are we a plague on the earth?
Jerri points out that the world has a finite amount of land capable of feeding us (arable land) but we have an infinite capacity to breed. Once, natural disasters kept us in perfect balance with our environment, but as we migrated to every corner of the earth and became more sophisticated -- learning how to overcome floods, earthquakes, pestilence and disease -- we outsmarted ourselves. We became a disaster, a plague on the earth.“Forty years ago, when the world’s population was about 4 billion, it was generally agreed that one hectare of arable land is necessary to provide the nutritional requirements of 2.5 people,” says Jerri. “So, since the world has about 1,476 billion hectares of arable land, a sustainable maximum world population was set at 3,691 billion and an excess population of 309 million was acknowledged.”
“While China, the most populous nation, did her bit to become a nutritionally sustainable nation with the one-child policy, the rest of the world’s nations either went on their merry way – believing, naively, that the problem was China’s, not theirs – or they generously opened up their borders, allowing immigration from severely over-populated nations.”
"Today, the current world population is about 6,262 billion people -- and increasing daily -- and, rather than feeding 2.5 people, each hectare of arable land is now being forced -- by dangerous agricultural practices – to feed 4.242 people.”
“Of the top ten nutritionally sustainable nations (United States, Russia, Australia, Canada, Ukraine, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Turkey and Spain), sustainability itself is severely affected by sparse water in Australia and sparse warmth in Canada and Russia (which accounts for their sparse populations),” says Jerri, “and any number of natural disasters – or political, social or economic ones, such as that currently unfolding in Zimbabwe and Georgia – can also have a serious short-term affect on food security.”
“From feeding 2.5 people per hectare in the 1970s, to 4.242 people today, how can the world’s finite arable land (1,476 billion hectares) possibly feed the expected world population of 13 billion in 2040 with security, especially when any sort of disaster can render a top nutritionally sustainable nation into a basket case?”
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