Part 1 of 2
Whether she was from Brazil or he was from Indonesia: there was a baby born on Halloween last week that was the 7th billion baby to live on this planet. My first thought was: Wow- it took us a thousand years to get our population to one billion, and then we had the guts to speed things up by 700% all in a matter of 200 years? Jeez…. How is the world ever going to survive the reality of the once, loose-fitting term of “over-population”? But then I found some comforting news: 7 billion seems a lot larger than it actually is and I have the stats to prove it. As National Geographic explains in the Special Series 7 billion video, standing shoulder to shoulder- we would all fit in the city of Los Angeles. If you were as astonished as I was- you might want to consider watching the video below (otherwise just keep reading). If you can't watch the video go to the link at the bottom of the page and watch the video there!
Yeah, my eyes did a double take as well. I also came back to my original question which was: “How were we going to survive this?” and then my thoughts reflected back to the movie… If space isn’t the main worry here then, without using the word balance, what word can be described as the problem (or the solution) in this time of great population growth? Here’s what I came up with in two words (sorry I couldn’t do it in one): Homo sapiens. We are all Homo sapiens which in Latin means “knowing man”. With this beautiful, evolution-speeding quality we also get another: the hope and desire to succeed in life. For some people, i.e. Bernie Madoff being one of the most recent examples, this means greed. For those of you who watched the video skip to the next paragraph, and for those who didn’t: keep reading. This number of staggering proportions comes at a time of scarce equality, and a freakishly bad world economy. The National Geographic video further proves my point by saying that only 5% of us use 23% of the world’s energy... which is a problem to say the least. And you don’t have to think hard about who that 5% is: about half of all that greedy 5% is coming from the United States (which puts a delicious stereotype on us Americans- but that’s another blog).
After watching that video, a good question popped into my mind: “So… how can we achieve this “balance” (especially in a world where people with loud voices love to shout their conflicting ideas at each other) without starting some super-regretful war?” I know some very loud people who would scream at me if I ever got the chance to suggest that they change the essence of who they are: so I’m not going to. Besides, that sounds a lot easier than it looks- it’s like trying to tell somebody with a bad GPA to study better: nothing in that statement is actually going to help the person get a better GPA. My proposal- how about we try working around our ever-so-human traits. What about people in the world (like me writing this blog) who can see past our greediness and think about a better kind of successful where everybody wins? And I know that the greedy leaders in the world would scoff at me with their obnoxious voices and try to push me down because there’s no way that I’m going to steal their status or their money from them without a fight. Well with this blog and the next part to this blog, I’m going to put up a fight as well, because I think as the world population hit 7 billion Homo sapiens: we really need a reality check on how we’re treating every single one of those humans (and if we’re doing it equally). Stay tuned.
For those of you who want to know more on the evolution of the Homo sapien all in three minutes of your time: watch this NPR clip:
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/31/141816460/visualizing-how-a-population-grows-to-7-billion
For those of you who are freaked out that the world is going to end: watch this three minute clip to soothe your fears:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iodJ0OOdgRg&feature=pyv
For those of you who want to learn more about National Geographic's Special Series: 7 Billion (and where I got my original clip from) go to this website:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/7-billion
Very intriguing. What a great discussion you've begun! And thanks for sharing the movie. What caught my attention most about your post was the beautiful insight that we have each other. That being a member of a community is a positive, constructive idea. How wonderful! You've left me with affirmation that the need to nurture creativity and appreciation for one another needs to be a part of our educational experiences. (Suggestions: Provide a link to the people you mention in your post. And don't write to two separate groups—video viewers and non-viewers. Assume the video has been watched, and go from there. Or assume it hasn't and go from there.) Thanks for sharing!
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