Technically you are a very small part of the population, how many of you have heard this before, "Be grateful for this opportunity. Don't take it for granted. The following trope, originated in 1990 by Dartmouth professor Donella Meadows and elaborated since by various individuals and organizations, may drive the pointhome: If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following. There would be:
• 60 Asians
• 14 Africans
• 14 from the Western hemisphere, both north and south12 Europeans
• 50 would be female
• 50 would be male
• 73 would be non-white
• 27 would be white
• 67 would be non-Christian
• 33 would be Christian
• 5 people would possess 32% of the entire world's wealth, and all 5
would be from the United States
• 80 would live in substandard housing
• 50 would suffer from malnutrition
• 1 would be near death
• 1 would be newborn
• and 1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education*"
* Statistics based on a "State of the Village Report," the original version of
which was composed in 1990 by Donella Meadows, and modified in subsequent
years by various authors and agencies, most recently ODT
(
www.odt.org/pop.htm) in 2005, which has made its statistics available for public use without copyright. Also cf. "History and sources of the ‘State of the Village Report'" at
www.odt.org/popvillagesources.htm.
