![]() If all the habitable land on Earth were equally distributed among all human beings present on Earth, this is the per capita share of good land per person. Subtracting this uninhabitable 57% (32,665,981 mi 2) from the total land area leaves 24,642,757 square miles or 15.77 billion acres of habitable land.ĭivide this figure by the current human population of 7 billion (that's7,000 million people!) and you get just under one hectare (2.3 acres) per person. The total land surface area of Earth is about 57,308,738 square miles, of which about 24% is mountainous and about 33% is desert. Let's do the math again, but this time for the entire planet. Sounds plausible enough, right? Without going into the fact that almost half the State is desert, notice we have not allowed for any roads, shopping malls, schools, hospitals, football stadiums, prisons, sewage plants, rivers, lakes, reservoirs, golf courses, parks, and what else?How much land does it take to support a human being? Dividing this figure by the current human population of 7 billion leaves each person with less than 100 square meters, a small plot the size of a big room about 10 m x 10 m. Some like to assert that everybody on Earth could be fit into the State of Texas, using logic as follows. Humans have occupied almost all of Earth's habitable lands. Similarly, humans cannot sustain themselves for very long in mountains, though we often visit these regions on a temporary basis. Indeed, they all face serious water shortages. ![]() ![]() Cities built in deserts like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Tuscon, cannot exist without importing water or pumping groundwater out of deep aquifers. ![]() People can visit deserts but long-term survival in desert regions is very tenuous. One third of Earth's surface is desert which supports very few people. Humans cannot live without food and water. "Land, they aren't making any more of it" - Will Rogers ![]()
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