[meteorite-list] NOW REALLY OT - What do you get when you cross an astrologer andalawyer?

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat Apr 23 22:28:41 2005
Message-ID: <426B0438.93CD3D9_at_bhil.com>

Hi, Martin, List,

Martin Altmann wrote:

> "of all these human beings made possible, but their health, safety,
> lifespan, wealth and luxury have all been increased beyond the wildest
> expectations of anyone alive 500 years ago."
>
> Well, unfortunately you have to delete the "all" from that sentence......

    Yes, there are many of those alive on the planet who are in dire
circumstances and in need of much more than they have and undoubtedly deserve
more assistance than they are getting, but...
    Even among the worst afflicted populations in the world, their
circumstances, though perilous, are dramatically better than they were centuries
ago. When I was born, the population of the African continent wasn't yet 200
million people; it's more than 800 million today.
    The reason is the dramatic drop in the death rate in that last 70 years and
most especially among children. In that 3/4's of a century, more than a half
billion children have been born in Africa and 75-80% of them would have died
while still children, but now 75-80% of them live. Living is a big improvement
over death, when death is delivered in the form of misery too severe to survive.

    It took 1600 years for the human population of the world to double from
225-250 million in the year 1 in our current calendar to 475-525 million when
the science revolution began (1600). It took only 200 years (1800) for the
human population of the world to double again and then only 130 years (1930) for
the human population of the world to double yet again and then only 53 years
(1983) for the human population of the world to double one more time! (If
predictions are correct, 39 years to the next doubling in 2022! But the rate of
growth is slowing dramatically, and we may not reach 10 billion at all.)
    I have lived to see the human population of the world more than triple in my
lifetime (so far!), and I hope be around for the quadrupling year, although it's
very doubtful I'll make it to the quintupling year! When I was a child in
school and we studied the countries of the world, we were very impressed with
the sheer teeming size of India, a veritable ocean of human beings with scarcely
room to crowd another one in. If I live for another 15 years, the United States
will have more people at that point than India did then. (I think we'll all
fit!)
    While India, contrary to all the predictions of doom, starvation, and
disease one heard in the 1950's (and 60's and 70's and 80's...), has nearly
tripled its population, pushing past the billion person mark all while
increasing lifespan, decreasing mortality, pumping up individual wealth, average
income and GNP, pursuing literacy relentlessly, advancing in every measure you
can find to measure except traffic congestion. There's hardly a village small
enough to not have a satellite TV, a telephone and the Internet! If you find
one, tell the Indian government and the plugs will be installed next month...
    The unfortunate "not all" are only relatively unfortunate (which doesn't
mean we should help them catch up). However, most of the most "unfortunate" are
unfortunate not in the basic economy of their lives but in their enemies, i.e.,
presently Darfor, Eastern Congo, formerly Rwanda, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and so
forth.
    And of course, there's trouble ahead. We're humans, and when one talks of
humans, there's always trouble in the forecast! It's our nature. But, we have
only begun to deal with our problems as a species rationally for the past 500
years, and then only very haltingly. We are getting better at it, just
improving very slowly. We're still learning the simple things... Hmmm, better
put a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean... Hmmm, maybe we should keep
track of all those Near Earth Asteroids... Hmmm, maybe we should look for a
better power source than burning up dead dinosaurs... Hmmm, since so many of
the children are staying alive, maybe we shouldn't have 10 or 12 kids...
    If you like to contemplate change in the world, then think of this: the ten
countries that will contribute the greatest numbers of new humans to the world
by the year 2025 are India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Indonesia,
United States of America, Bangladesh, Zaire, and Iran, IN THAT ORDER. These ten
countries alone will add 1,329,000,000 people to the world's population between
1995 and 2025. (They're right on track so far, after ten years.)
    Even more interesting to contemplate is the U.N.'s median projection for the
same ten biggest contributors to human growth (except that Zaire is out and
Brazil is in) by the year 2050, only 45 years from now. These ten countries
will add 3,907,000,000 people to the planet! The developed world as a whole
will shrink; Europe will shrink by 95 million people. The number of people over
age 65 will grow from 350 million to 1.4 billion. India will be bigger than
China. By 2050, just Eastern Africa will have many more people than all the
countries of South America, the Caribbean and Oceania combined. And Western
Africa alone will have the same population as Europe!
    Are those the winds of change I hear...?

Sterling K. Webb
Received on Sat 23 Apr 2005 10:28:08 PM PDT