7 billion humans and rising
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Brandon Keim at Wired brings up some good points about what it means to have an ever growing population and how it changes the world around us a bit at a time. In October 2011, we pushed bast the 7 billion humans on Earth. At that number, he points out a few important things:
- we control 83% of our land
- we consume 20% of Earth's volume of life
- we use 1/3 of the planet's fresh water.
Perhaps the bright spot is that, if we were all still living with 1900's technology, we would have ruined the world many times over. Efficiency with farming techniques, recycling, and energy efficiency have all scaled back the amount of impact we've had on our ecosystem. It's a short article with several points about how we'll need to further adapt over time if we aren't to completely overwhelm and imbalance the planet.
I've started a forum where we can list some ideas for ways the humans will need to become more efficient to keep from overwhelming the world.
7 billion people at Wired
Interested in the social impact of our future advancements, Daryl developed and built Regarding Tomorrow as a platform to share and discuss our collective hopes and fears of the future. Daryl's background is in education, including graduate studies in special needs and a masters in instructional technology from UVA's Curry School of Education. He has worked as a high school teacher and has over 10 years of university experience in the US and Canada.