Oceans of Opportunity

Since 2008, this Blog has been a communications priority providing shorts, op-eds, and bramblings that communicate our evolution to ‘a new life in the sea’.

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when the population goes boom, I’m going splash

'A New Life in the Sea' by Michael LombardiTime.com offered an interesting read recently about what the world will look like in 2050. Sounds like a ways off, but its not when we consider what needs to happen to accommodate the boom that we’re talking about.

Today, Planet Earth is home to just shy of 7 billion of us. That’s 7 billion mouths to feed, 7 billion consumers of water, 7 billion demands for personal space, and 7 billion potential propagators of disease. Food, water, shelter, disease – the rudiments of keeping some sense of GAIA here on Earth.

According to the article, in 2050, we’re looking at 9.5 billion people. That’s less than 40 years away. Go back in time to 1950 – just 2.5 billion. When we hear our parents talk about the good ol’ days, they aren’t kidding. We need to listen to learn lessons about appreciating time and space, because it is soon to be on its way out.

To lend some perspective about being neighborly in 2050…for those of you reading from suburbia, look outside to your neighbors house. Now, add another house in between; another family of 4, with a dog, a cat, and a goldfish. Things are going to get tight here on the terrestrial world. For those of you in the cities – think it’s a fight on the subways now?

We have some serious proactive thinking and strategic planning to do to get ready. What’s scary is that it will sneak up on us, with population growth rates only hovering at about 1% per year (remember its compounded, just like credit card interest). Can Planet Earth handle all this? I just don’t know, and to be honest I have my doubts. Natural resource depletion is a real thing, and its already going in the wrong direction thanks to humans’ use and abuse. My opinion is that 2050 will come with a largely manufactured existence, and a vastly altered perception of high quality of life.

The obvious solution to the squeeze here on land, is to look at the unused area of our Planet. Terra firma may very well reach critical mass, possibly even causing some degree of natural selection or mass extinction to set in, but this is avoidable if we consider the 95% of living space on this Planet that has yet to be permanently occupied – the oceans. Dennis Chamberland – engineer, visionary, explorer – said it best, ‘Population ZERO‘. Its a frontier there for the taking…

Image via Wikipedia
I have my plot picked out, and will be planting my flag in its soil very soon. No neighbors, no subways, no sitting in traffic and fighting 9.5 billion people trying to get where I’m going – and its right here in our backyards…the solution to the population boom is the obvious; and that is to make use of the space we have been given. Unfortunately, we haven’t figured out how to get there just yet…but it is coming.
I recently drove through campus at the University of Rhode Island. It’s an exciting time, as new students are attending campus orientation, things are quiet, yet the University is seemingly just at rest, waiting for the surge of fresh new energy with the coming school year. Hanging from lamp posts lining the campus roads are signs saying ‘Think Big, We Do’, with a picture of Planet Earth. When I see Planet Earth, I see one thing – the color blue. It’s water, and it covers the vast majority of our planet. When I ‘think big’, its about how to get there – not only is it our destiny, but it is essential for the survival of our species.
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