1000 days to the 7th Billion Human: What Do We Tell Her?

We have roughly 1,000 days before the seventh billion human being joins the rest of us on Planet Earth. A worthwhile exercise would be for each of us to take 15 minutes as we ride the bus to work, run on our tread mill, or sip our coffee, and imagine what we would say to our seventh billion fellow human being about the human condition awaiting her. This conversation, however hypothetical, can help us take stock of the global constellation that we all have helped produce.

The first thing we could tell our newcomer is that she can expect to live in excess of 70 years, and that this is twice as long as what people counted on a century ago. We would tell her that while the world is a very unequal place in terms of income and wealth, disparities in life expectancy are decreasing. We could report in good conscience that the world possesses some effective global public health instruments, and that we have eradicated small pox and might see the end of polio and malaria in her lifetime. She could be told to expect to have more than 11 years of schooling, education being another area where gross but diminishing disparities loom large in the world. We could also report that the world which awaits her prizes gender equality more than any other era, so she can anticipate a more enabling world than her mother or grandmother endured.

In the spirit of first giving the good news, we can in good faith report that she will have capabilities which can not only empower her but would have been the envy of emperors and tycoons from earlier centuries. In terms of information and knowledge, our newcomer will have unprecedented access through the likes of Wikipedia, JSTOR, and Google Scholar. The breadth of information and knowledge and the ease of her access would have been unfathomable to the Encylopédistes and Academies of Sciences of previous centuries.

At the same time, we should admit to her that there are critical risks. Although we know about the mind-numbing results of previous genocides and have profusely sworn not to allow this ultimate crime to take place again, the sad fact is that if our seventh billion fellow human were to face genocide, chances are that nobody will come to her rescue. We would need to tell her that not only the able military powers of the world have abdicated their solemn responsibility to protect, but that they have also not allowed the development of institutions for people to join a UN Volunteer Army.

We would also need to tell her that we have set into motion, first unknowingly and for the last 20 years in full realization, a chain of events which will soon become irreversible and will lead to catastrophic consequences through climate change. We would need to add that while we were able to devise a scheme for collective global action to prevent ozone depletion, a similar framework to contain climate change has eluded us.

More importantly, working on a welcome message to our seventh billion fellow human being provides us with a rare but overdue opportunity for introspection as well as a frank accounting of the implicit responsibilities we have toward other human beings and future generations. The contours of our epic interdependence should be evident to many of us by now. What is less apparent is our working answer to what our responsibilities are toward each other and what, in turn, our rights are. Without some notion of global civics, the waters of interdependence are treacherous to navigate. Doing unto others what we would have others do unto us remains the most resilient benchmark for decent conduct in human history. This hypothetical conversation with our newcomer could set us on a path toward answering some to these cardinal questions.

Comments

[JScott]

Tell em 'don't have any kids', it'll ruin the planet.

[greyhound2]

Easter Island is a good example of what is in store for the planet. When the Polynesians first arrived, they found a lush timbered island suitable for humans. After generations of over-breeding, the island was denuded of its forests and the soil depleated. Faced with hungrey mouths to feed, the only food source left was each other.

[WilliamL]

We tell him or her to adopt.

[kendraro]

Truly amazing is the biology that drives us to reproduce - even in the face of a world in chaos - but people have been doing it for a looong time. I myself found out I was expecting in the middle of a 6 day blackout from hurricane Fran.

[eciaccio]

How about: "Abandon all hope all you who enter here"?

[Weirdo]

1000 days to the 7th Billion Human: What Do We Tell Her?


Keep your pants on?

[jsarets]

No if she's Sudanese. They give women 20 lashings for wearing pants.

[mamacat]

Of all of the problems facing us, it seems to me that overpopulation of the planet is the crucial common thread running through them all.
If we could stabilise the human population, we could then make real strides against pollution, hunger, poverty, and sickness.

If we halve the pollution per person, it will not be sufficient to prevent a run-away green house effect if the population continues to double every few decades.
If we double the food output of the biosphere, something which we may not be able to do, such an accomplishment will not be sufficient to avoid hunger if the total populaion doubles every few decades.
If we double the GDP of all nations, but allow the population to triple, the income per individual will have to go down, not up.
In 1979 China instituted the one-child per family policy. When is the rest of the world going to catch up to China?

[DrVeruju]

Mamacat ... It seems that far too many people are unable to grap the simple consequences of the exponential growth of our population that you highlight so well. There seems to be a collective desire to ignore the perilous situation that we are in. " we must build more houses for the growing population" "we must grow more food for the growing population" are the only responses we hear to population pressure. Never "we need to stop/ reverse population growth".

I have been trying to point out that one child per family, worldwide for two or three generations would bring the global population back to a level where the demands for food, water, fuel and resources in general would be much more sustainable. However, I don't think much will happen until women, worldwide, are fully empowered and properly informed. Do mothers really want to bear children that are certain to starve?

[HamidN]

Why are we assuming it will be a girl? It might be a boy!! :)

[Mortifyd]

Because women outnumber men globally.

[poomplet]

That has nothing to do with births...it's that women live longer.

Birth rates are pretty much exactly even

[eileenflemingWAWA]

2009 is the final year of the UN's Decade of Creating a Culture of NONVIOLENCE for All the Children of the World.

So, we tell her we are sorry that the US is on the record as abstaining to support the initiative because it "would make it too hard for US to go to war."

And we tell her that religiosit­y/fundamen­talism has held up evolution, but we "are all children of the Most High God."-Psalm 82:6

And we tell her "To think deeply [anyway and] grow angry and to anger others! And if [she/he] cannot tolerate this anger, [she/he is] wasting the time [spent] thinking deeply! [Because] one of the rewards to deep thought is the hot glow of anger at discovering a wrong, but if anger is taboo, thought will starve to death!"-Jules Henry

And we tell her-please forgive US, for too many of US knew NOT what we did-and did NOT!

http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=825&Itemid=195

[azdisabledsci]

I pity all babies born into this world, for the earth cannot sustain the population.

[Jimboy17]

Our overpopulation of the planet makes me positively ill.

[RMankovitz]

I would have a slightly different story to tell. It goes like this.

First, the good news.

You lifespan is likely to be shorter than that of the previous generation, and will likely be filled with many disabling illnesses, leading to a very poor quality of life. The odds are high that you will succumb to an infection for which there is no treatment. Your chances of successfully conceiving a healthy child are extremely low due to the toxic environment. During your lifetime, the death rate is likely to increase significantly, and the birth rate will plummet.

Your education is likely to be inferior to those of past generations. Worldwide starvation will be at an all time high, as will regional warfare. You options for a place to live will be severely limited, because soon all land adjacent to the ocean will be underwater. Many of the plant and animal species alive during the prior generation will be extinct during your lifetime.

Now for the bad news.

Based on studies of other living species that have ignored nature and exceeded the carrying capacity of their environment, it is estimated that your generation may well be one of the last for our species.

Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com

[2sunny]

Not exactly the best news of the day......enough to get me to click on your website.
Very interesting.