Dan Brown's latest novel "Inferno" made me realize that reading can be very hazardous. Overpopulation is stated as a big problem, and a quick internet search confirmed that Brown's fictional characters are not alone in their grave concern about reaching the supermarket, just to find empty shelves. The cause of this disaster would be that one of the other 7.2 billion Earth dwellers took the last items. It seems like popular theory also want us to believe that one billion additional people will join us every 12-15 years or so to burden the planet's resources. It will increase much faster if we do not find a way to curb the relentless fornication. I decided to investigate these claims.
A short history lesson in population tells how humans called a huge party in the year 1800 when there were 1 billion people alive. It must be accurate because back in the day, invitations were mailed to proper mailboxes, and 1 billion stamps were printed for the occasion. Fortunately the press was invented, so the invitation did not need to be hand copied. If it is considered that it took Adam's descendants a considerable time to multiply their number since creation, it is a shock to find that by 1927 another party had to be held as 2 billion people were alive on a sunny Saturday morning. It took only 127 years to achieve the same population growth which took eons before this short historic span. Things then started to gather speed and 33 years later, in 1960, there were 3 billion despite the efforts of mass murder in World War 2 by various players. The Soviets and the Americans realized the soon to be experienced real estate problem and gunned for the moon. This was so expensive that no party could be afforded. In retaliation the earth population got angry and multiplied like there was no tomorrow. 14 years later, in 1974, there were 4 billion, and the world leaders gave up trying to control the growth. At steady pace we reached 5 billion in 1987, 6 billion in 1999, and finally 7 billion in 2011.
For some reason, the world authorities on the subject, projects a world population of 8 billion will be reached by 2025 only. I do not think so. As I am writing this, we are licking on 7.2 billion, according to their clock. We are not yet 2 years down the line from 31 October 2011 - the day that marked when we supposedly reached the 7 billion level. In my book, that means we are even more effective in multiplying our number than the previous 3 decades, and should reach the mark of 8 billion by 2021. This in a time where a popular belief is "the world can sustain 1.5 billion people at American standards of living and consumption" (
http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org). Sure, the Yanks do like to have everything, but I think that type of statement only serves them to feel proud of how much they consume against the rest of us, and should not be seen a challenge to upscale your own consumption.
All this statistics are quite boring, so let's ask the important question: "Why do we still find stuff on the shelves of supermarkets?", and "How many people can Earth support?" For our 8 billion people party, date will be advised, we need a venue! Fortunately, with the development of the internet, invitations are much easier to handle nowadays. If we allocate 2 square meters per person (that is a bit smaller than a double bed) in the tent so that they can mingle and not be too crowded, we'll need a tent covering 16,000 square kilometers. A nice rectangular tent 160 x 100 kilometers with the bar at the center, and food close to the north exit, thank you! Since the Chinese are the largest population on Earth, they should host the event - travel costs are thus dramatically reduced . Conveniently most things are made there as well, so orders are placed with Wuyangshi Canvass Corporation for our tent.
Let us have a look at living arrangements for our 8 billion people. Before we stampede over to NASA and jettison some unfortunate souls to Mars, let us analyse the cramp living quarters on planet Earth. Earth is big, very big, but people cannot live everywhere. Fiction wants us to go to the the sea, but let's step away from that for a moment, and accept the oceans are not an option. Some mountains are very high, and remote desert living is also kind of shitty, and let's consider Antarctica nice living for penguins only. As an assumption we could consider half the land mass to be conservatively habitual. That leaves the human race with only 67,470,000 square kilometers (
http://en.wikipedia.org). If our 8 billion people were requested to live in houses as a perfect pair on average, and each household have a plot of 1000 square meters, how much land do we need to sacrifice? Amazingly, this arrangement will rid the population of just under 6% of our habitual 67,470,000 square kilometers. Remember, we do not have a single block of flats yet to optimize our living arrangement! The rest we can use to get food and other fun activities. NASA, the efforts to dispatch the first crew for project "Overpopulate Mars", is a bit premature.
Water is the other big killer always pushed our way. The Zambezi river is a nice big one, the fourth longest in the Africa, and the average flow-rate of dumping water into the Indian ocean is about 2,45 million liters per second (
http://en.wikipedia.org). If we forget about all the water already used through the dam structure, estimated to be half, and build a big pipe just before the water go to sea and allocate this for human consumption, there will be a bit more that 26 liters for each of our 8 billion family members, every day. This might sound a bit low, but is more than enough if we recycle, for human consumption. All the other rivers can be used to ensure the oceans do not run dry.
What is the problem then? Why are we then stated to be overpopulating the world? Is it not as simple as, "we do not like each other very much?". We find reasons to demonstrate this all the time. There are disagreements and wars about religion, race, economy, petty politics, being scared, retaliation, and various other apparent causes. We are quite efficient in finding motivation for a fight. There seem to be a need to demonstrate superiority over others; be the boss, and that is the real problem. We like to be a bit greedy and bossy! So we advocate to each other, "we are too many on the planet!". With less people around, there will be more wealth for the remaining few, and less people to order around, thus in some way satisfying to the beings we became.
If we could work together as a world population to the greater good of mankind, then we have more than enough space to keep on having steady population growth and loads to share for many decades more. I am sure with combined effort, all resources will be found to be in adequate abundance. At some stage we will be getting overcrowded and have to start moving into apartment blocks when we reach 15 billion or so, but that is still a far way into the future. So Mr. Brown, there is no need for your characters to render the population infertile yet. Getting them to pull in the same direction is more important for the merry growth of our numbers on this good Earth.
18 August 2013
