The surface of the Earth constitutes 510.072 million sq km. Of this, 70.8% (361.132 million sq km) is water. The remaining 29.2% (148.94 million sq km) is land. This is around 16x the size of the United States.

Interestingly, only 13.31% of this land is arable, or 19.82 million sq km. Of this, 2,770,980 sq km (1.86% of total, 13% of arable) are irrigated.

Only 4.84% of the world speaks English as a first language. For comparison:
Mandarin: 13.7%
Spanish: 5%
Arabic: 3.2%
Hindi: 2.8%
Japanese: 2%

33% of the world is Christian. 20% Muslim, 13% Hindu. 6% Buddhist.

18% of the world cannot read, of which 11.9% of the 18% live in: India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Egypt.

Average GDP: $10,000. 40.7% of the world is in agriculture, 20.5% in industry and 38.8% in services. Services make up 64% of the world’s wealth, agriculture 4%.

We consume 83 million barrels of oil per day, or 30 billion per year. There are 1,293 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. This means there is a 43 year supply of oil — assuming we find no more nor consume no more oil.

There are 172.8 trillion cu m of proven natural gas reserves. We are consuming 2.819 trillion per year, giving us a 61 year supply.

There are 2.1 billion cellphones in the world (1.2billion land lines).

From the CIA’s World Fact Handbook.

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