On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 09:20:56 -0500, <jon@dakota-truck.net> wrote:
>
> I have heard this said before also; I don't know if I read it
> somewhere or heard it from somebody or what, but whichever it was,
> I remember it being that each person was given 1,000 square feet,
> as opposed to an acre. If you run the numbers on that basis, there
> is indeed enough room with extra to spare. (If the land in Texas
> were divided equally between 6 billion people, each one would have
> about 1200 square feet.)
>
> I don't think the illustration was intended to mean that you
> could actually set up a functioning living area this way, since
> you'd need roads and stuff too, its merely a way to try to illustrate
> the amount of land mass available on the earth in comparison to the
> number of people - to combat the idea that the earth is overcrowded
> I suppose. I have a feeling that the people who think the earth
> is overcrowded are those same people who tend to jam themselves all
> together in those wretched things called "cities". :-) Flying out
> to the national DML meet last summer, I was struck more than once by
> the vast amount of land we have here in the US alone.
>
> Anyhoo, I don't know anything about P.J. O'Rourke; I haven't
> read any of his books, and so I'm not even sure if he was the
> one who first came up with the illustration, but since I had
> heard it before myself, I figured I'd chime in. There was no
> error in your calculations as the illustration was posed, but
> I think Rascal accidentally substituted 1 acre for 1,000 square
> feet. If you check the numbers at 1,000 square feet I think
> you'll find that the illustration rings true.
>
>
The overcrowding doesn't mean that there won't be nough room for people to
physically stand on the planet. It means that resources arel becomeing
more scarce. There is only so much arable land available. Sources of fresh
and clean water are also a concern. Clean water is a large problem for
many people in the world.
And those "wretched cities" you refer to are an answer to the problem.
Concentrating large numbers of people in one area preserves land needed
for crops. It also makes it more effecient to provide services to people.
Suburban sprawl is the worst thing ever. Towns force developers to build
houses on 1 acre or larger to minimize population growth. All that does it
speard a large number of people over a larger area. That sucks up more
farmland and causes traffic. People need to travel further to get the
services they need. Mass transit also becomes too expensive to serve those
communities effectively. I live in New Jersey. I know all about it.
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