August 9, 2012 12:10 pm
If We All Lived Like UAE Citizens, We’d Need 5.4 Earths
Dubai’s man-made Jumeirah Islands. Photo: Imre Solt
The latest awesome infographic from Tim De Chant’s Per Square Mile answers the question, how much land would 7 billion people need to live like the people of these countries?
Despite having a population of 150 million, if we all lived like Bangladeshis there’d be plenty of Earth left over for Mother Nature to do her thing and provide resources for all.
At just 4.7 million people, however, Costa Rica tips the scale. We’d need nearly another half-Earth to support everyone.
Whoops, here comes the US. As usual, our 311 million citizens have some of the most embarrassing stats and highest global footprints.
But we’re still not as bad as the UAE. If everyone lived like these 7.8 million citizens, we might as well start expanding to other planets to meet our ravenous natural resource and artificial island needs.
More from Smithsonian.com:
China’s Per Capita Carbon Emissions Nearly On Par with Europe
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
