The Earth is a "finite environment".

Earth looks like a little blue ball of Life in the vast darkness of Space. It is very far away from anything else. That helps us to understand that everything on the Earth (except sunlight and meteorites) had to come from the Earth, because it could not have come from anywhere else.

Everything that exists on the Earth came from the molecules that make up the Earth. Every plant, every animal, every rock and drop of water, and every human too. We are part of the Earth. When you take a deep breath, you are breathing some air that once was breathed by dinosaurs. When you touch your skin, you are touching molecules that once were a part of the Earth.

In a very real way, we are all part of the Earth.

Maybe we can help everyone understand that we are all part of the living Earth, Children of Mother Earth. Maybe then we Earthlings can all work together to take care of our place in the Universe.

The first thing we have to do is teach everyone the arithmetic of overpopulation!

If we don't, our time will be up sooner than we think.

Image credits for this page:
Earth Clock: Gran
Earth in a beaker: Gran

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D O T H E M A T H - O U R P O P U L A T I O N G R O W T H R A T E I S U N S U S T A I N A B L E

Steady growth within a finite environment

Bacteria in a test tube

Bacteria grow by doubling – one divides to become 2, 2 divide to become 4, 4 become 8, 16, 32, and so on. Imagine we have bacteria doubling this way every minute in a bottle. At 11:00 am there is only one bacterium in the bottle. At 12:00 noon the bottle is full.

This is ordinary, steady growth with a doubling time of one minute within a finite environment of one bottle.

Consider these 3 questions:

1 – At What time was the bottle half full?

Well, since the doubling time is one minute, it must have been half full at 11:59.

2 – If you were an average bacterium in the bottle, at what time would you first realize that you were running out of space?

Think about this. It is important that you understand this, because this kind of growth is what is happening on the globe. Let’s look at the last minutes in the bottle.

Bacteria in a Bottle (the last minutes)

Time	How much is full?	How much is still empty?
11:54 am 11:55 am 11:56 am 11:57 am 11:58 am 11:59 am 12:00 noon	1/64 = 1.6% full 1/32 = 3.1% full 1/16 = 6.3% full 1/8 = 12.5% full 1/4 = 25% full ½ = 50% full 100% full	63/64 empty 31/32 empty 15/16 empty 7/8 empty ¾ empty ½ empty

At 5 minutes before 12, when the bottle was only 3% full, with 97% open space just yearning for development, how many would realize there was a problem?

So, if on Earth we currently have 15 x as much open space as we have already used, what is the equivalent time for us? Answer: It’s 4 minutes before 12:00.

Suppose that at 11:58 am, two minutes before the finite space is filled, we realize that we are running out of space. We launch an all-out effort to search for a new planet. We throw all our money and resources at the problem and, amazingly, we find THREE new planets we can get to.



That’s a colossal discovery. Now surely this would solve all our problems. Wouldn’t it?                ...read more