How many people can the earth support?
The book I briefly mentioned at the end of class today was 'How many people can the earth support?' by Joel Cohen. Although it is ten years old now there isn't really another book like it and the points it makes are still relevant.You can read an interview with Joel Cohen here that nicely summarizes some of the points in the book.
You might think that we'd be able to calculate the earth's carrying capacity and you certainly wouldn't be alone. From the interview:
People see the title, How Many People Can the Earth Support? and they ask me "What is the answer?" And my answer is: we have to understand the question better. What choices do we want to make?
You have to ask how many people can the Earth support at what average level of material well being? Do people want to have a lot of food, with animal foods included, or just vegetarian food? Do people want their clothing to be cotton or wool or synthetic fibers? Do people want to drink river water or Perrier water?
etc. etc.
Labels: Environmental Issues
posted by John Latto @ 7:48 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Just had a strange thought- if we assume over-population of Earth will occur after we are all long gone because we are currently getting along fine...and people in future generations assume that over-population will not occur until THEY are gone...and people in the next generation...etc...will people living on Earth when this actually happens notice it is occuring? or will it be too late? it obviously won't just be a * POOF * and everything is gone...so, if it's a long drawn out process over many generations, is it even humanly possible (pun not intended...) to control it?
That's an interesting perspective. It could be argued that we are not, in fact, currently getting along fine. About 1 billion people lack clean drinking water for example and the average life expectancy in much of sub-saharan Africa is less than 50 years. As we exceed the ability of the earth to support the human population I don't think we'll see the consequences equally spread around the globe. The negative effects may be particularly harshly felt on those lesser developed countries - which is also where most of the population growth is occurring. This is one reason why some activists are pushing for a large scale investment in solving some of the problems in Africa rather than applying a Band Aid (pun intended - Band Aid was the original group that ultimately spawned the Live Aid event) every time there is a famine.
Is it humanly possible to control population growth? I'm actually optimistic about our ability to control growth. I think population will start to level out somewhere around 10 or 11 billion. I'm far, far less optimistic about our ability to control consumption. The lack of action on climate change (which is a consequnce of economic growth and fossil fuel consumption) is very depressing.
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