... the earth was twice as big?

Did you ever hear of the ‘Earth Overshoot Day’? It is the day on which we used all natural resources for one year, the day when the human race overshoots the earth’s ability to regenerate itself. In 2018, the day was August 1st, while in 1999, it was October 1st. So as you can see, the human race uses more and more resources every year. Right now, we would need 1.7 earths to support human civilization. So what if the earth was twice as big? Would that solve our problems?

First of all, we need to know how scientists calculate the date. They divide the earths biocapacity through the totality of humanity’s demand on those resources. If you calculate this for single countries, you can see that western countries are leading the list. The US would have their Earth Overshoot Day on 15th of March, Austria on 15th of April and Greece on 23rd of May. So if the earth was double sized, it would also have a higher biocapacity and therefore the earth would have more resources. It solves one problem, but at the same time, other problems appear. It all goes down to one fact: as the planets mass would increase eight times, the force of gravity on earth would be twice as strong. So what would that mean for our life?

First of all, everything would weight twice as much. Not because we would gain weight, but just because the gravity would be twice as strong. Due to that, people will get shorter again, as our spines become compressed by constantly being pulled down by a stronger force. Everything would be more ‘down to earth’. Therefore, animals and also human would probably look totally different, if we were even able to live under those conditions. As the gravity doesn’t only affect your stamina or your appearance but also your inner organs, we would need twice as much energy to pump the blood through our veins.

Speaking of energy, a lot of tall trees or even normal plants would simply collapse as they don’t gain enough energy by photosynthesis to transport the water to the top. That would also mean that we are facing a food crisis, as also potato plants, grain and all our food crops would collapse. Which would be even worse then, as we need the double energy as described above.

Another point that has to be considered is that a larger earth also signifies a bigger amount of magma inside the earth and consequently increased activity which would lead to a bigger amount of volcano eruptions and earthquakes, as the activity of magma is also responsible for plate tectonics. Probably the whole landscape of our planet would look different, as plates move more frequently and new land originates by volcano eruptions.

After all, that doesn’t seem like the perfect solution for our over-consumption. The only thing we can do is to reduce our consumption and be more thoughtful in how we treat our environment. Still, it is an interesting intellectual game with a lot of things to consider. NASA has recently discovered a planet called Kepler-22b which is 2.4 times as big as earth. Maybe we will know more about what would happen if our planet was twice as big once Kepler-22b is completely explored.