It's only alarming if you believe that the human population is close to the carrying capacity of the Earth. Given that the densest population centers are also the richest, this seems unlikely. Environmental and associated problems are not the result of brute numbers.
All of these population graphs play the same trick on your eye by using a vertical scale set by the current population. This is an understandable choice, but as a side-effect it makes the current growth look "vertical", when in fact for an exponential the location of the "knee" in the curve is purely an artifact of the vertical scale. If you graph the world population in millions, the current situation looks terrifying; if you graph it in billions, it looks alarming; if you graph it in trillions, it looks like we've got nothing to worry about.
Indeed. Due in part to lower birthrates in rich countries and increasing wealth across the board, demographers predict that the current population growth will flatten out around 2050, at an estimated 8-10 billion people. Humanity faces many problems, but "overpopulation" isn't one of them.
Not sure if you've seen this series: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY (despite looking/sounding boring at the start, stick with it; it's really captivating and interesting), but it is amazing just how much 'small' growth (even 2-3% p/a) can cause things to double in much less time than you'd imagine.
Or if you haven't got the time to watch the whole thing (is close to an hour all in all), this touches on a couple of the topics the video covers: http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/exponential-growth-tut... (naturally doubling every minute is on a much faster scale to the Human population!)
All of these population graphs play the same trick on your eye by using a vertical scale set by the current population. This is an understandable choice, but as a side-effect it makes the current growth look "vertical", when in fact for an exponential the location of the "knee" in the curve is purely an artifact of the vertical scale. If you graph the world population in millions, the current situation looks terrifying; if you graph it in billions, it looks alarming; if you graph it in trillions, it looks like we've got nothing to worry about.