7000000000 humans on this pale blue dot

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

Carl Sagan: Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

@barn: no big words

(.).) BOOBS!!

Bob Brown put it pretty good today on his Press club lunceon, if only all others

were so straight talking, our world would be much much better . Even the

"Gay" debate has merit, as that hookup produces no exta mouths

In the '60s John Brunner wrote a novel entitled "Stand On Zanzibar". The title is a reference to being able to fit 7 billion humans on the island of Zanzibar if they all stood close together

From Wikipedia ...
"Its title refers to an early twentieth century claim that the world's population could fit onto the Isle of Wight (area 381 km?) if they were all standing upright. Brunner remarked that the growing world population now required a larger island-the 3.5 billion people living in 1968 could stand together on the Isle of Man (area 572 km?), while the 7 billion people whom he projected would be alive in 2010 would need to stand on Zanzibar (area 1554 km?). Throughout the book, the image of the entire human race standing shoulder-to-shoulder on a small island is a metaphor for a crowded world where each person feels hemmed in by a prison made not of metal bars, but of other human beings. By the end of the book, some of that crowd is (metaphorically) knee deep in the Indian Ocean surrounding the island."

From that, I guess that the entire world's population would even have sleeping room on Tassie (26,410 sqmiles - Zanzibar 950 sqmiles)). My point being that the Earth is far far from being overcrowded - just some spots on the Earth are becoming pretty crowded.

As for feeding them all; more than enough food is produced globally to feed the entire global population. This (http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=308830) is an interesting read on the problem. There's plenty of literature on the topic, but in a nutshell it mostly highlights the fact that the rich countries waste more than they use while the poor countries starve. It is interesting to note, however, that both China and India (the 2 most populous countries on Earth) are experiencing obesity problems more than hunger problems. This fact holds true for the Earth as a whole.

We need to be less greedy and learn to share the riches that we have - and, no, I'm definitely not a leftie. Ask loggie .

ps The fact that we've not found even 1 other planet suitable to support Earthly life suggests to me that we are indeed in a very VERY "... privileged position in the Universe."

This needs a thread of its own.