This year we witnessed the arrival of the seventh billionth earthling. Global population continues its exponential growth voraciously. What we find ourselves muddled in is a paradox of human welfare and destruction. The trouble is that there is no consensus on this. The planet hasn’t tried to support this many of its children at the same time. As with any parent, she gives us free will and resources to accomplish what we think is right. Self-harm is categorized as prudent morality, or in this case, unprudent. The majority follow the conventional morality and stick to the program of unsustainable immediate growth all the while grabbing more and more of the resources. How much is too much?
We arose from water and our demise is inscribed in it. The third planet in our home solar system has 1,386 million cubic kilometres of water. The mathematical building block of our Universe is an efficient & elegant sphere, hence lets envision that all of the water(life-sustaining and otherwise) could be compressed into a sphere…
...if all of Earth's water(ice, liquid, vapour, freshwater, saline) were to be compressed to form a sphere, it would measure 1,385km in diameter. (source: USGS)
Almost 97% of this is saline and hence not suitable for drinking. Of the drinkable freshwater, 68% is locked in ice and glaciers, 30% is underground and the rest is found on the surface as rivers, lakes or swamps. The freshwater on the surface amounts to just 1/10,000th of one percent of the total water.
The global population growth is apparantly on a decline but the people are indeed living longer. And we all know that none of the nation states are ever going to put an end to human reproduction. What we have here is a taut struggle between the exponential growth of users and an irreversible eradication of a finite utility asset. The asset just happens to be a life-sustaining resource, more valuable than gold or currency ever will be.
(End of Part I)
Introspection Junction 