Why the Current System Cannot Sustain 7 Billion People

The media is in a frenzy over recent statistics which now show the world’s population at the seven billion marker. A new Reuters article concerning the birth of our planet’s seven billionth baby suggests that those who control the media- in other words, the flow of information- are afraid of what seven billion people could mean for their system which is presently in overload.

Many ask the question as to whether or not seven billion people make for a sustainable world. I’ve written extensively on this subject and you can check out my answer to this question here. To summarize my stance on so called ‘overpopulation’ however, I will stress that yes indeed- the way in which this current global system is set up, there is no way that a population so large is even remotely sustainable.

By ‘sustainability’, I am referring to the ability of every man, woman, and child on the planet to have access to the fundamentals of life. This is an obvious impossibility as primitive nationalistic tendencies coupled with blinding greed withhold any sense of compassion and intelligent, ‘earth resource management’ which would lead to a holistic future where all are provided for and not one person goes hungry.

Consider the waste generated from a single McDonalds restaurant each night alone. Now tally this waste with all the other perfectly good food thrown away at the end of a work day from every restaurant in America. Times this amount by 365 days and one is left with an astronomical amount of food that could’ve been re-allocated to poor and starving nations thereby solving the issue of global hunger. Keep in mind that we’re just zeroing in on the United States in this our analysis. Waste throughout the whole of the industrialized world is absolutely unreal to even begin to fathom.

The problem revealed with the birth of the world’s seven billionth child is not that there are now too many people on the planet- its that there is no true system of global, intelligent resource management installed which pays no mind to national barriers and other such frivolous remnants of an era that has long since passed.

An objection often raised to those who believe that the Earth is capable of handling many more than seven billion people is that there isn’t enough room for all the people to live. This is an absurd statement to make- and anyone who frequently travels via airplane is aware of this. Endless fields- unoccupied- just sitting there whilst cities grow jam-packed is a typical example of a system which is inherently flawed.

The present, fossil fueled world will no doubt collapse beneath the weight of seven billion or more people in the near future. In order to prevent this collapse, our best and brightest are really going to need to come together and design an alternative direction for our civilization to head into- because clearly what we’ve got going for us now will only send us collectively to the guillotine.

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