Today I came across an article that argued the fact of the world being overpopulated. The author stated that-mathematically-every one of the seven billion people that inhabit this earth, could easily live in Texas with each person having an equal amount of floor space that the average American home has. Per square foot that is. This intrigued me so I decided to do the math ad see whether or not he’s “technically” right. So here’s the math:
7.487609e+12/7,000,000,000 = 1069.65842857^2 ft
Okay so the square footage of an average American home is about double the number that I got, but point is, all the world’s populace could comfortably fit in the state of Texas; mathematically. Now I do agree with the author on this aspect of things, but I disagree when he says that the world is “underpopulated”. It is most certainly not underpopulated. In fact, the Earth’s population is outstripping available resources as we speak. All that “unused earth” is what we use to grow food, procure drinking water, and get other natural resources from. True, we could probably utilize the “unused” portions a little better, but seriously now. If we wanted to grow food in the mountainous regions, well that just wouldn’t work out now would it? You need the proper soil, air, and temperature along with the right amount of sunlight in order to get food to grow. Not only that, but you would then need a way of getting the food harvested and off of the mountains. Or take the jungle for example. Just how in the world do you propose we get what little food we could grow out of there? It’s not simply as easy as to say “oh but the Earth really isn’t overpopulated, it’s underpopulated.” “Look at how much space humanity is wasting.” “People are starving everyday even the we have the resources to provide for them all.” No. We are utilizing our resources to the best of our abilities. If you’re going to go making claims like that, well then you better have a genius way of fixing things and of backing up your words. And yes, people are starving and dying, but lack of food isn’t the main reason of that. There probably would be enough food for all seven billion of us; the problem is a lack of a way to get the food to people. We need a simple, cost effective way of getting food and clean water to the needy. Right now, we have no such way. If you want to end world hunger then stop focusing on the food itself and instead focus on getting that food out to the people who need it. I believe that we could get to a point where humanity isn’t suffering as much, if only people would have faith and take action.
Anyways. My whole point to this is that you can’t go around whilly nilly, stating that the Earth is really underpopulated when, in reality, we face the serious problem that the world is severely overpopulating itself. We are going to run out of resources sooner or later because our populace will only continue to grow in it’s masses unless some form of evil, whether it be a new outbreak of disease or a hybrid form of indeginious creature wipes out half of the world’s populace or something as equally awful. I know, I know. Radical ideas, but I’m just saying. The world has got to end someday in some way…right?
girl in the mirror 