Sometimes you can find a peaceful corner of the countryside, relax and pretend that you’re not clinging on to a big rock, hurtling through space, with intense activity and environmental destruction going on all around you.

Good luck if that’s you. Here are the facts…

In the next HOUR:

• 6,360 people will die.
• 1,080 of them will die of starvation.
• 600 of the deaths will be children.
• 15,480 babies will be born.
• 6,780 of them will be born into poverty.

• 103,000 trees will be cut down.
• 1,140 of these trees will be just for toilet paper.
• Only 42,000 trees will be planted.
• 6,000 acres of rainforests will be cut down.
• 6 different species of animals, plants and birds will become extinct because of tropical forest loss.

• The world will use 576 million plastic bags.
• More than 60 million of these plastic bags will go in the trash.
• 330,000 new pieces of plastic will litter our oceans.
• That’s 60 garbage trucks of plastic.
• We will throw away 180 million face masks, most of them laced with plastic.
• 219,397 tonnes of garbage will be produced globally.
• 5,670 tonnes of food will be thrown away in the United States alone.

• The United States will slaughter 974,100 land animals for food.
• The country will also slaughter 5,353,900 fish and other sea creatures.
• Worldwide, 9.7 million fish and other sea life will be killed.
• 6.6 million chickens will be slaughtered.
• 159,840 pigs will be killed for food.
• 59,040 sheep will be slaughtered.

• 11,408 sharks will be killed by people.
• 0.0013896 people will be killed by sharks.

• 1,392 airplanes will take off around the world.
• 3,345,420 barrels of oil will be used.
• 158,400 lightning strikes will hit the Earth
• 300 earthquakes will occur.

The big picture

All this takes place in just ONE HOUR, remember. The world moves at a frightening pace, so those statistics that do not favour the natural world are particularly distressing to process, personally speaking.

Let’s put them into context alongside other things happening on Planet Earth. These, too, will happen in the NEXT HOUR statistically:

• Amazon chief Jeff Bezos’ net worth will increase by $8.56m.
• The world will spend US$219 million on its military.
• US$188 million will be donated to charity.

• 10.8 billion Google searches will be performed.
• 7 billion Facebook Likes will be made.
• 3.2 billion WhatsApp messages will be sent.
• 21 million Tweets will be Tweeted.
• 33,840 new websites will be created.

• 1.3 million people will search for porn.
• 90 million people will have an orgasm.

• The universe will expand by 53,280km
• 108,000 stars will explode
• 17.3 million new stars will be created

Sources:

Our World In Data, Indexmundi, EIB, OmniCalculator, Education Database, Internet Live Stats, Best Techie, WWF, Faunalytics, Live-Counter, AnimalClock, The World Counts.