How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?

[nabraxas]

Tuesday 21 Sep 2010 8:30pm SBSONE

Esteemed naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough takes a look at the problems we face as a continuously growing species. On a journey from Mexico to Spain, China to Rwanda, ecologists, demographers, farmers, engineers and family planning clinicians report on the enormous challenges of dealing with humans in ever increasing numbers.

From the drought-stricken Colorado River, which is struggling to irrigate the farms upon which millions of Americans rely, to Mexico City, trying to cope with water rationing, the program reveals how scarce resources are affecting people all over the planet.

But this future is not inevitable. Experts discover that while countries as diverse as Canada, Turkey and Russia negotiate rights to sell freshwater to the world’s ever-expanding dry-lands, the richest countries in the Middle East are piloting solar desalination plants to provide fresh water and irrigate farms in the desert.

Improvements in social policy and global cooperation also offer hope. Research has shown that where women are emancipated and literate and where family planning is freely available, birth rates decrease.

But should population control be the duty of each one of us? David Attenborough asks whether we should all commit to smaller families for the sake of all humanity and the survival of planet Earth.

 

http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/program/howmanypeoplecanliveonplanetearth/about/synopsis

& ov course it's on YouTube broken into 6 parts:

 

[Slybacon]

Improvements in social policy and global cooperation also offer hope. Research has shown that where women are emancipated and literate and where family planning is freely available, birth rates decrease.

sounds very NWO

[Teotzlcoatl]

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?

No more than 10 billion if we plan on keeping any level of biodiversity.

[Slybacon]

No more than 10 billion if we plan on keeping any level of biodiversity.

 

Based on what?????

[Legba]

If you held a dance party and allotted 1 square metre on the dance floor for each person there for them all to teabag around, and invited 10 billion people, the dance floor would be 100 square kilometres in size. A perspective of size.

[Guest svarg26]

population control is a scam. africa alone could feed the world 3 times over. not to mention south america. but we sell weapons to them and start tribal wars so that this will never be able to happen.

but feel free to go to uni and be indoctrinated into believing what ever you are told.

[Teotzlcoatl]

Based on what?????

Based on statistics which are not currently available to the general public.

[Slybacon]

Based on statistics which are not currently available to the general public.

 

pffftttt

[santiago]

find out how many sao paulo's (city) fit into australia, sao paulo and australia have roughly the same populace

multiply the poulation by the amount of times it fits and you have a guestimation of maximum populace in australia.....within say 200 years as a x figure.

then divide the current population of australia into the worlwide population, refine it into fractional percentage times it by the above figures and rationalise it by figure X, times 200 and you will have a statistical figure of maximum capity in 200 years, this doesnt add in variables such as underground inhabitation, sickness, genocides, wars, meteors.

the final figure is

1324 billion 222 million 745673

[ref1ect1ons]

I think they have you teo, you nazi eugenicist. When they start sterilising ppl youll justify it with your religious environmentalism. theres a good eugenics doco on utube called maafa 21.

[C_T]

Based on statistics which are not currently available to the general public.

 

oh but you have access to it lol.

[Mt.B]

I think the carrying capacity of this planet has a lot to do with our attitude towards how we treat it. The worse we treat it the less it (all life, not just ours) can sustain.

[bℓσωηG]

population control is a scam. africa alone could feed the world 3 times over. not to mention south america. but we sell weapons to them and start tribal wars so that this will never be able to happen.

but feel free to go to uni and be indoctrinated into believing what ever you are told.

 

I was going to write exactly that svarg ..

There is no reason why Africans themselves should go hungry . Africa alone can feed the entire world , if it weren't for foreign interference ,funding of tribal wars and political turmoil. The UN is a terrorist organization in disguise .

The blaming on the populace for the environmental degradation of Earth is unfounded,and i will not share this guilt.

If we were free to live sustainably then there would be no problems , but sadly we are not , we are owned , large corporations rape the earth and blame ordinary people who are simply trying to feed their children while being

forced into a monetary system which favors only those that created it.

[Sheather]

I have a feeling that with correct management the world could support a whole lot of people. Keeping the ocean clean and safe would be my major concern, as most of our oxygen originates in phytoplankton (That is, unless we figure out how to farm the stuff effectively). If we correctly utilised solar and wind power (or better yet, fusion), and managed multi-tier rooftop gardens for food, and purification plants to recycle water, what cap would we have? Just the amount of food we could produce really.

Correct me, please if I'm missing something, I have little knowledge of this subject, these are just my thoughts on the matter. I think 10 billion is a stupid number from Teotz, being high and mighty about his "top secret" information.

If we treated the world right I think 10 billion could be exceeded quite easily.

[bℓσωηG]

http://www.sovereign...ent.com/?p=6008

We should take a look at the abnormal food, the cheap stuff designed especially for the great unwashed brainwashed masses though, and make a little comparison. Where do we start? First, let's build ourselves a chemical and biological warfare plant in order to produce the chemicals to exterminate the residual mass of landless peasants. Put the poison on the land and into the food.

Peasants were quite useful when the elites were building up and feeding their industrial revolution. The peasants were then herded off their land and into the elite's industrial revolution, planned by the elites, and built, financed and run by the slavery of the peasants. Now, that slavery is upgraded into a global post-industrial automated, robotised society, the elites had better cull the humanimal stock before they wake up.

What better way than to make the cattle drive themselves to (super)market and pump them full of every conceivable poison and drug and genetically rebuild them into the perfected slave you always wanted them to be, the elites being the highest, most superior breed on the planet, in terms of Darwinistic eugenics.

 

...and i say fuck eugenics whatever packaging its wrapped up in...

Edited September 18, 2010 by blowng

[kadakuda]

the country i live in has around 600/1 square km....and no its not sustainable in the least.

i personally believe, with very little knowledge but a big mouth, that the pop. right now is too large. the only reason *we* seem so -ok- is because most of the world is living in poverty/famine. averages can slant things anyway we want them to

[bℓσωηG]

I do imagine a world without borders one day and without cities...

But I also tend to read between the lines and when hearing about ''overpopulation'' by prince charles or some elite corporation ceo, I believe they're actually talking about ''depopulation''...There are many ways to depopulate the earth , the easiest way is to make food toxic and let people eat themselves sick and eventually die , that way the powers that be also get money selling sick people the drugs that their pharmaceutical companies manufacture.

That would account for all the goings on regarding the legality of growing organic food, and the rampant over production of GMO foods, additives in food,water and plastics, mercury in vaccines , and an energy industry which refuses to use clean sources, etc...

[santiago]

i watched that show, it was some of the most sobering TV i have seen in a long time......

the prediction that one day wars will be waged not over oil but over water has been said before but the reality of it was presented, i also have a unfounded personal belief that wars will be waged over antartica for some reason.

spoke to a great mind about this show yesterday and i put ahead a theory to him that the human race will never out of food or water because simply as is "the custom of the sea" the greater survival instinct will kick in and we will simply like in the first matrix movie start to farm ourselves. the food will become refined human meat, the water we need will come from refined blood........but then he blew my theory out of the water and said what will the people that we eat eat themselves, which i replied each other..............he said it couldnt work and simply the actual numbers of the human race will naturally decline as in locusts, no source of food locusts decline.....riches of resources locusts plague.

so my theory was a absolute refinement on cannabalism in the dark future, human culture is littered with cultures actually making this work in the mainstream in times of need, the theory was refuted by as what i define in my friend a great mind and a great thinker, but sometimes even the greatest minds have limitations of imagination.

we agreed on what was also brought up in the show, technology. nobody really knows what advancements lay ahead for us........to use another overused matrix analogy.................who knows scientists may invent a synthetic wonder food, possibly a pill with advanced amino acids and food groups, with one pill.......a whole weeks nutrition could be taken, with additives to reduce hunger and change brain chemistry to adapt to a life of no food, to adjust to simply ingesting a few grams a week of super food to keep us alive.

probabitity of physics says there are billions of pieces of rock floating out in space just waiting to collide with planet earth which will in time hit planet earth resulting in the possible eradication of the human race, as has happened possibly many times over the course of earths history this will clean the slate and a new world order will rise from the ashes, this is mother natures detox and its only a matter of time before the clock resets itself and nature can go about starting fresh.

[Teotzlcoatl]

Well at some point there has got to be a number that the world could NOT support... my estimation is 10 billion IF we plan to keep any level of biodiversity and not just turn the entire Earth into cities and corn/rice fields.

[Sheather]

Estimation Teotz?

I was under the impression that you had definitive statistics "which are not currently available to the general public"

[kadakuda]

whats worse, tis happening, or knowing its going to happen (in the future) and not do anything.

I for one have bought 5 acres of land (as much as i can afford in an area i want to live) and can farm it legally and with the climate its decent.

Plan for the future. all the condo/apartment dwellers will die first. and lets not kid, people do bad shit in desperate times. thats not a bad thing so much as an animal thing...just is. plan for that.

those people with gallons of stored water, preserved food and tunnels seem fucking bonkers now, but they are the new kings of the future if shit hits the fan ;)

[WoodDragon]

Over history humans have directly or indirectly co-opted about half of the photosynthetic capacity of the planet, wiped out a fair number of fisheries around the world (eg Atlantic cod) and reduced the higher trophic-level fish stocks by at least 90%, removed about half the pre agricultural-dawn forest, drained vast swathes of 'fossil' aquifers, dried up the Aral Sea, a lot of the Dead Sea, and many rivers (including the Murray and the Snowy), and started the 5th Great Extinction. And that's basically all before breakfast, and mostly with a population of several hundred million people that only recently burst through the billion mark to now approach 7 billion.

Figures comparing the space physically taken up by a human, to the land masses of the planet, are spurious nonsense. After you've figured out how much land there is for each of 7 billion humans (or 10 billion, or whatever) figure out how much land is needed to produce all of the food, fiber, timber, mineral resources, water run-off, and whatever else each of those humans requires. Then figure out how much is required to maintain a sustainable population of each of the species that currently share the planet with humanity. FFS, try tell a farmer with 10 thousand acres that you're going to house 10 thousand people on his property, and that it won't affect his productivity because that's only one person per acre. He'll rip you a new one faster than you can say Malthus.

For what it's worth I am an ecologist, and these sorts of questions are my bread and butter. It is fascile to say that just because X city has Y million people, the world can be carpeted at this density of humans. The environmental footprint of a megacity (or even of a regular city) is vastly greater than the real estate that is sits upon.

If the planet ever reaches 10 billion people you can pretty much say goodbye forever to the non-human great apes and a lot othe the other primates. You can kiss goodbye most of the megafauna that we haven't already wiped out over the last 100 thousand years. You can probably say hasta la vista to around half the remaining bird species, a significant proportion of the reptiles and amphibians and remaining mammals, and most of the rainforest in south east Asia and South America. Africa's rainforests wouldn't be too far behind. You think it's hard to fish the oceans now? Well, they'll be a whole lot emptier with 10 billion humans munching on seafood, and so will the rivers that are already losing most of their higher fish species.

We humans got to where we are by using, over about the last 250 years, hundreds of millions of years worth of photosynthetic energy fossilised in coal, oil, and gas, and by using the planet's biological and mineral resources at a rate that will leave nothing for generations a few centuries hence. We've spent the captial dudes, instead of living off the interest. We (comparatively) rich bastards can sit back and think about it because we have the education and the resources not to worry about where our next feed is coming from, but this doesn't change the fact that the sums don't add up for continued growth. It'll hurt the First World as much as the Third world - growth limits don't discriminate.

No growth is infinite in the real world. Every biological system has a carrying capacity. The laws of thermodynamics preclude magical sources of energy, or whole meals packed in a pill. There's a wall around how many people we can fit into a finite space, and humanity is already breathing brick-dust, even as we clamp our mouths shut and pretend that we can't taste the fired clay.

The simple fact is that the planet is finite, and this is certain, even if people's capacity to understand this is not. It is not fascist or eugenic to state the obvious, and it is not even misanthropic. It's simple arithmetic, and the basic equation is that if you want a healthy, wealthy lifestyle for yourself and for your kids and society, it comes at a price. Spending up big in ecologically-expensive terms, which is what overpopulation is, will bring the same result that spending up too much on credit did for so many countries a couple of years ago. The difference is, that where you can 'magic' up money to push the ultimate financial hangover back a few years or a few decades, there will be no ecological overdraught possible. You fuck Mother Nature, she's gonna bitch slap you so hard in return that you might never get up again. Either we attend to our own numbers in an ethical and timely manner, or famine, deasease and war will take care of it for us down the track, and leave a wasted battlefield behind for the survivors.

I'm not trying to be a ratbag, and I genuinely hate disagreeing with SAB folk I greatly respect. But on this subject I have heard so much pseudoscience that it now sticks in my craw, and I have to say my piece. If anyone wants to dispute Attenborough's thesis, well, fine, go for it, but please be prepared to discuss the finer details of photosynthetic efficiency, trophic energy transfer, direct and indirect resource utilisation, exponential and sigmoid curves, growth coefficients, growth asymptotes, ecophysiological envelopes, niche partitioning, and any number of other relevant parameters that dictate the carrying capacities of ecosystems, no matter how big and complex they are.

It's fine to pick numbers like 20 billion or 100 billion out of your arse and say it's all cool, but if you don't have a handle on the underlying biology and mathematics then is all just arse-burping. Personally, I reckon that Attenborough's numbers are pretty much on the money, and this is because he consulted the best scientists in the world. Not the best Nazis, or the best politicians, or the best Illuminati - just the best scientists. The audience might not like the numbers, or what they imply, and they might decide not to act on them, but that's a choice between those alive today and our decendants.

It won't change the fact of the numbers, or of the ultimate results of whatever decisions we make.

[Fenris]

This might be of some interest

The Georgia Guidestones

On how to live after the apocalypse with conservative numbers on what we should keep the population to.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-05/ff_guidestones

[synchromesh]

This might be of some interest

The Georgia Guidestones

On how to live after the apocalypse with conservative numbers on what we should keep the population to.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-05/ff_guidestones

 

Bit of an understatement there don't ya think?

FFS, try tell a farmer with 10 thousand acres that you're going to house 10 thousand people on his property, and that it won't affect his productivity because that's only one person per acre. He'll rip you a new one faster than you can say Malthus.

 

In other words, one of the solutions to overpopulation is greedy farmers?

But I also tend to read between the lines and when hearing about ''overpopulation'' by prince charles or some elite corporation ceo, I believe they're actually talking about ''depopulation''...

 

Speaking of princes...

"In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation."

- Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

[Legba]

I wonder if locust have this conversation before what controls their population occurs?