Too Much Too Young

I've often heard the 'fact' repeated that there are more people alive today than have ever lived and died since the beginning of time. Ever. I've read it on the internet too so it must be right, right?

I used that self-same internet to check it out (I know; the irony) and guess what I found? It's a total fabrication. Depending on your view of the beginning of time and what constitutes a human being (and please don't go all creationist on me here) there have been anywhere between seven and thirty people lived and died for every one person alive today. So that's one 'fact' debunked. My good deed for the day. Next week I'll take on fraudulent psychics (i.e. all of them) and those who believe England will win the World Cup.

But I did find one quite staggering fact while I was reading. I think that it will surprise and maybe even shock you too. Brace yourself, here it is.

In my lifetime the world's population has doubled.

I'll give you a moment for that one to sink in. It's doubled. Twice as many. One plus one equals four. That could possibly be understandable if the rise had been from say five hundred to a thousand. A net figure of five hundred more people alive would be pretty reasonable to me, but the real number is a bit bigger than that.

When I was born among the dinosaurs in the mid 'sixties there were just over three billion people alive worldwide. Now there are seven and a quarter billion, give or take a few who hid under the bed when the census taker came to call. And every single one of them needs feeding. And a roof over their head. And needs their waste disposing of, in whatever form that might take.

Many people think that this mass population increase isn't sustainable and that someday soon we'll cross over some kind of tipping point. We'll run out of places to live or to grow our food. Or we'll poison our home world. Or blow it up. Or change the weather so drastically that the earth becomes totally uninhabitable. Any way you look at it, we're doomed. Aren't we?

Well not necessarily. Not everybody is so sure that breeding more people is such a bad thing. Some say that a stranger is just a friend that they haven't met yet. Me? I say that a stranger is someone to whom I have yet to sell any of my books. If even a small percentage of those three and a quarter billion - and the figure has increased by around three thousand since I started writing this piece - bought one of my books then I'd be a very rich man indeed.

Can anyone recommend a good translation service?

© Shaun Finnie 2014