Busting the Overpopulation Myth
You’ve probably been told in schools and in the media that the earth is overpopulated and that this overpopulation is why we need things like birth control and abortion and restrictive family planning policies. It is also the reason why the earth is experiencing dramatic episodes of climate change. In today’s article, I’m going to test that theory against known facts in order to prove to you once and for all that the world is not only NOT overpopulated, it’s not even close.
How Much Land Does the United States Contain?
I’m from America, so I’m going to unfairly pick upon America because I can. The United States alone contains 2.3 billion acres of land. Before we get excited about that number, only 290 million of it is what is considered “arable” land, which is the kind of land that people can live on and farm.
That, for the record, is a land mass roughly the size of Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, and Iowa Combined. Just six states.
How Many People Live on Planet Earth?
As of right now, we have about 7 billion people living on this planet. Of course, that number changes each day.
What Would Happen If Every Person Moved to the United States?
ACK! We would run out of land, right? Not really.
If you divide 290 million by 7 billion, you get just one 400th of an acre per person. Now, that may not seem much, but it works out to 1800 square feet of land. Per person. And that’s assuming that we only assign spaces to live horizontally and use no vertical space at all.
How Much Land Is 1800 Square Feet?
To put 1800 square feet in context, the average 2 bedroom apartment is about half that size. The average 3 bedroom house is only 1200 square feet. It’s just 100 square feet smaller than the size of the average 4 bedroom house. That’s plenty of land for an entire family to live, and — again- that only assumes we’re building horizontally and not vertically on the space.
Conclusion: Totally BUSTED
This myth is so laughable and so simply and easily proven to be a lie that it’s incredible it’s still hanging around. If we fit every person in the world into the United States, we would have 5 continents (not including Antarctica) where we could house new people if we needed to. The world’s not running out of space anytime soon.
