3 ms·

> The reality is just a few short years ago the UN updated its population estimates for the end of the century from less than 9 billion to a more likely 11 bill

> The reality is just a few short years ago the UN updated its population estimates for the end of the century from less than 9 billion to a more likely 11 billion, and as many as 13 billion people. The surface area of the Earth is about 510072000 km^2. 13 billion people gives a population density of about 25 people per km^2. By comparison, the U.S. has a population density of about 33 people per km^2. The U.K has a population density of about 255. So, there's plenty of room (heck, much of the U.S. is still essentially unpopulated, particularly in the western states). > resource depletion What "resource" is being "depleted"? Not energy, that's for sure. There's enough uranium to keep our civilization going at the current level for millions of years, assuming breeder reactors are used. That's without requiring any new technology. If we get fusion, then you can up the millions to billions. We're not actually running out of anything vital. Sorry. > history of optimistic mistakes Not to be confused with the history of pessimistic mistakes, running from Malthus, down through the "population bomb" scare of the 1970s, right up to the present day.

saagarjha 9y ago
> The surface area of the Earth is about 510072000 km^2 Of which 70% is water. > So, there's plenty of room Sure, there's plenty of room. But I think you'll agree that most people don't want to live in a desert, or Antartica, or on top of a mountain. The amount of land that people actually want to live on is much, much smaller than the figure you're quoting. > We're not actually running out of anything vital. Sorry. Maybe nutrient-rich soil? Clean water?
- Turing_Machine 9y ago
  > Of which 70% is water. That would put the population density per square kilometer with 13 billion people up to 68, roughly that of Ireland (which has lots of rural areas and farms). > But I think you'll agree that most people don't want to live in a desert, or Antartica, or on top of a mountain. The United States has plenty of mountains and deserts, but many parts of it still have vastly higher population density that the number the alarmists are worried about. The population density of California (which has deserts and mountains all over the place) is about 93. The population density of New York State (which still has quite a large amount of farms and woodlands) is about 159. Heck, the population density of Indiana, which to a first approximation is just a big corn field, is about 71 per square kilometer. That's still less than the 68 per square km that's being touted as a doomsday scenario. > Maybe nutrient-rich soil? Clean water? Wrong, and wrong. Modern farming doesn't require "nutrient-rich soil", and water shortages are a regional thing, not a world-wide thing.
  - philwelch 9y ago
    Also, the main bottleneck for those issues is plain old energy. If tokamaks end up being the way to go, by the end of the century, we will have orders of magnitude more energy than we could possibly need to desalinate the oceans, extract nitrogen from the air to make fertilizer, and even reprocess CO2 and water back into synthetic hydrocarbons. 11 billion people is outright tiny for a near-Kardashev-1 civilization.
sangnoir 9y ago
> We're not actually running out of anything vital. Sorry. You're absolutely correct and it's a shame you're being downvoted. I have lived in the third world and I can confidently declare than people in the west have much bigger ecological footprints (by any metric you can think of :energy usage, pollution, weight of garbage thrown out, etc). Contrast this with the low-productivity of third world farming (per unit area, relatively) as well as massive unrealized potential for hydro-electrical and other renewable energy. I'm going to say there is plenty of capacity for accommodating population growth.

saagarjha 9y ago

> The surface area of the Earth is about 510072000 km^2 Of which 70% is water. > So, there's plenty of room Sure, there's plenty of room. But I think you'll agree that most people don't want to live in a desert, or Antartica, or on top of a mountain. The amount of land that people actually want to live on is much, much smaller than the figure you're quoting. > We're not actually running out of anything vital. Sorry. Maybe nutrient-rich soil? Clean water?

Turing_Machine 9y ago
> Of which 70% is water. That would put the population density per square kilometer with 13 billion people up to 68, roughly that of Ireland (which has lots of rural areas and farms). > But I think you'll agree that most people don't want to live in a desert, or Antartica, or on top of a mountain. The United States has plenty of mountains and deserts, but many parts of it still have vastly higher population density that the number the alarmists are worried about. The population density of California (which has deserts and mountains all over the place) is about 93. The population density of New York State (which still has quite a large amount of farms and woodlands) is about 159. Heck, the population density of Indiana, which to a first approximation is just a big corn field, is about 71 per square kilometer. That's still less than the 68 per square km that's being touted as a doomsday scenario. > Maybe nutrient-rich soil? Clean water? Wrong, and wrong. Modern farming doesn't require "nutrient-rich soil", and water shortages are a regional thing, not a world-wide thing.
- philwelch 9y ago
  Also, the main bottleneck for those issues is plain old energy. If tokamaks end up being the way to go, by the end of the century, we will have orders of magnitude more energy than we could possibly need to desalinate the oceans, extract nitrogen from the air to make fertilizer, and even reprocess CO2 and water back into synthetic hydrocarbons. 11 billion people is outright tiny for a near-Kardashev-1 civilization.

sangnoir 9y ago

> We're not actually running out of anything vital. Sorry. You're absolutely correct and it's a shame you're being downvoted. I have lived in the third world and I can confidently declare than people in the west have much bigger ecological footprints (by any metric you can think of :energy usage, pollution, weight of garbage thrown out, etc). Contrast this with the low-productivity of third world farming (per unit area, relatively) as well as massive unrealized potential for hydro-electrical and other renewable energy. I'm going to say there is plenty of capacity for accommodating population growth.