Some things make me really optimistic about the future. For instance, that we all need the same things at a much higher level of cohesion than we care to acknowledge.
The best example would be housing and folks often argue about how many people can live on this planet, who has the right to have a good life etc.
Well, someone did the calculation and apparently there’s enough room on earth for 8 billion people to live in houses on suburban lots, yessir:
4 bil households (8 bil people) with each household living on a detached 500 sq m lot (20m x 25m or apx 1/8th acre) => 4,000,000,000 hh * 500 sq m => 2mil sq km.
The earth has 149mil sq km of land area so those suburbs would take up about 1.7% of the land. If you subtract out antarctica (14 mil sq km), siberia (13 mil sq km) and 3/4 of canada (7 mil sq km), the sahara desert (9mil sq km)… you’re still left with about 106 mil sq km so we’re using about 1.8% of the land.
Density isn’t evenly distributed you say? Well, let’s look at only china then… Some 1.4 bil people in 9.6mil sq km. Everyone living on in 500 sq m lots means 350,000 sq km, or about 5% of the land. Lots of western china is too inhospitable you say? Fine, subtract out Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xining (forget the fact that 60mil+ people live there). That’s half of china’s land area! You’re still left with around 4.860 mil sq km. So everyone’s suburban lots would fit in about 7% of the land.
Don’t stress about driving and pollution, now. We aren’t there yet, we don’t drive that far that often and, by then it will be level-5 cars, efficient and clean.
A plot for you, a tree in there and animals running by is what we all need.
Welcome to the Slow Slow Hybrid and Healthy World.
I think it is important to remember that this is technically possible.