A recent National Geographic article pointed out the ominous implications of any continued explosive global growth population even as it approaches 7 billion... what about the planet's capacity to house anything like the numbers JWs expect to see resurrected onto their "New Earth?"
Can the Earth's Ecology Withstand A "New World" as Conceived By JWs?
by Room 215 6 Replies latest jw friends
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minimus
Don't worry about it. Jehovah will take care of it!
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DanaBug
Jehovah will make nearby planets habitable and teach them how to build spaceships to travel to them.
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sir82
There was an Awake article 20 or so years ago....or is it in the "Insight" books?
Anyway, it divided up the earth's land mass among 20 billion people and the result was something like 0.25 acres per person, which they said was enough to produce food for everyone.
I have no idea where they came up with 20 billion, but they indicated that's how many would be resurrected.
There are some painfully obvious flaws with that of course.
If 100% of the earth's surface area is devoted to producing crops for humans, what will animals eat? Where will people live, dispose of waste, etc.?
How much wheat could be grown in the Andes, Himalayas, Rockies, etc.?
Oh wait I forgot: "Jehovah will provide...you just have to get there."
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Leolaia
*** g70 10/8 p. 19 Where Would All the People Live? ***
It is just in recent centuries that earth?s population has grown tremendously. In this regard, Dr. Albert L. Elder, as president of the American Chemical Society, stated at a meeting of that society in 1960:
"It took over 5000 years of human history up to about 1820 to reach a world population of 1.1 billion. Within the following century, population doubled. Now, it stands at about 2.8 billion and could reach 3 billion early in the 1960's [as it has done]. Thus, in less than 50 years there has been an increase in population equivalent to that which occurred during the first 50 centuries."
So those who are alive today represent a sizable number of those who have ever lived on this earth. In fact, in 1966 a speaker at the Florida State Pharmaceutical Association convention observed: "It is now estimated that 25 per cent of all the people who have ever lived are alive today." -- Jacksonville Journal, May 18, 1966.
On the basis of that estimate, the population throughout all human history would be only some 14,000,000,000 persons. But suppose that many more than that have lived on the earth. Let us add 10,000,000,000 more persons and assume that a population of 24,000,000,000 is involved. Would there be room for them? Well, since the earth has over 36,000,000,000 acres, there would be more than an acre and a half of land for each person! But would an acre and a half be enough to produce the needed food? There is good reason to believe that only a fraction of that acre and a half per person would be needed for food, leaving room for recreation areas and sanctuaries for animal and plant life.
Earth Can Produce Enough Food
According to The World Today: Its Patterns and Cultures (1966, p. 76), less than one eighth of the total land area of the earth is suitable for growing crops. The yield of much of the land that is cultivated is very poor, and farming methods are often not the most efficient. But even now, under conditions that are far from ideal, it is admitted that earth has the potential to support a much larger population. For example, Time magazine of July 13, 1970, in an article about new, high-yield strains of wheat and rice, reported that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization "now maintains that the world's agricultural potential is great enough to feed 157 billion people." Surely, then, the earth could support 24,000,000,000 persons.
An acre and a half for each person! Adjusting to the current population factor, this equals a plot of land 238 feet x 238 feet. Is that enough space for a house, garden and small zoo? The paradise earth doctrine is threatened if the present growing population of nearly 7 billion lives to old age and isn't executed by Jehovah at Armageddon. All those people would have to be resurrected and added to the number already waiting to be resurrected. The Society will probably need to change the resurrection doctrine yet again to make it a more exclusive resurrection. But wait, the Population Reference Bureau estimates that 64.7 billion people have lived since 2000 BC. This much higher figure more faithfully represents the infant mortality rate that in premodern times claimed the lives of so many humans in their first years of life. Which also raises the question -- what will Paradise earth be like when the majority of the world's population consists of crying babies?
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james_woods
Of course it makes no sense - but that does not stop credulous JWs from just saying "Jehovah will take care of everything for us".
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Room 215
and that's before such issues as the rate of rain forest deforestation, global warming and rise of ocean waters, the implications of rising consumerism and aspirations in previously "have-not" third world countries, etc., etc, are factored into the equation.