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Earth's population by latitude is shown to the right.

I made this human population map to graphically illustrate the location of people on Earth. Humans are a species almost exclusively inhabiting the northern hemisphere. Even those in the southern hemisphere are clustered northward close to the equator. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina may loom large in our imaginations but their populations are quite small compared to the north countries. Those small peaks in the south are in Brazil and Java. Those beautiful southern countries just don’t compare in overall population mass to China and they don’t even form a blip at this scale of resolution.

What’s even stranger is that a sphere, such as the Earth, gets noticeably smaller as one proceeds towards the poles and yet there are still vast numbers of people living very far north but few living even modestly south. Several major capitol cities are located 60° North — St. Petersburg  the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years,  Helsinki, Finland, Stolckholm, Sweden and Oslo, Norway. That is almost as poleward as the tip of Antarctica at 63° which in an unimaginable place for a city. Venice, Italy which most people consider quite a balmy climate, on the Mediterranium Sea is 45° North and most of Europe is poleward of that. By comparison from 45° South there is only few large towns. Punta Arenas in Chile at the pointy tip of South America is the only one very far south and Comodoro Rivadavia in Argentina and in New Zealand, Invercargill at the tip of New Zealand and Dunedin just up the coast. These are not very poleward and close to 45°. There are more people living poleward from 45° North, the top horizontal line than live in the entire Southern Hemisphere which is a much larger area.

There is a lot more open ocean in the Southern Hemisphere where only a few people can live on the islands and much of what appears to be habitable continents, like Australia is in fact a flat desert with no mountains to pull rain out of the sky and it will remain sparsely populated. Sub equatorial Africa has been inhabited since humanity emerged and so it is already close to the carrying capacity of that land. The current population is presently being supported beyond the natural carrying capacity by imported food and food producing energy in the form of oil for powered equipment and fertilizers. That leaves only Brazil as a large land mass capable or sustaining large numbers of people and it is there where a population explosion and economic explosion is presently taking place. The ecologists are of the opinion that the Amazon will quickly be mined of its nutrients and collapse within a hundred years. Young people alive today may see that happen. But for the immediate future Brazil is a wonderful place to be.

The future population graph similar to the one above probably won’t change much visually to the casual observer over the next decade but in four decades there will be a noticable lump in the south appearing from Brazil’s population explosion. The maximum human population growth will probably be in the equatorial zones. Even though the world population is doubling in about 39 years the northern-most countries are already experiencing population stasis and declines. Africa’s population is a big question mark and most projections are based on the last few years of growth. That would indicate massive population growth but that seems unlikely when those areas already experience occasional famines. Even a doubling of population in the south won’t make much of a blip in the graph of the southern zones.

The theme song from the old TV series The World at War is flowing through my feelings at them moment. That melody reeks of the world-sorrow of humanities struggles.