Resource Distribution
Developed countries use more
than their share of
resources.
For
example,
the
average American uses 20
times
the energy of a Costa Rican
and
70 times of
a Bangladeshi. The world’s richest 1 billion people use 80% of the world’s resources. That
means that the other five billion plus people use only 20% of the world’s
resources.
Scientists say that there is enough water for everyone. The problem is that the water isn’t everywhere where there are people. Water can be found all around the world but most of it is salty or frozen. One half billion people have persistent water shortages for part or all of the year. In 25 years that number will be three billion, not accounting for global warming. Some geologists think that water shortages will stop the population explosion.
Food,
like water, is also unequally distributed. About 1 billion people don’t have
enough
calories to even walk around. Ten
million people die of hunger every year,
mostly infants and children. If the whole world ate like North Americans (30%
of calories from animals) only 2.6 billion
people
could be fed. There would be enough
food for everyone if we all were vegetarian. A lot of grain is used to feed
the
animals we eat; 7.3 kg of grain
is needed to make
.0004 kg of beef. The demand for fish has
grown with the population. Over-fishing is when we take too many fish that they
can’t reproduce
fast enough to keep up. Technological advances in fishing
and the demand for fish
have caused
over-fishing. The way to solve over-fishing is fish farming. Fish farming is
when you domesticate fish. Farmed fish grow faster and gain more weight with
the same amount of food than land animals. It’s weird that people in Europe
and North America are worried about overeating when most other people
in the world
are hungry
or starving.
