New York city’s weight of the human-made mass in is roughly equal to the weight of all the fish in the world.
The mass of the Eiffel Tower, France… is equals the weight of the ≈10,000 remaining white rhinoceroses in the world.
And it started long ago. The mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt is equal to the mass of a temperate forest or the size of the city of Kyoto, Japan
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According to a new study conducted by Emily Elhacham and Liad Ben Uri, from Prof. Ron Milo’s Environmental Sciences Department at the Israeli Weizmann Institute of Science, the year 2020 crossover point, when the total mass of human-made materials “anthropogenic mass” now outweighs the entirety of the Earth’s living biomass.
The study, published in Nature, shows that outset of the 20th century, human mass equaled around 3% of the total biomass. How did we get from 3% to an equivalent mass in just over a century?
The human made mass amounts at 30.11 trillion tonnes. The largest share is accounted for by urban areas, with 11.10 trillion tons. The estimates also consider trawled sea floor, eroded soil and reservoirs – all signs of the immense human influence on our beautiful little blue planet.
The things we produce have far outpaced population growth: Today, on average, each person on the globe produces every week a quantity of anthropogenic mass greater than their body weight.
From now on, humans are adding new mass such as products, vehicles, buildings, and roads at a rate that is doubling every 20 years, leading to a “concrete jungle” that is predicted to reach over two teratonnes (i.e. two million million) – or more than double the mass of living things, by 2040.
From now on the neuter is losing to humens.
You will find more infographics at Statista
“The message to both the policymakers and the general public is that we cannot dismiss our role as a tiny one in comparison to the huge Earth. We are already a major player and I think with that comes shared responsibility,” says Prof. Milo.
“This study demonstrates just how far our global footprint has expanded beyond our ‘shoe size.’’ Milo added, “We hope that once we all have these somewhat shocking figures before our eyes, we can, as a species, take responsibility.”
