I started out considering the present population of the Earth, found the land area of the planet and then I found that someone else had done all of my work for me as follows:
http://tinyurl.com/o3b33
Earth has a surface area of 196,940,400 square miles, slightly less than a perfect ball with a diameter of 7913.5 miles (which is the mean diameter of the Earth - see "Prove it" under 103).
The surface area of the seven continents and all the islands of the world is about 57 million miles, while the total area of the six habitable continents (Antarctica excluded) is around 52 million square miles.
Including Antarctica , over one fifth of the globe's land mass is under water (oceans, lakes, rivers, etc.) or ice. This leaves about 45 million square miles of exposed land.
The human population on earth has crossed six billion. [Actually as of the 8th of this month, 6,508,408,138 people]. If we distribute all the exposed land evenly among all mankind, 133 people would have to share one square mile. What that means is that every single person on Earth, man woman and child would have close to five acres of land for his or her use. More precisely, each person would get 209,000 square feet of land, or a square plot of land 457 feet on each side.
Not all this land can be used beneficially however. A significant portion of the Earth's exposed land is unhabitable or cannot be used for any agricultural purpose. Large portions lie in the far north. Large portions are extremely arid. Large portions are very mountainous. In sum, only about one fourth of all the land on earth, or somewhat more than 12 million square miles, is arable.
Today, over half of the arable land in the world is in fact not under cultivation. Bringing the unused land into service in many cases would require huge investments of money and effort, and would do considerable damage to the environment. For example, only about 28% of the arable land on the African continent is used for growing crops. Immense tracts of forests or jungles would have to be cleared to bring the rest of the arable land on that continent to productive use.
Thus, only about one eighth of each imaginary plot of land distributed to each person is land which is under cultivation. In effect, each person has a piece of land about 26,000 square feet (a square 161 feet on each side or just a bit more than ½ an acre) at his or her disposal on which to grow all that he or she needs.
The surface area of the seven continents and all the islands of the world is about 57 million miles, while the total area of the six habitable continents (Antarctica excluded) is around 52 million square miles.
Including Antarctica , over one fifth of the globe's land mass is under water (oceans, lakes, rivers, etc.) or ice. This leaves about 45 million square miles of exposed land.
The human population on earth has crossed six billion. [Actually as of the 8th of this month, 6,508,408,138 people]. If we distribute all the exposed land evenly among all mankind, 133 people would have to share one square mile. What that means is that every single person on Earth, man woman and child would have close to five acres of land for his or her use. More precisely, each person would get 209,000 square feet of land, or a square plot of land 457 feet on each side.
Not all this land can be used beneficially however. A significant portion of the Earth's exposed land is unhabitable or cannot be used for any agricultural purpose. Large portions lie in the far north. Large portions are extremely arid. Large portions are very mountainous. In sum, only about one fourth of all the land on earth, or somewhat more than 12 million square miles, is arable.
Today, over half of the arable land in the world is in fact not under cultivation. Bringing the unused land into service in many cases would require huge investments of money and effort, and would do considerable damage to the environment. For example, only about 28% of the arable land on the African continent is used for growing crops. Immense tracts of forests or jungles would have to be cleared to bring the rest of the arable land on that continent to productive use.
Thus, only about one eighth of each imaginary plot of land distributed to each person is land which is under cultivation. In effect, each person has a piece of land about 26,000 square feet (a square 161 feet on each side or just a bit more than ½ an acre) at his or her disposal on which to grow all that he or she needs.
This terribly small piece of land which must provide our own total sustenance is scary enough but it can only get worse! Population control people have preached this for years and the people have not listened. I do have to caution that somewhere there is a ½ acre of land supporting me, it most certainly is not the relatively useless acre where I live! Perhaps it is in Iowa or Central California - someplace, but not here - unless one considers jack rabbits sustenance.
I present this because the following depressing article with its very narrow scope involving the mortality of birthing mothers is a small part of the growing poverty and desperation of the living peoples on this planet and most of their problems are due to an exploding population.
Yes, we can deplore the greed and waste of our wealthy societies who don't seem to be empathetic enough toward the world's down-trodden - perhaps even people like me can be blamed. And yes, we can deplore any war or military action which destroys vast resources which could be used to help the world's down-trodden. But to what end I wonder?
In the animal kingdom we find that there are creatures such as sea turtles which can live for hundreds of years! Yes, they have sex and lay their eggs in the warm beach sand by the hundreds. When the babies hatch they scramble for their lives into the sea. However, in that mad scramble they are attacked by birds and even once in the water there are ‘monsters of the deep' waiting to gobble up their little bodies. The population of adult sea turtles is quite low. It is a similar result with rabbits where the balance of their population is maintained by their natural predators - and the balance of the predators themselves, including mountain lions and deer are interdependent.
I'm sure the same was true for us until we decided to become humans. With our brains we managed to overpower our predators, guarantee our sustenance through agriculture, medicine for our ills and injuries, and on and on and on. We have had the ability to solve every problem which might shorten our lives - and we have even improved our abilities to reproduce!
We have created religions and governments which promote our fecundity - we have, indeed, created an existence which will ultimately destroy us because of our success!
So as our world order presents yet a new crisis to be solved by our superior brains and ever decreasing square foot of land and environment and potential source for our sustenance, where does it end? When do we learn what we have to do collectively, not individually to survive? Frankly, I don't think we are quite that smart... So read on and weep.
WORLD HEALTH DAY: Dead Mothers Don't Talk
Mithre J. Sandrasagra, Inter Press Service (IPS) Fri Apr 7
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 7 (IPS) - The current crisis of skilled healthcare workers could deal a fatal blow to the global anti-poverty campaign agreed to by world leaders six years ago, U.N. experts warned on World Health Day.
"The global population is growing, but the number of health workers in many of the poorest countries is falling," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted Friday.
"Access to services is limited by inequity and poverty," Arletty Pinel, chief of the Reproductive Health Branch of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS.
According to U.N. estimates, Africa alone will require a million new health workers to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a global plan of action aimed at reducing poverty by half and radically improving the lives of at least one billion people by the year 2015.
Currently, there are no countries in Africa, Asia, or Latin America and the Caribbean that are on pace to meet the target of reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015, according to the Statistics Division of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
"Addressing the shortage of midwives through education, training and deployment to underserved areas would bring us much closer to achieving the MDG of improving maternal health," said Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of UNFPA.
"Concerted efforts are urgently needed to solve the shortage of midwives and other health workers -- a shortage that is severe in the poorest countries, putting the lives of millions of people at risk," said Obaid.
Midwives play a central role in saving the lives and improving the health of mothers and infants around the world. "Yet despite their importance, they often face poor working conditions, inadequate supplies and support and, as a female health workforce, are subject to gender discrimination," she continued.
Addressing the shortage of midwives could also bring countries closer to achieving another MDG, which is to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015.
Some 700,000 more midwives are needed to provide universal access to skilled care at birth, according to UNFPA.
"Contrary to child survival that has shown dramatic increases over the years, maternal deaths continue to maintain themselves at about the same level and in some countries have increased," Pinel said.
The chance that a woman will die due to pregnancy-related causes is one in 17 in least developed countries, one in 61 in developing countries, and one in 4,000 in industrialised countries, according to Family Care International (FCI), a New York-based NGO endorsed by the U.N.
The single most critical intervention for safe motherhood is to ensure that a health worker with midwifery skills is present at every birth, and transportation is available to a more comprehensive level of obstetric care in case of an emergency, according to UNFPA.
In the developing world today, only 58 percent of all deliveries take place with the assistance of a trained attendant.
Professional accredited midwives have successfully passed a relevant midwifery programme that is approved in the country where they practice. In some countries this may entail up to five years of university-level training, Pinel said.
In 76 countries, UNFPA supports training of health personnel in various aspects of maternal care, including life-saving skills for emergency cases.
Many expectant mothers, especially in Africa, deliver with the help of traditional birth attendants (TBAs). This practice has proved dangerous, according to FCI, because up to 15 percent of all births are complicated by a potentially fatal condition that TBAs are unqualified to handle.
Women attended by trained attendants are more likely to receive treatment early, when the situation can still be controlled.
In the majority of cases, maternal mortality reductions have been achieved where countries have introduced professional midwives, while at the same time phasing out TBAs without criminalising them, according to Pinel.
For example, Malaysia used media campaigns to persuade women to use midwives, but they also offered mechanisms where TBAs would partner with midwives.
Making TBAs partners with professional midwives has been applied in a number of countries including Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria and Uganda, according to Pinel.
In Yemen, there are eight maternal deaths daily -- one of the highest rates in the world. Seventy-five percent of Yemenis reside in villages in mostly isolated regions, whether in the mountains or the desert. Home deliveries in Yemen are estimated at 84 percent.
"We found that the main reasons for maternal mortality are the difficult circumstances women live under in these regions," said Asia Makwi, the project's programme officer.
Last year, UNFPA began a project in collaboration with the Yemeni Social Affairs and Labour Ministry to provide midwives with the tools they require to deliver babies safely, and distribute "safe childbirth kits". The kits consist of sterilised masks and gloves, soap for washing hands, pieces of plastic cloth and sterilised cotton, sterilised thread and razors, and a brochure from which midwives in any region can learn delivery procedures.
Countries that invest in high-quality training, placement and retention of midwives, while at the same time investing in facilities to provide emergency obstetric care, will show dramatic improvement of maternal mortality, according to Pinel.
"The time for action is now," said Kathlyn Ababio, the International Confereration of Midwives (ICM) representative here during the World Summit at the end of 2005, when world leaders reaffirmed their commitments to the MDGs.
"In Africa and Asia, only between a quarter and a third of women deliver with a skilled attendant, and even fewer have access to emergency obstetric and neonatal care. This must change, and soon," stressed Ababio.
ICM is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that unites 85 national midwives' associations from over 75 countries.
In sub-Saharan Africa, there are an estimated 750,000 health workers in a region that is home to 682 million people. By comparison, the ratio is 10 to 15 times higher in wealthy countries, according to Dr. Tim Evans, assistant director-general of Evidence and Information for Policy at the World Health Organisation (WHO).
"Without a dramatic increase in capacity, paediatric immunisations will not be administered; infectious outbreaks will not be contained; curable diseases will remain untreated; and women will keep dying needlessly in childbirth," Annan said.
"Dead mothers don't talk, and those that surround them sometimes see this as a 'normal' process of life. But most maternal deaths could have been avoided if the system hadn't failed those women," according to Pinel.
"The persistence of maternal mortality and morbidity, when the interventions to prevent them are well understood, represents a human rights violation and social injustice," she emphasised.
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