Wednesday, February 4, 2015

1 in 7 billion

Mrs. Jarman had us watch the discovery video from 2011 about the rising population and the problems that causes.

The land mass of earth is 57,308,738 square miles . There are roughly 7 billion people on earth, meaning that the population density of the entire planet is 123 people per mile, so about the same as North Carolina right now.

This means that land is not the problem; resources, infrastructure and education are.

So which of these gets addressed first? Should any of them be placed above others in terms of importance?

Personally, I would say no. 

Resources, infrastructure and education all need to be improved and all at the same time:
A poor infrastructure means resources don't get distributed correctly and it means people would have trouble getting to their schools. Resources mean that people won't be able to live because they don't have food or water, etc. Education is necessary because that would allow the citizens to create for themselves what they need. It's that whole "teach a man to fish" idea. It is also necessary because fertility and education have an inverse relationship.

When these three things are set up, all else follows.

There is more information here in this blog if you are curious:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/seven-billion/kunzig-text



1 comment:

  1. Seems like you and I had the same ideas. I will say your blog is a little short, thought. Wish you'd elaborated more...
    Personally, I think infrastructure needs to be fixed first. You can't build schools if you don't have a safe building for it, after all.

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