six billion and counting

Here is an interesting read from the 1999.11.15 issue of Time magazine sent by Harold Musnitsky from Penn Valley, Pennsylvania.

If we could shrink the world’s population to a village of 100 persons, maintaining all the existing ratios, the village would look like this: 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the western hemisphere (North, Central and South America) and 8 Africans. Seventy of the 100 would be nonwhite. Seventy would be non-Christian. Six people would control 50% of the world’s wealth, and all of them would be citizens of the U.S. Seventy people would be unable to read, more than half would suffer from malnutrition, and 80 would live in substandard housing. Only 1 of the 100 would have attended college.

Some believe we do not inherit our land from ancestors but borrow it from our children. What we leave them will be determined by an increasing population and the calendar. Our failure to solve the population problem will no longer be a fault; it will be a judgment.

Indeed so!

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