Seven Billion

You Are Now One of 7 Billion People on Planet Earth

There are now 7 billion people sharing our little blue marble*, you and I included. That means 7 billion people who get hungry, need space, and disagree with things that the other 6.999999999 billion people say.
It means 7 billion people who want electricity, and who care first and foremost that they have it at all, not so much where it comes from.
It means 7 billion people who want to drive cars, and who will most likely use gasoline to fuel them. It means billions of people vying for oil, though experts believe supply will peak soon, if it has not peaked already.
It means 7 billion people who need clean water at a time when arid regions are becoming more so.
It means 7 billion people who are increasingly vulnerable to an increasingly ornery climate system that has been overloaded with a concentration of greenhouse gas emissions. There will be more floods, fires, and droughts, and there will be more people living in the areas impacted by them.
You are one of those 7 billion people, and you may or may not still want many of these things. The challenge of the 21st century will be meeting the demands of the 7 billion much more intelligently and efficiently than we have done in the past. If every nation consumed at the pace of the United States, we would need many more earths. We have the one. But we also have new tools.

That is a whole bunch of zeroes - in 7 billion. But we also have a bunch of zeroes in positions of planning, regulations, government...Also so many of us act like "zeroes' in our day to day lives. We must "live simply so others can simply live."