Reaction Paper

Lecture Notes C

At the beginning of the 21st century, the population of our planet earth is approximately six billion people. We have been a marvelously successful species capable of flourishing in most land areas of the planet from arctic tundra to tropical rain forests, from coastal swamps to mountainous terrain. As humans, we express ourselves in more than 6,000 different languages, residing in approximately 200 different nations, comprising thousands of separate and distinct cultural groups. The scope, scale and diversity of our species is truly mind boggling. Dr. Phillip M. Harter of the Stanford University School of Medicine offered the following condensed perspective: If we could shrink the earth's 6 billion population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following: There would be: 57 Asians 21 Europeans 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south 8 Africans 52 would be female 48 would be male 70 would be "persons of color" or "non-white" 30 would be white 70 would be non-Christian 30 would be Christian 89 would be heterosexual 11 would be homosexual 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States 80 would live in substandard housing 70 would be unable to read 50 would suffer from malnutrition 1 would be near death 1 would be near birth 1 (yes, only one) would have a college education

B,Canfield