I once saw a educational film made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1955. In it, an ag scientist claimed that by the year 2000, the earth’s population could be as high as 2 billion. He was asking how the Earth could contain and support such a population. Of course the scientist’s speculative projection of the earth’s population was way off. In 2014, there are 7.125 billion humans inhabiting the planet. They eat, drink, pollute, deplete wild animal populations, get sick, kill each other, use natural resources to keep warm, cool off, move, and remain stationary. I’m not going to get into global warming, soil depletion, or air pollution at this time, although overpopulation is at the root cause of these problems.
China leads the way with 1.357 billion, followed closely by India with 1.252 billion. I remember when I was a kid in the late 1950s, there was a theory floating around that the Chinese were purposely overpopulating so that they could build an army of millions with which they could eventually invade and overrun the United States so that they could get its abundant natural resources. The theory was totally wrong. The Chinese are taking over the United States economic resources without invading or firing a shot. They are loaning us money, picking up our debt, and making cheap labor available to U.S. companies. The Chinese have human labor in abundance, including skilled labor. That’s how you win the game, folks.
The largest city by population in the world (according to the World Atlas) is Tokyo, Japan with a population of 37,126,000… WOW no wonder the NFL wants a franchise there! New York has regained it’s position as the Western Hemisphere’s largest city after failing behind Mexico City for a few decades. Remember the TV show “The Naked City” from the late 1950s and early 60s? The ending went “There are 8 million stories in the naked city and this has been one of them.” New York City now has 20,464,000 Yankee fans within its five boroughs. That makes it the 8th largest city in the world. The City of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates has a population of 1.5 million people. There was no such place as Dubai in 1960. It was developed as an oil drilling station 1971. A million and a half people have come there in just 44 years.
Indianapolis stands as the 13th largest city in the United States with an official population of 834,852. Remember in 1964 when the U.S. Census declared Indianapolis to be the nation’s 11th largest city with a population of over a million? Economic stress caused a population decline here, as it did with other cities in the country as urban flight caused the counties surrounding Marion County to grow. The 800,000 figure doesn’t take into consideration the growing population of Hamilton, Greenwood, and the other doughnut counties around us. There could be as many as 2 million people dwelling in central Indiana. Marion County has one of the largest areas of undeveloped land of any urban center in the country. Let us hope in remains that way. Indiana sees itself as a small, rural state, but hat’s not true. We are the 15th largest state in the Union with a population of 6,570,902. That’s a whole bunch of Hoosiers.
I don’t know about you, but I plan on taking the Space Shuttle and pioneering the dark side of the moon. The environment may be hostile, but it couldn’t be any worse than the earth’s environment at this time.