Opus 2012-291: Dicernment Watch: Population Bomb Is Still a Dud

I never read the book.  I don’t intend to ever read the book.  I have a life and reading foolishness is not high on my list.  The book was called The Population Bomb and I believe the first edition forecast that the world would dissolve into starvation and chaos in 1980.  Look around you.  We are still here and last time I looked there was still food on the shelves.  The book has been regularly reissued since then, changing the date but not the conclusion.  It is still being purchased and read by the credulous.  There is still no report on whether the election that stopped the rise of the oceans and began the healing of the planet has increased or decreased those sales.

My mind turned in this direction as I was flying across the hills that Easterners call the Appalachian Mountains.  The area was green and productive.  There were cities, towns, farms, factories, roads and more.  Yet it was largely empty.  This is what fascinates me about the area east of the Mississippi.  It is some of the most heavily populated land in America, yet it is largely open.  It is not crowded once you get outside the inner areas of the large cities.  I assume that people who think the world is overcrowded rarely get away from their malls and couches.

I have not done the math recently, so maybe it is time to do it again.  First, let’s Google the total population of the world.  We get a lot of numbers but a safe estimate looks like 7 billion or, 7,000,000,000.

Now, how much land is there in the world?  You can come up with 58,000,000 square miles.  If you do the math it comes out to 117 people per square mile.  To be fair we should take out Antarctica, which leaves us with a population density of 130 people per square mile.  That doesn’t tell you much so lets look at a few numbers to compare.

People per square mile:

California, 242
New York State, 414
Kansas City, MO, 1,630
Wichita, KS, 1,962
Pumiceville, People’s Republik of Kalifornia, Arox. 6,000.

Next let’s Google the total area of the state of Texas:  268,820 square miles or 172,044,800 acres.

If you do a little math that comes out as 2640 people per square mile or 40.687 people per acre.  Think of an acre as the area of a football field without the end zones.  Think of 41 people living in the area of a football field. 

Is that what you consider crowed?  The entire world living in the state of Texas with a football field allocated for every 41 people.  When you consider how many people now live in apartments or rent rooms it doesn’t seem like the world is too crowded.  If you feel like it is then throw in the state of Oklahoma for elbow room and Colorado for malls and parks.  The rest of the world would be empty.

So next time someone tries to tell you we need population control, rent them a car and tell them to drive across Montana and North Dakota. 

homo unius libri