You Are Here Redux
by Craig on Mar.26, 2008, under quote, science, world
This Slashdot post is very much in the same vein as my earlier blog post on the size of humanity relative to the size of the earth. Here’s the jist:
If you moved every single person in the world to the land area within Texas, we’d have less population density than New York City.
The water outflow of the Columbia River would provide each and every person with nearly 26 gallons of fresh water per day
We could feed all those people - about 500 square meters per person - with the existing farmland within the US
Essentially, we could live mid-density, and feed and provide potable water for every single person on the face of the earth, and not require a single person living outside of Texas - no one on the other 6 continents, the oceans, or any other State. No one in Canada or Mexico.
We could feed everyone without a single acre converted from farmland - wouldn’t need to touch a single acre of forest, nor city, nor ocean, nor park.
The earth can support a LOT of people; the problem is distribution of the resources. And that is a purely political issue. Concerns about too many people on earth are demonstrably false.
(The poster provides links for all of these claims; see the post for URLs. They’re mostly raw factual/wikipedia links with one Vegan Society link to support the food production claim).
