All authors would love for their latest book to become a best seller.
But it's not easy.
Sales in the order of 3,000 per week are needed to get onto the New York Times best sellers list, so it helps if you are famous or get to chat with Oprah.
Here are some other numbers: Hospital emergency departments vary in size but on average each ER treats 600 patients every week.
A medium-sized high school might have 1,500 students enrolled.
A suburban train with eight carriages can ferry 1,600 commuters at time from their homes to offices in the city.
A person who goes about their business but does not take much exercise will take 6,000 steps in a day, whilst active individuals might manage 10,000.
At rest a human adult will breathe steadily, roughly 12 times in a minute and 720 times in an hour.
And here is another one.
Every hour of every day there are 8,000 more people on earth.
That is two and a half times the number of book buyers, the weekly throughput of 13 ERs, enough for five high schools, and the passengers from five commuter trains, every single hour of every day.
If you prefer bigger numbers, 8,000 an hour grows to 192,000 per day, 1.
3 million per week, and 70 million per year.
Every year there are more people added to the global population (births minus deaths) than there are Frenchmen.
In two and a half days we add more people than there are elephants in Africa.
Amazing isn't it.
Staggering even.
It is worth taking a moment to think what all these numbers mean.
Every day there are 192,000 new chemical engines added to the planet, for that is what human bodies are.
Each one respires.
It takes in carbon (food) and converts it to energy, a process that requires water and oxygen.
This is the reverse of what happens in plants (photosynthesis).
And as no engine is 100% efficient, each human also generates waste.
This is not a mystery, nor is the process in humans any different from all the other animals on earth, all the other the secondary producers.
8,000 an hour means food, water and shelter for these chemical engines.
Food, water and shelter over and above what is needed for the 6.
5 billion of us already here.
Food that must be grown, water supplied and houses built.
We have known about this for some time.
Back in 1798 Thomas Malthus wrote of the perils of population growth for resource use and society.
He was worried that increases in population would lead to poverty and warned of catastrophe that can follow exponential growth.
Fortunately, we do not have to imagine the supply of resources for 8,000 extra people an hour indefinitely.
Population growth will not last forever.
Demographers like Malthus, the scientists who study these numbers, know that growth rates slow and eventually population size will reach a plateau.
By 2050 there will be around 9 billion people, and perhaps the peak.
This means that we do not have to manage to cope with ever increasing natural resource demand (what we do about consumerism is another topic).
It will be possible to grow the food, supply the water and build the homes because eventually we will know the upper limit.
Only we must start to acknowledge the size of this task.
The raw numbers will be huge.
Natural resource production systems will need to deliver consistently throughout a changed world.
This will be the challenge of our times.
We may think that financial crises, recession, jobs and all the flow on immediacies of our lives are the challenge, but they are just symptoms.
The real game is what we do to deliver natural resources to 9 billion people.
It is a challenge we ignore at our peril.
8,000 an hour; 700 in the time it took to read this article.
It is a sobering thought.
But it's not easy.
Sales in the order of 3,000 per week are needed to get onto the New York Times best sellers list, so it helps if you are famous or get to chat with Oprah.
Here are some other numbers: Hospital emergency departments vary in size but on average each ER treats 600 patients every week.
A medium-sized high school might have 1,500 students enrolled.
A suburban train with eight carriages can ferry 1,600 commuters at time from their homes to offices in the city.
A person who goes about their business but does not take much exercise will take 6,000 steps in a day, whilst active individuals might manage 10,000.
At rest a human adult will breathe steadily, roughly 12 times in a minute and 720 times in an hour.
And here is another one.
Every hour of every day there are 8,000 more people on earth.
That is two and a half times the number of book buyers, the weekly throughput of 13 ERs, enough for five high schools, and the passengers from five commuter trains, every single hour of every day.
If you prefer bigger numbers, 8,000 an hour grows to 192,000 per day, 1.
3 million per week, and 70 million per year.
Every year there are more people added to the global population (births minus deaths) than there are Frenchmen.
In two and a half days we add more people than there are elephants in Africa.
Amazing isn't it.
Staggering even.
It is worth taking a moment to think what all these numbers mean.
Every day there are 192,000 new chemical engines added to the planet, for that is what human bodies are.
Each one respires.
It takes in carbon (food) and converts it to energy, a process that requires water and oxygen.
This is the reverse of what happens in plants (photosynthesis).
And as no engine is 100% efficient, each human also generates waste.
This is not a mystery, nor is the process in humans any different from all the other animals on earth, all the other the secondary producers.
8,000 an hour means food, water and shelter for these chemical engines.
Food, water and shelter over and above what is needed for the 6.
5 billion of us already here.
Food that must be grown, water supplied and houses built.
We have known about this for some time.
Back in 1798 Thomas Malthus wrote of the perils of population growth for resource use and society.
He was worried that increases in population would lead to poverty and warned of catastrophe that can follow exponential growth.
Fortunately, we do not have to imagine the supply of resources for 8,000 extra people an hour indefinitely.
Population growth will not last forever.
Demographers like Malthus, the scientists who study these numbers, know that growth rates slow and eventually population size will reach a plateau.
By 2050 there will be around 9 billion people, and perhaps the peak.
This means that we do not have to manage to cope with ever increasing natural resource demand (what we do about consumerism is another topic).
It will be possible to grow the food, supply the water and build the homes because eventually we will know the upper limit.
Only we must start to acknowledge the size of this task.
The raw numbers will be huge.
Natural resource production systems will need to deliver consistently throughout a changed world.
This will be the challenge of our times.
We may think that financial crises, recession, jobs and all the flow on immediacies of our lives are the challenge, but they are just symptoms.
The real game is what we do to deliver natural resources to 9 billion people.
It is a challenge we ignore at our peril.
8,000 an hour; 700 in the time it took to read this article.
It is a sobering thought.
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