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Have We Reached Maximum Sustainable Population Size?
Hugh Pickens writes "Pulitzer prize winning writer Thomas Friedman writes that in few years we may be looking back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? 'We're currently caught in two loops,' writes Friedman. 'One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability.' According to the Global Footprint Network we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth's resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. 'Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,' says Paul Gilding. 'We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter. We may be slow, but we're not stupid.'"
No.
The Earth wasn't supposed to be able to support half the current global population.
Then Norman Borlaug came along, and turns out we could support more. Who knows this time around?
It's a little early to include the tornadoes as part of a discussion on global climate change. Just like one hot summer doesn't prove it and one cold winter doesn't disprove it (even ignoring the false notion that global climate change != getting warmer everywhere all the time) we'd need to see evidence of increased storm activity for multiple years in close succession before we could draw any conclusions. In general i'm a "believer" in global climate change, but i'm not in favor of using incorrect data to try and prop up the idea.
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He has a 9.6 million dollar, 11,400 square foot home.
Oh and his wife used to own a company developing mall properties, those high square foot, poorly insulated buildings surrounded by heat absorbing asphalt.
See: tragedy of the commons...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter.
I wish I could be as sure. Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed does a nice job of documenting societies that, when faced with the same choice, picked collapse. Granted, they didn't have Jared Diamond's book to read beforehand, but neither did they have our capacity for self-immolation.
"Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for mankind to keep all its eggs in."
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
In 1971, Paul Ehrlich predicted a maximum sustainable world population of 1.2 billion people. By 1994 Ehrlich raised his estimate to 2 billion saying, "the present population of 5.5 billion [..] has clearly exceeded the capacity of Earth to sustain it." Two decades later we're closing in on 7 billion souls the overwhelming majority of which are not expected to starve to death or otherwise suffer a Malthusian catastrophe.
Overpopulation alarmism has become trite and hackneyed.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
It's meaningless to ask if we have reached maximum sustainable population size unless you also specify what standard of living you are talking about. I can recall reading about 20 years ago that we had already passed the point where it was possible to give everyone on Earth the same standard of living as the average American.
But standard of living really is a proxy for resource consumption and not a very good one because as technology advances it can produce more from less. Eventually you reach a wall though. Pick a resource utilization number and multiply by population. Is it greater than the available resources? If yes then we have passed the sustainable population. OTOH divide available resources by population and you have the allowed resource utilization to maintain that population.
Of course that all becomes more complicated when you treat resources as finite.
Of course that all becomes more complicated when you try to factor in the effects of growing technological capabilities.
Of course that all becomes more complicated when you try to factor in the effects of human nature.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Who gives a flying fuck what the purchasing power of [arbitrary currency unit] is? What matters is how much a typical person can buy with a day's wage. That is a hell of a lot higher today than it was in the 19th century.