Last week the population of our global community hit and surpassed seven billion. We started out pretty slowly, but – over the last few decades – we’ve exploded our baby-making and alive-people-keeping, which has resulted in our planet’s population doubling in the last 50 years.
Wow. Seven billion, eh?
How did this happen? Well, just in case rhetorical questions aren’t your thing, here’s a pretty cool explanation from NPR:
How do you feel about this? Where do you fit into this story of human life? Check out this supercool tool from BBC News and learn your exact number in our world’s current population figures.
So, with at least 6,999,999,999 people on the planet besides you, what will be some of our community’s biggest challenges going forward? Here are the top three challenges that you and I can work on together:
- Food and Water. There’s enough of it, sure, but it’s not really distributed equally or efficiently and we waste a lot of it, especially after Thanksgiving dinners and when we flush toilets in North America. Oh, and we also destroy and contaminate a lot of it, too.
- Greed. It almost ruined our global economy three years ago and, well, it hasn’t really gone away. In fact, it’s being applied to strategically control many, many things from the above category. Transforming our world from me to we might be the most important – and difficult – hurdle that our global community clears.
- Aliens and/or Robots from the Future. If James Cameron and Will Smith have taught us anything it’s that, eventually, our fragmented global community will unite to confront terrifying aliens/cyborgs bent on destroying us. If your name is John Connor or Neo please wear a helmet when you do dangerous things, as you will be important in this struggle.
To wrap things up I encourage you to expand your mind regarding what you know about our brave new world. This fact-filled video with sweet beats presents some compelling data on everything from language to technology to education to the environment to media:
Alright, that’s it, folks! I’m gonna wrap this up before my Android (a phone, not Lieutenant Commander Data) becomes even more suspicious…
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Masthead photo courtesy of UggBoy UggGirl
I don to think that ther are too, many problems. On the planet for nwo. We can hve moe like that plnet in staff Wars.
– PetE
Articulate as always, Pete. I’m glad that you’re one of my 6,999,999,999 friends/strangers-who-are-future-friends on planet Earth.