DEMOGRAPHY AND SOVEREIGN ENVIRONMENT

In 1925, only 100 years ago, planet Earth, our spacecraft, had about 1.9 billion crew members; in 1975 they were ≈4.0 billion and in 2025 it reached ≈8.5 billion, distributed among various groups, peoples, countries, nations. Roughly speaking, every half century, the planet doubled its population. In some areas, birth rates decreased, but people’s longevity increased. And in others, rates and population simply increased. The total numbers are frightening.

The surface of the planet is finite, on the order of ≈510 million km², being ≈30% land and ≈70% water. Of dry land, only about 1/3 is habitable (2/3 are deserts and glaciers). In 2025 the average population density was about 170 people per habitable km², that is, one person per 0.58 ha (a rectangle of 58 m x 100 m), one football field for each human being.

Taking into account that we need to share the habitable space with other species, such as cows, sheep, rats, cats, cockroaches, mosquitoes, chickens, monkeys, anteaters, snakes and hummingbirds, in order to preserve these non-human companions of ours, more or less useful, and with whom, in one way or another, knowing or not knowing how, or why, we live in symbiosis, is a noble mission that we all support. It is an axiom, as had already been established by Noah, well over 3 thousand years ago.

The conclusion is that the situation is complicated and that concerns about the planet are fair.

However, the 8.5 billion homo sapiens need to feed themselves, regulate the temperatures of their homes, build their anthills in ingenious ways and aspire to evolve, as the anthropologist (and Jesuit theologian) Teillard de Chardin (*01) well philosophized.

Some parts of the planet, some peoples, some nations, have already solved their problems of wealth and well-being, often at the expense of seeking finite natural resources outside their territories, whether by buying (exchanging), or by taking through other methods; in short, badly or well, they solved their initial needs. They are the so-called “developed” countries.

These old colonialist processes, with the use of brute force or in disregard of ethics, became more sophisticated, evolving into political-economic-financial processes, more efficient, more effective and, almost always, difficult to visualize. They adopted romantic discourses, with pseudoscientific phrasing and prophets of chaos, in which many allow themselves to become involved, as Socrates, Aristotle, Plato and other thinkers of ancient Greece had already noticed more than 2.5 thousand years ago, when they forged the word “demagogy”. Or by other more modern thinkers, such as Thomas More, in the 16th century, with “utopia”.

It should be noted that, in Brazil, in 2025 we were ≈215 million people (only ≈2.5% of the world population). But Brazil has about 8.5 million km² of habitable land, that is, 17%. This results in an occupation rate ¼ lower than the world average: ≈40 people / km². There are 4 football fields for each Brazilian!

Although our part of the planet’s crew is very small (2.5%, as already stated here), there are some entities and some people among us who, out of fashion, or because they were catechized that way, or for lack of option, dedicate themselves to wanting a country still not developed, such as Brazil, which needs and deserves to improve the standard of living of its people, to give up exploring its deposits, its riches, developing its arts and doing its honest and fair work.

Why do our environmentalists not help our PETROBRAS in its prospecting in the so-called “equatorial margin”? Why do they not help so that our hydroelectric plants are not limited to operating “run-of-river” (without reserve)?

Is it correct to think about the environment without considering demography and the stage of development? Is it fair?

We need rational actions for the defense of the environment, with responsibility, without extremisms and taking into account our sovereignty and our interests.

*01_ Teillard de Chardin

Eng. José Eduardo Frascá Poyares Jardim, President of the Institute of Engineering

Eng. Miguel Fernández y Fernández, Regional Director of the Institute of Engineering

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