How many people can the Earth actually hold?

[Hellravager]

How do you feel about this?
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/many-peop...161120761.html

Earth may only be a tiny blip on the map relative to the entire universe, but for our purposes, it's pretty darn big. Of course, the vast majority of earth - about 70% - is comprised of water. Taking that into account, the actual area of land on earth is estimated to be around 150 million square kilometers.

That being the case, Life Noggin recently set out to examine how many human beings the earth is capable of holding; not in a physical sense, but more in the sense of how many people can be sustained by the Earth's finite resources. Today, the earth's population checks in at about 7 billion, but that figure will only increase in the years ahead thanks to improvements in medicine and other health-positive factors. In fact, it's estimated that the human population by the end of the century will be 10 billion strong.

Looking ahead, is there a point in time where the earth's capacity to support mankind will be pushed to the limit? Will we always have enough food and water to keep everyone happy and healthy? If you're pessimistically inclined to answer 'no', we can't really fault you, especially given that the distribution of resources around the world today is extremely skewed already.

But even if we assume a more even distribution across the world, many experts believe that the situation here on Earth will start looking grave once the human population reaches the 9-10 billion mark.

Live Science notes:

One such scientist, the eminent Harvard University sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, bases his estimate on calculations of the Earth's available resources. As Wilson pointed out in his book "The Future of Life", "The constraints of the biosphere are fixed."

"Aside from the limited availability of freshwater, there are indeed constraints on the amount of food that Earth can produce, just as Malthus argued more than 200 years ago. Even in the case of maximum efficiency, in which all the grains grown are dedicated to feeding humans (instead of livestock, which is an inefficient way to convert plant energy into food energy), there's still a limit to how far the available quantities can stretch. "If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving little or nothing for livestock, the present 1.4 billion hectares of arable land (3.5 billion acres) would support about 10 billion people," Wilson wrote.

Life Noggin's video also address a number of interesting points on the matter.

[May90]

Given how inefficient our current resource spending is, I think we can easily go up to a trillion, at least, before problems start - but by then we will probably have the tech level which would allow us to go way over that...

[IIamaKing]

I cant even begin to guess other than to say a fuck load more than we have now. So much empty space now. Lots of it built out not up. I bet we can come up with better more efficient way to feed people as well, so yeh, a fuck load more, final answer.

[Gheld]

I got up to the part where the video pushes the BS myth that a vegetarian diet is better for the environment/more land efficient which completely ignores the fact that livestock can be raised on unarable land. Whereas vegetables can't. Then I turned it off.

Or just before that... inconvenient math. 2 degree Celsius temperature increase = less than 1% increase in atmospheric energy. So people should shut the fuck up about the "MOAR EXTREME WEATHER" bs. The math does not support that. It's a myth pushed by ignoramuses that just parrot back everything people tell them.

[lucred]

I would say that is rather doubtful May. Assuming the 150 million square kilometers of land figure is accurate, that would be about 150 square meters per person IF every inch of land was used for residence, and none for agriculture. This includes areas like the grand canyon, death valley, the saharas, antartica etc.

This also excludes businesses, streets, parks etc. Add those and agriculture to the list and it is likely closer to about .5-1 square meter per person, MAYBE as much as 5-10, but that would leave everyone quite hungry most likely. Subtract areas that are essentially unlivable and...

Edit: that is not to say we are anywhere near capacity now... but most likely about 20-30 billion is the real cap for anything most would consider livable. And that is only if we GREATLY improve resource distribution.

[Gheld]

I would say that is rather doubtful May. Assuming the 150 million square kilometers of land figure is accurate, that would be about 150 square meters per person IF every inch of land was used for residence, and none for agriculture. This includes areas like the grand canyon, death valley, the saharas, antartica etc.

This also excludes businesses, streets, parks etc. Add those and agriculture to the list and it is likely closer to about .5-1 square meter per person, MAYBE as much as 5-10, but that would leave everyone quite hungry most likely. Subtract areas that are essentially unlivable and...

That's how much land is needed to also feed people, using currently available agricultural methods. Agriculture takes up a fuck ton of space.

EDIT: Oh NM I see what you're saying.

[endersblade]

A comment in that video stuck me. If we all became veggies, things would last longer.

On this exact forum, someone posted an article quite a while back that livestock makes more efficient use of land space than crops. They also don't destroy the ground to the point they can't use it, like crops do (which was mentioned in that video). So it would be more beneficial for us to become pure carnivores than vegans. This video seems pretty biased in the opposite direction for some reason, even after stating that crops aren't permanently sustainable.

Mankind could house quite a lot of people on this planet, but a lot of things would have to change. And the fact that we all think of individuality instead of the sum of our species, that isn't going to happen. Too many rich people would lose money, and too many projects would go unfinished because of greed.

[Enthusiastic Steward]

I cant even begin to guess other than to say a fuck load more than we have now. So much empty space now. Lots of it built out not up. I bet we can come up with better more efficient way to feed people as well, so yeh, a fuck load more, final answer.

I agree in principle (that we have way more available space than we're using) but I think we'd need a survey of what percentage of the currently uninhabited space is actually uninhabitable by any significant human presence before we can try do narrow down past "fuck load". As in, how much of that 150 million square km is actually inhabitable? Mountain ranges, desert, antarctic wasteland etc all need to be accounted for so we can figure out how much acreage there is that we can actually live on rather than just total land area.

[endersblade]

I agree in principle (that we have way more available space than we're using) but I think we'd need a survey of what percentage of the currently uninhabited space is actually uninhabitable by any significant human presence before we can try do narrow down past "fuck load". As in, how much of that 150 million square km is actually inhabitable? Mountain ranges, desert, antarctic wasteland etc all need to be accounted for so we can figure out how much acreage there is that we can actually live on rather than just total land area.

California was a desert, and we populated it. The same could be done to all of the deserts of the world. It would just take time and money, which nobody wants to put forth.

I would worry about colonizing the poles though. I get the feeling that putting a substantial population on them would end up causing them to melt, and that would potentially be very bad.

[Gheld]

A comment in that video stuck me. If we all became veggies, things would last longer.

On this exact forum, someone posted an article quite a while back that livestock makes more efficient use of land space than crops. They also don't destroy the ground to the point they can't use it, like crops do (which was mentioned in that video). So it would be more beneficial for us to become pure carnivores than vegans. This video seems pretty biased in the opposite direction for some reason, even after stating that crops aren't permanently sustainable.

Mankind could house quite a lot of people on this planet, but a lot of things would have to change. And the fact that we all think of individuality instead of the sum of our species, that isn't going to happen. Too many rich people would lose money, and too many projects would go unfinished because of greed.

The problem is that we take something like wheat, cut it out of the growing soil, scuttle the remains, use the kernels for food, feed the rest to animals that poop it out nowhere near the growing soil. We do agriculture in the most money efficient manner possible, which is also the most counter-intuitive way if you say...want your great great great grandchildren to not live on an environmentally devastated planet with no food.

[Alski]

Given how inefficient our current resource spending is, I think we can easily go up to a trillion, at least, before problems start - but by then we will probably have the tech level which would allow us to go way over that...

Unless you want to pack everyone in to highrise buildings i don't see earth sustaining almost 150x its current population.

[Powerogue]

I admit one of my biggest worries is we'll grow so much all the larger countries will start warring over resources, except this time with such ridiculously catastrophic weapons we'll tear the earth apart in the process of whittling ourselves back down (only contributing to the resource starvation, as we burn and salt the very land we're fighting over)

[Deleted]

No, some space needs to be set aside for the purpose of populating it with resurrected dinosaurs.

[Hooked]

I read each person needs 2 acres to be self sufficient growing their own food.

[Deleted]

That recent wikileak from Nestle, where a internal classified report showed that the World will run out of fresh water by 2050 was not reassuring material. Makes you wonder what else multi cooperations are holding back on to protect their products.
Earth could probably sustain 10 billion. But that requires a global shift to diet based of vegetables instead of meat (can still eat meat obviously, just far less of it). It requires a total switch to renewable energy (we need to curb CO2 emission by 80% of the current populations consumption.)
Way to many ifs and maybes imo.

If we could settle the global fertility rate around 1.6-2.0 we would se a decline instead of a increase. With a global 1.6 fertility rate we would only be 1 billion people on earth by 2300.

[Deleted]

That recent wikileak from Nestle, where a internal classified report showed that the World will run out of fresh water by 2050 was not reassuring material.

So there's all this water in the ocean but we can't even use it for drinking?

[Orwell7]

Eating vegetables requires much more space than eating meat. You have to eliminate like 50-60% of the animals to sustain that much territory to plants.

[Daedius]

I cant even begin to guess other than to say a fuck load more than we have now. So much empty space now. Lots of it built out not up. I bet we can come up with better more efficient way to feed people as well, so yeh, a fuck load more, final answer.

Soylent Greens!

[Deleted]

So there's all this water in the ocean but we can't even use it for drinking?

Desalination requires reasonable advanced technology. Israel is the leader in the field and covers 50% of freshwater with seawater afaik.
But yes it is theoretically possible. The issue is whether its practically and realistically - Africa will sport 500 million more people in 15 years. And they will experience increasingly more droughts. So that is something which needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Alternatively we could start eating healthier of course.

[Mormolyce]

Whatever it is, we're going to find out soon.