There are too many of us!
Today we reached 8 000 000 000 people. Is le déluge imminent?
On the day I was born, there were less than half of us as there are now. The minifigure, metaphor of my quest, allows me to imagine the unimaginable a little bit. Put 8 billion figures in a row and you have a line-up that goes around the earth twice!
Purely mathematical you can consider Australia and New Zealand, arranged like the municipality of Dilbeek in Belgium, as the place of residence for the entire world population! This village has almost everything a livable world could have. Agricultural areas, sports fields, parks, breweries, schools. Yes, there is a lack of a university or airport. But then the rest of the world is empty. What an luxury, isn’t it?
Asia as a raw material supplier, Europe as a ClubMed destination. Africa as an agricultural area, thanks to the knowledge collected by Musk and the entire continent of America as 1 wildlife reserve. It is totally utopian, but indicates that there is actually no overpopulation.
There are too many of us who want too much
As a little kid I vividly remember the ice cream parlor in Beringen. There I read that a strawberry coupe was only available in season. Outside that strawberry season, your ice cream was topped with a strawberry coulies. It indicates that humanity has long struggled with its desires to want everything that the earth really always wants and certainly everywhere, preferably immediately. The impatience and the possibly acquired luxury of our part of the world are the impetus for a disempowerment of the supermarket Earth. On an open farming day, I saw the huge progress in growing strawberries almost all year round. That crazy provision of food almost any time any place is one of the system disruptions. Precisely because petroleum is such an accelerator for growth and overconsumption, it is one of the drivers of climate disruption.
GEOGRAPHY, more than a climate subject How to easily explain the carbon cycle story to students. In a simplistic way I link the exorcism from the earthly paradise. It looks something like this:
While drawing a tree, I gauge the knowledge of photosynthesis. CO2 goes in and O2 comes out. Where did that C go? Meanwhile, I draw an apple and write down the fructose atomic model. They have this knowledge thanks to biology. Then I draw Adam next to the tree. He takes a bite of the apple. C and O2 go in and CO2 comes out; combustion or digestion.
Après moi, le déluge!?
Will there be only disaster, war and misery after us?
Raw materials are monopolized by Xi. Putin leads us towards a dirty cold war, Lula claims to save the rainforest after all. Erdogan is aiming to claim Cyprus ( and his new gasfields )
More and more young people are increasingly asking themselves whether procreation is still sensible. Some countries; Japan in the lead, already showing a downward trend. So migrations could be beneficial if they can be done in the right climate. China abolished the policy of 1 child per family, without success for the time being. The concept of brother or sister has disappeared there after 2 generations. The little emperors of China are yet to make themselves heard! Trump launched “America First” Le déluge then translates to returning to those times our grandparents said were better times.
So I start my quest today: the search for the answer to #the10billionquestion!