[1/5] At the start of the 20th century, the mass of human-created stuff weighed in at 35 billion tons, or roughly 3 percent of global biomass. Since then, anthropogenic mass has grown exponentially to approximately 1.1 trillion tons today.
![[1/5] At the start of the 20th century, the mass of human-created stuff weighed in at 35 billion ton...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FWjbcPjakAAozKH.jpg)
[2/5] It’s now accumulating at a rate of 30 billion tons a year, which corresponds to each person on Earth generating more than his or her own weight in manufactured stuff every week.
[3/5] Most of that stuff is concrete—humanity’s favorite building material—followed by gravel, bricks, asphalt, and metals. If current trends continue, these manufactured materials will weigh more than twice as much as all life on Earth by 2040, or about 2.2 trillion tons.
[4/5] Roughly 90 percent of the living world by weight, meanwhile, is composed of plants, mostly trees and shrubs.
[5/5] But while humans manufacture ever more materials each year, the weight of Earth’s plants has held relatively steady, due to what the authors describe as a “complex interplay” of deforestation, forest regrowth, and vegetation growth.
#didyouknow #upsc #upscexam #iasbaba
#didyouknow #upsc #upscexam #iasbaba
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