Earth's Maximum Population?

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A Many Splendored Thing

Well-known member
What do you think it could be?

Considering we have barely tapped into the potential of this planet, I'm thinking 100B+.

If we didn't have to fight over food and water, the rise would be quick. Maybe 100-200 years.

It sounds insane to have 100 Billion people here, but, thinking about it, that would seem easy.
Edit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4DCS4uZOUk&feature=c4-overview
It's a bit long, but this brings up the points of sustainability, especially with the economic model we have now.
 
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Starry

Starry

Well-known member
I'd have to say no more than 10 billion... Currently the world produces enough food to feed around 12 billion... With most of it being wasted by the gluttonous, wasteful West... But to sustain anymore people some serious changes would have to be made to prevent wastage and to ensure that the earth itself is well cared for. Forgetting about climate change for a moment, the earth is being terribly destroyed by intensive farming and deforestation, carbon fuels, chemicals galore being pumped into the system...
 
Metal_isthe_Answer

Metal_isthe_Answer

Well-known member
100 billion would destroy our environment and our agriculture. We are at what? 7 billion (roughly) now? The earth should have maybe half that.
I love Chinas one child per couple policy, and if I remember right, Ted Turner said we (the US) should do that, and he even went far enough to say that people who want to (I believe he actually just said poor people) could sell their right to have a child to others who want more than one child.
I think thats actually a great idea, I dont want kids so Id give up my right to do so to someone else who want one.
 
A

A Many Splendored Thing

Well-known member
I'm just thinking about the technology that could get it there.

Currently we have to produce food in certain environments that are hospitable for it, but what if we could produce food and drinkable water nearly anywhere?

Having to transport food around the world is difficult due to its volatility, not to mention the transportation itself. And not everyone is able to receive some.

Then medicine enhancements would also be a big boon if sent throughout the world.

And better technology.

It would be like the growth from the 1800's to now. Every time food and medicine resources is enhanced, the population booms.

I guess the real question is, does the Earth have to resources to sustain a future 'technologically-bettered'(at least for survival) race.
 
O

O'Killian

Well-known member
Most of what I've seen or heard on the matter is that we overshot it some time ago (Wikipedia has a number that jives with what I was taught in biology last semester (that we're using ~1.5x what the Earth can replenish).

And a lot of that is because we're 'cheating' and using energy stored in a finite amount of eons-dead compost. Once that's gone - whether it happened in the 1970s or won't for another couple of hundred years - we'd better have come up with something else.

Hopefully technology and just better practices will raise our carrying capacity somewhat. For example, just a few crops represent a ludicrous percentage of our food supply, often grown in an area whether it's the most efficient or not. Breeding indigenous plants to the same end would help, and that would at least alleviate the major logistics problems in feeding the world. But no matter which way you turn it there are already too many of us no matter how loathe we might be to admit it.

Really, we've already grown exponentially in population from the start of the 1900s 'til now and that's just not the kind of thing you can continue without literal scientific miracles. There are probably more of those in the future, somewhere, but counting on them because we had a bunch of them in the last century is probably not a good idea.
 
A

A Many Splendored Thing

Well-known member
The total planetary population could also count other animals besides us. Plus all of the land that could be salvaged for farming or living space.

I'm thinking more of a theoretical max if we were to convert everything to energy farming, plant farming, and living space(less than what the west enjoys now).

The number would require better tech than what we have now(or at least more deployment-like solar panels) and how we use it now. Current sustainable levels are definitely lower.
 
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