defenceless – American fundamentalists against pro-choice doctors, Iranian mullahs against their country's Jewish minority, Hindu fundamentalists in Bombay against that city's increasingly fearful Muslims.
Rushdie advised the 6 billionth child, who the UN designated as Sarajevo-born Adnan Nevic:
The ancient wisdoms are modern nonsenses. Live in your own time, use what we know, and as you grow up, perhaps the human race will finally grow up with you, and put aside childish things.
Nevic had a simple message this week, saying:: "I wish that the birth of the seven billionth child brings peace to the planet."
But what would your letter to the world's 7 billionth inhabitant say? We'd like you to share your letter in the comment thread below. What do you hope for, for child 7 billion? Peace, a better standard of living, an end to environmental problems such as climate change? And what advice would you offer him or her?
While the UN is breaking with its tradition of naming a child for this milestone – which it has done with child 6 billion, 5 billion and so on – perhaps one of the children born on 31 October 2011 will, one day, read your hopes, fears and advice for them.
