A couple of things in response to both posts so far:

1. It seems to me that the native English speakers would be more than that. The US population is somewhere around 280 million. With the UK, Oz and NZ I would think the number would be more than 350 million.

2. I would have to say that the Internet is spreading the need to learn English to communicate worldwide, but I read somewhere, I think in an advertisement for the technology company Accenture, that Chinese would be the dominant language on the Internet in this next ten years or so. This would probably be just within Chinese only websites because Chinese is obviously not a global language, but that's something to think about.

3. About UN world population projections. I've heard that the prediction is that the world's population will even out at around 10 billion. I can't see it skyrocketing like that estimate shows. There are a couple reason that I think the world population is going to be leveling out. China restricts families to only one child, so logically their population should be shrinking. The average number of children per family in the US now is 2.2. I assume this is dropping some. Two children per 2 parents would seem to be the leveling off point, but we also need to factor in single people who aren't having children at all. Also, as Africa becomes more "civilized" I think there will be more contraceptives, therefore lessening the number of new children.

Just my rambling two cents.