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No, we shouldn’t. Our planet’s healthy carrying capacity of humans is about 2 Billion at a somewhat less-than-first-world level of totally vegan quality of life
by rekabis 4y ago
No, we shouldn’t. Our planet’s healthy carrying capacity of humans is about 2 Billion at a somewhat less-than-first-world level of totally vegan quality of life, or somewhere around 500 million at a first-world omnivore quality of life.
We are so far beyond the planet’s healthy carrying capacity that the planet is dying before our very eyes, for those with the will to actually see what’s happening. Fisheries are collapsing everywhere. Topsoil will be gone within the next 60 years. Wild populations of all animals has gone down by 60% in the last century. We are in a human-caused extinction event that rivals the worst that has happened in geological history not only in magnitude, but also in sheer velocity. Even ELE-class asteroids took centuries for the majority of their extinctions to conclude, and we’re doing it in mere decades.
Sure, the planet could “support” 10 or 20 billion or more, but only by placing 100% of all arable land under intensive use, and by fishing every inch of the ocean; whereupon all non-farmed life will be pushed to extinction and the planet’s biosphere will collapse, bring its carrying capacity rapidly down to 0 humans.
We desperately need far fewer humans on this planet, and as soon as humanly possible.
- Earendil137 4y agoTrue. But population is on a decline, for all developed nations atleast. Developing nations are the one rising, worst and worst each year.
- rekabis 4y agoAnd this is where the education of women comes into play, providing even subsistence-level populations with birth control options. No parent wants to bring children into this world that they cannot effectively support, and no woman wants to be a brood mare. Limited programs in Africa and Asia has shown this to be a wild success in slowing population growth, it just lacks widespread public funding and political will, as well as stable countries that aren’t having civil wars or genocidal religious purges.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rocket_surgeron 4y agoThe rise in population in developing nations is slowing, and at a much faster rate than in developed nations. Most projections have global population plateauing in the 2090-2100 timeframe although the recent record fertility decreases in Asia and Africa may pull that forward a couple of years or decades.
- Amasuriel 4y agoI agree. The whole article is pinned on the idea that infinite economic growth is not only possible, but critical. Even given that premise, it assumes that population growth is required for that. I don’t feel like you need to be an economist or mathematician to understand that perpetual economic growth based on finite resources is no achievable. Maybe instead of doubling down on the old model that has driven us to ecological disaster we should look for a new one.
- noworld 4y agoWhere do you get these numbers?