The Day Of Seven Billion

[Krikkit]

100,000 humans on the entire planet alive 70,000 BCE? Today there are 81,758,000 humans only in Germany. And almost nobody has to starve. Quite the opposite: supernutrition is not uncommon in wealthy countries.

I don't think we will extinct because of 7 or 10 billion humans on the planet. The current population is not a problem. Unfair distribution of food and resources is a problem.

I think that is because Germany is capable of importing enough food to keep its population healthy. What happens when the countries that produce that food have such a large population themselves that they can no longer export to Germany? What happens when there is so much hunger in the third world that people mass immigrate to Germany and suddenly there are 150,000,000 people to feed?

Wasn't there mass starvation in Germany during the British Blockade following WWI?

I don't know enough about history to know.

 

[Eli13]

Hey um just saying we aren't "cramped" like some people make to be. All of earths inhabitants (meaning only humans) could fit in a space just about the size of india. with minimal living space of course.

 

[Jarvitä]

Hey um just saying we aren't "cramped" like some people make to be. All of earths inhabitants (meaning only humans) could fit in a space just about the size of india. with minimal living space of course.

Given the population density of Macau, you could just fit everyone inside the same area as Germany.

And if the entire world were uniformly populated with the current population density of South Korea (a much more modest 487 people/sq km), the world population would be 73.6 billion people.

The Earth isn't crowded, isn't overpopulated and definitely isn't anywhere near the "carrying limit" or other such nonsense. Stop the fearmongering.

 

[Eli13]

Thank you. Trying to get that point across is kind of important.

 

[T.Neo]

T Neo, where did you get your figure of 10 square kilometers for one person to be well fed?

Thumbsuck.

However, according to this page, there is roughly 3 670 000 km^2 of agricultural land in the US. Wikipedia gives the population of the US (at the time of the 2010 census) at roughly 308 750 000 people. Dividing the agricultural area by the population, I get 0.012 km^2, or 12 000 m^2 of land per person, which is far lower than 10km^2.

I chose the US not only because of its developed nature (or the fact that Americans and many non-Americans would relate), but because it is a large country with a lot of agriculture, which minimises food imports. Of course there is a lot of food being imported into the US, but there are also a lot of agricultural products being exported from the US. And assuming that the staple diet of the average US citizen is made up of grains and meat, the grand majority of what people in the US eat is indeed grown locally.

 

[Grover]

ive had this discussion a few times: because most of Humanities problem's link to there simply being too many of us. and as harsh as it may seem, i think we need to sort this out now before it gets out of hand

our planet is struggling to support 6 Billion, and it will soon (if it hasnt already) top 7. at this rate, its probably not mad to predict a maximum population of 9-10 Billion, before either we manage to handle it, or we simply starve because our famrland is no longer fertile

the way i see it, we have to expand to survive, but we cant expand till we get our butts off this rock and onto others (that is, providing it is possible to expand colonies over the solar system/Galaxy) and until then, we're sort of at our limit

another alternative is some magical technology that can make our lives 100% sustainable and at the same time give us the yields that we need
taking food for example, we need to produce alot, but we also need to produce it sustainable, which means giving older farmland time to recover, setting other parts aside to conserve our biodiversity, and of course, keep us from ing the global climate

7 billion, probably not much worse than right now, since were so close. but in the long term, things look grim

 

[T.Neo]

The 'carrying capacity' of Earth is not 6 billion, it could be in the tens of billions... you could maybe even have a hundred billion or more people on Earth, if you were willing to sacrifice the rest of the environment heavily.

We don't need to expand our numbers to survive, but we do need to expand our scope... unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much motivation or ability for that at the moment, though.

The main problem for humanity at the moment is finding a source of energy that is sustainable, viable and low-impact. After that comes providing food to large amounts of people without destroying biodiversity. And then making infrastructure and service delivery sustainable. All three can be done, but it isn't exactly easy to do any of those things.

Solutions will be found, when they need to be found. It's like the malthusian catastrophe, that was averted by the green revolution. If we need it, we will have another green revolution... maybe this will be the green slime revolution, but still.

The planet isn't struggling to support 7 billion people. We're struggling to find an alternative for when the thing that we're using to support 7 billion people runs out. Currently 7 billion people are getting along just fine, aside from the fact that a large percentage of those people are starving, diseased, or are in some way disadvantaged. And that is not because there are too many people on Earth, it is because there are too many bad people on Earth.