15 Billion Human Beings by 2100?

Some population expert representing the UN has predicted that there'll be 15 billion people on the planet by the end of this century. No big deal there; at least in terms of the prediction, anyway. Anyone with an ounce of skill in this field can do wobbly maths with logistic functions on a sigmoid curve for the exponential growth of mankind...the trick being to understand the saturation point where growth slows down and, eventually, stops. We don't appear to be anywhere near that and we remain, quite obviously, in the exponential growth phase.

A Licence to Bonk? Should be
 "World Restraint Day?

But why? George Monbiot argues that over-consumption is to blame. That's paradoxical, given that "consumption" (or TB) nearly did for us, once upon a time. Regular readers will know that I love to disagree with Mr Monbiot when I get the chance. It's not over-consumption that's led to this huge population and its prediction to double inside ninety years.

So what is really to blame? Shagging...that's what.

All the thinktankery in the world can come up with sociological crap and data to prove that this over-consumption issue here or that macro-economic fundamental there is the cause but in the end, it's all about unprotected sex between male and female human beings (plus a little bit of weird science and eugenics around the edges).

So, taking Verhulst's compressed S-curve theory, when will the saturation occur? Don't know. Nobody knows. But there's a fair chance that we're close already, given the poverty in some parts of the planet. Even if there was an even distribution of the world's resources, there's probably only enough to go round for basic subsistence levels for another few decades. And one can't really see Philip Green of Fred Goodwin sharing out their wealth any time before they make their richly deserved trips to hell in whichever handcart has been supplied.

And what about available space? Saturation points of population and resources are skewed because of the way both are distribued. Here's some wonky maths...

The land mass area of the planet is about 150 million square kilometers. There are about seven billion people. So that's about twenty thousand square meters each. My house and small garden comprises a land footprint of about one hundred square metres and is probabaly about average for the UK. So I'm only taking up one half of one per cent of my share, and I live with another person too, so we are only using one quarter of one per cent each! OK, there are quite a lot of uninhabitable places on the planet but, even so, if the average person is only using what me and my wife are using, then there'd have to be over ninety-nine per cent of the earth's land surface unavailable to make it into a crisis. Result!

Inhabitable, Inhospitable, or both?

Let's look at somewhere that is, largely, inhabitable (as opposed to inhospitable): France. The area of France is 640,000 square kilometers. If we ignore the Alps and Pyrenees bits that are too high and snowy and some of the Massif Centrale, there's probably about half a million square kilometers to play with. If the population of the world was fifteen billion, as predicted, then everyone would have around thiry-five square meters of France to live on and if they lived in families of four, then that would be almost one hundred and fifty square meters per family...half as much again as that which I live on and, let's be fair, even a measly thirty-five is a damned sight more than the average human being has at his or her disposal at the moment. Of course, such an arrangement would mean that there was no room for all the other infrastructure like shops, service workplaces, transport and all that but on the assumption that everyone would need about twice as much of that as they need living space then that just means that instead of France alone, the population could be sorted out across Germany, Spain and Portugal as well. This population enclave could as well be anywhere on the planet and not necessarily central Europe. It's just that it's convenient for temperate conditions climatically and for me to berate the French (a bit).

And that leaves the rest of the planet available for everything else, viz:

1) Manufactories: These can all be placed near the natural resources required.
2) Farming: Again, placed in locations ideal for crop cultivation and livestock rearing.
NB: Where both Manufacturing and Farming require human employees, these can be migrant workers from "Fraspaporger" (that's the new population centre I've just described) for a few months at a time - a bit like the old kibbutz idea, I suppose.
3) Holidays! To suit all tastes from the arctic regions to the Caribbean.
4) Prisons - there are lots of ideal locations already in Northern Russia...or just use Australia again
5) Everything else...

Plenty of room, then. In fact, if Fraspaporger was expanded into Poland, Italy and Denmark (i.e. "Fraspaporger Politaden", and who wouldn't want an address that ended like that?) then the population of the world could go up to more than twenty five billion quite easily and still be accommodated, fed, watered and kept mostly sane.

So why (on earth)  isn't the world sorted out like this already?

Oh, yes, that's it: Greed, Wrath, Gluttony, Pride, Envy, Sloth and, of course, bringing me back to my original point...LUST. So, instead of ushering in my Brave New World, all we have to do is stop people shagging indiscriminately with no thought for the future...even on a Friday night.

Over to all of you, then...