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Space isn't the issue.There's plenty of space yet left expand into, though I hate to picture a planet where nearly every nook and cranny is developed. The issue is resources and the ability to distribute it to the masses. I think the single biggest factor that will effectively cap world population will be the availability of fresh water, both for drinking and for food production.
Water is not an issue. Newer technologies will make desalinization cheap and very productive. In the near future we will have nearly infinite water.
The world can handle a lot more people just fine. The thing is we have to advance in technology in order to survive. We can't rely on dead plants and coal for energy anymore. Time to Innovate and put science to the forefront!
Yes the world can "mantain" many more millions. But at what prize?
Live in overcrowded places, with very low quality of life, most of natural spaces destroyed...
You have the example of black africa, places like Nigeria, where they are triplcating the population in less than a generation ( from 40 million to 178 million). Europe will be overun by africans in less than a generation.
The Earth cannot sustain those on it now. I would say, the most the Earth can add, at this point is 277 people. Period. Everybody just stop what you are doing. We have to wait for some others to check out before anyone new can arrive. Its not that hard. The Earth is like a hotel/restaurant. New people can come in after some check out. Makes sense. No?
The Earth can sustain the people who are here now. It's how the food is distributed that's the problem and the way we use our resources.
I've read that if you put all the people on the planet shoulder to shoulder, they would just about fill Texas. That leaves a lot of space.
The problem is not a lack of resources but a lack of being able to distribute those resources through to people due to warlords, dictators and communists.
Lets ground ourselves with some facts. Water and energy are very abundant on earth, and those things are the building blocks to sustainability. We just need to facilitate access to those resources for all!!
Also any first world country actually has a population decrease, what makes people have many many children?
War, lack of opportunities for women, lack of education for women, no access to family planning for women. Basically the social and mental health of our women.
Please take the time to see an educated approach to population:
Yeah the problem is not resources. We have a ton of resources on the earth for people to live. Plenty of water, the potential to grow plenty of food although we will need to eat a lot less meat. If we could figure out how to transmit it and store it we could set up solar fields in the Sahara and produce more energy than we'd ever need. It would only take about 1% of the Saharan land area covered with solar panels to produce more energy than every power plant in the world. The sun drops more energy on the Earth in a day than we use in a year and we can't figure out how to harness that???
Truthfully it is probably within our capability to do that but it would cost tens of trillions and would take most of the world cooperating over a period of a few decades and that won't happen.
Like I said - we have a MONEY problem and a WILL problem not really a resource problem in truth. Fossil fuels are 140 year old technology - can we seriously not do better than that? Of course we can we just don't want to pay for it.
We're also not particularly ready for the new 1st world problems of increasing lifespan and more education = fewer births. We're not prepared to pay for old people's health care after they can no longer work. Look at how we've f***ed up the health care issue in the U.S. even though everyone knows it's a problem.
The 3rd world problems we have like hunger, poverty, are within our ability to fix but we don't have the will. Seriously the U.S. alone could spend 10% of what what it spends on policing the world with its military on feeding hungry people and there would be no hunger anywhere.
Last edited by redguard57; 06-17-2015 at 09:32 PM..
So with all of these people that the earth can sustain would you be happy if the entire world looked like NYC? Again, it may be able to sustain more people but comfortably? WHat about California...they are running out of water as we speak. The more people we have the faster our resources will become depleted. People don't care about taking care of the earth as it is, can you imagine what it would look like with that many more people? The movie Wall-E comes to mind.
Yeah the problem is not resources. We have a ton of resources on the earth for people to live. Plenty of water, the potential to grow plenty of food although we will need to eat a lot less meat. If we could figure out how to transmit it and store it we could set up solar fields in the Sahara and produce more energy than we'd ever need. It would only take about 1% of the Saharan land area covered with solar panels to produce more energy than every power plant in the world. The sun drops more energy on the Earth in a day than we use in a year and we can't figure out how to harness that???
Truthfully it is probably within our capability to do that but it would cost tens of trillions and would take most of the world cooperating over a period of a few decades and that won't happen.
Like I said - we have a MONEY problem and a WILL problem not really a resource problem in truth. Fossil fuels are 140 year old technology - can we seriously not do better than that? Of course we can we just don't want to pay for it.
We're also not particularly ready for the new 1st world problems of increasing lifespan and more education = fewer births. We're not prepared to pay for old people's health care after they can no longer work. Look at how we've f***ed up the health care issue in the U.S. even though everyone knows it's a problem.
The 3rd world problems we have like hunger, poverty, are within our ability to fix but we don't have the will. Seriously the U.S. alone could spend 10% of what what it spends on policing the world with its military on feeding hungry people and there would be no hunger anywhere.
Totally agree.
To sum up the mess we have with our medical system:
Breaking Bad was a hit series about a chemistry teacher making industrial quantities of Meth, ALL TO PAY HIS MEDICAL BILLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It will cost us lots of money to start populating the universe but it must be done.
Last edited by Werone; 06-18-2015 at 11:50 AM..
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