"Is it too many for our planet to sustain?" The myth of overpopulation is easily debunked right now: Take the total planetary population and estimate 1000 sq ft per person That's roughly a space the size of Texas. It doesn't even account for multilevel structures (so if you include single person housing of 2-3 stories each, you could tri…
The myth of overpopulation is easily debunked right now:
Take the total planetary population and estimate 1000 sq ft per person
That's roughly a space the size of Texas. It doesn't even account for multilevel structures (so if you include single person housing of 2-3 stories each, you could triple that space for each person, family housing would be double or more of that... Huge houses!)
Not that'd I'd advocate for packing people THAT densely, but as a what if...
How much land for agriculture is left? The rest of the planet... AND Plenty of room for recreation spaces and natural venues, massive energy production zones whether they be nuclear, solar, wind, etc, etc.
The entire planet is still fairly empty of people. Even if you split that Texas sized space into 5-7 pieces and doubled and redoubled the land for each, the planet is not nearly full of people (and clearly has lots of resources). Even if you dislike cities and want more room, consider that thought experiment.
It's all propaganda and control... All the way down.
There are diseconomies of scale for transportation that need to be dealt with as you go up in city size. Wide freeways have more lane change action. And more drainage issues as well.
Garbage and sewage needs to be transported farther as a city spreads out.
Urban heat island effects grow.
Air pollution has farther to travel.
Food transport vehicles have more distance to travel to get to grocery stores.
Visit Mubai. Then tell me how the planet is underpopulated.
And India has been civilized far longer than Northern Europe.
And I never want to be a civilized as Japan. They pay a huge psychic toll for their clean streets.
The United States is what it is in significant part because it has a low population compared to it's carrying capacity. We are farther from the Malthusian Limit than most of the world. The Europeans who settled this land got doubly lucky/blessed:
We got a largely empty land thanks to natives dying off from our diseases and vices.
We got the benefit of the Industrial Revolution long before we needed it.
----
These are not new ideas. They used to be taken for granted. Pioneer Spirit was an essential part of our cultural DNA.
Yes, the planet could support 20 billion people, if we want to replace much of our meat with fish. We are still hunter gatherers on the oceans. Were we to do proper game management of the oceans, and some strategic fertilization of the barren areas of the seas, we could easily get our protein from the oceans.
But Real Americans would be an endangered culture.
---
OK, OK, yes we could increase the redneck fraction of our no 330M+ US by reversing Nixon's disastrous farm policies. The livable rural areas are semi-uninhabited because of the economies of scale afforded by gigantic farm machinery.
But keep ramping up the population and the entire country will be dominated by the Blue.
----
And when doing your calculations, do keep in mind that a large fraction of the planet's surface consists of mountains, arid regions, tundra, or boreal forest.
I made clear I am NOT advocating for people packing. I'm using the reality of the space involved to show HOW empty the planet is... In a space the size of California OR Texas, every single human on Earth could have a 2+ story house to themselves (and families that much larger). Even factoring in services/needs etc, and splitting that into more than one Zone, you could easily fit all of the people in a small fraction of this world. Spreading people is better... But most people have ZERO sense of how much space there is... They think it's all overcrowded and scant resource BECAUSE they were lied to, repeatedly.
It all comes down to resource usage habits, moral values (or lack thereof) and energy resources tapped into. The latter is the biggest contributor.
When wood and biomass were the chief fuel source some 200 years ago; people like Kelvin and his peers estimated a “carrying capacity” of 2 billion. However, this was blown away once Oil, Coal and Gas became Mainstream. That promise still exists today; but the harbinger would be Nuclear power.
For instance, if Nuclear fusion were to become as commonplace as convenience store gas stations; forget 10 billion: 3 trillion people would not be a problem for the planet.
Every human on Earth could stand shoulder to shoulder on an area of land the size of county Roscommon in Ireland.
But that's not really the point, we need x acres per person for food production, waste management per person, x acres per person of cobalt mining and the like
A quick reality check from Bard (Google's GPT equiv, I'm testing)
Vertical hydroponics farms can produce up to 100 times more food per square foot than traditional outdoor farms. This means that a vertical hydroponics farm with a footprint of 100 square feet could produce enough food to feed one person for a year.
So much for acres per person. I'm still a fan of meat herds, etc etc.. just pointing out that potentially just 100 square feet per person would do it. Meaning add a rooftop/skylight garden onto each of those Houses... and supplement with food grown elsewhere in the vastly empty world.
All of that was discussed, are you intentionally ignoring it?
And we were not discussing people packed shoulder to shoulder but with a living space FAR larger than many live in today. 2000+ square ft PER person.and still the entire rest of the world would have room for food and energy production etc, natural resource acquisition, wildlife preservation etc.
Yep. People only believe THIS lie because most hunams (not an error. Inside Joke.) live in cities, so think that level of density is vaster in scale than it actually is. I've driven from one coast to the other in the U.S., it was hugely deserted for most of that trip, which got me thinking about the gargantuan amounts of space where these roads don't reach.
Something else to consider, is that Japan has roughly 1/3 the population of the U.S., yet is about the size of California. Somehow they aren't living in an overcrowded hellscape. Huh.
Japan is interesting case. For one, much of the archipelago is still fairly uninhabited. For another, the urban centers are remarkably easy to live in - little crime, no litter, everything runs very smoothly. The psychic quality of humans is a big factor in terms of the maximum population density.
"Is it too many for our planet to sustain?"
The myth of overpopulation is easily debunked right now:
Take the total planetary population and estimate 1000 sq ft per person
That's roughly a space the size of Texas. It doesn't even account for multilevel structures (so if you include single person housing of 2-3 stories each, you could triple that space for each person, family housing would be double or more of that... Huge houses!)
See https://www.pop.org/episode-1-overpopulation-the-making-of-a-myth/
Not that'd I'd advocate for packing people THAT densely, but as a what if...
How much land for agriculture is left? The rest of the planet... AND Plenty of room for recreation spaces and natural venues, massive energy production zones whether they be nuclear, solar, wind, etc, etc.
The entire planet is still fairly empty of people. Even if you split that Texas sized space into 5-7 pieces and doubled and redoubled the land for each, the planet is not nearly full of people (and clearly has lots of resources). Even if you dislike cities and want more room, consider that thought experiment.
It's all propaganda and control... All the way down.
There are diseconomies of scale for transportation that need to be dealt with as you go up in city size. Wide freeways have more lane change action. And more drainage issues as well.
Garbage and sewage needs to be transported farther as a city spreads out.
Urban heat island effects grow.
Air pollution has farther to travel.
Food transport vehicles have more distance to travel to get to grocery stores.
Visit Mubai. Then tell me how the planet is underpopulated.
Again, you've missed the point.
Mumbai is because we dont deal rationally with this, we pretend it's a problem.
Mumbai is super crowded.
And India has been civilized far longer than Northern Europe.
And I never want to be a civilized as Japan. They pay a huge psychic toll for their clean streets.
The United States is what it is in significant part because it has a low population compared to it's carrying capacity. We are farther from the Malthusian Limit than most of the world. The Europeans who settled this land got doubly lucky/blessed:
We got a largely empty land thanks to natives dying off from our diseases and vices.
We got the benefit of the Industrial Revolution long before we needed it.
----
These are not new ideas. They used to be taken for granted. Pioneer Spirit was an essential part of our cultural DNA.
Read some Heinlein and Kornbluth.
I'm a huge Heinlein fan. I repeat myself: you missed my point entirely.
No, I read your point and dislike it.
Yes, the planet could support 20 billion people, if we want to replace much of our meat with fish. We are still hunter gatherers on the oceans. Were we to do proper game management of the oceans, and some strategic fertilization of the barren areas of the seas, we could easily get our protein from the oceans.
But Real Americans would be an endangered culture.
---
OK, OK, yes we could increase the redneck fraction of our no 330M+ US by reversing Nixon's disastrous farm policies. The livable rural areas are semi-uninhabited because of the economies of scale afforded by gigantic farm machinery.
But keep ramping up the population and the entire country will be dominated by the Blue.
----
And when doing your calculations, do keep in mind that a large fraction of the planet's surface consists of mountains, arid regions, tundra, or boreal forest.
Yes, high population densities can be made to work, but check out the correlation between population density and Blueness!
A man's 1000 square foot apartment is not his castle.
I made clear I am NOT advocating for people packing. I'm using the reality of the space involved to show HOW empty the planet is... In a space the size of California OR Texas, every single human on Earth could have a 2+ story house to themselves (and families that much larger). Even factoring in services/needs etc, and splitting that into more than one Zone, you could easily fit all of the people in a small fraction of this world. Spreading people is better... But most people have ZERO sense of how much space there is... They think it's all overcrowded and scant resource BECAUSE they were lied to, repeatedly.
It all comes down to resource usage habits, moral values (or lack thereof) and energy resources tapped into. The latter is the biggest contributor.
When wood and biomass were the chief fuel source some 200 years ago; people like Kelvin and his peers estimated a “carrying capacity” of 2 billion. However, this was blown away once Oil, Coal and Gas became Mainstream. That promise still exists today; but the harbinger would be Nuclear power.
For instance, if Nuclear fusion were to become as commonplace as convenience store gas stations; forget 10 billion: 3 trillion people would not be a problem for the planet.
Every human on Earth could stand shoulder to shoulder on an area of land the size of county Roscommon in Ireland.
But that's not really the point, we need x acres per person for food production, waste management per person, x acres per person of cobalt mining and the like
A quick reality check from Bard (Google's GPT equiv, I'm testing)
Vertical hydroponics farms can produce up to 100 times more food per square foot than traditional outdoor farms. This means that a vertical hydroponics farm with a footprint of 100 square feet could produce enough food to feed one person for a year.
So much for acres per person. I'm still a fan of meat herds, etc etc.. just pointing out that potentially just 100 square feet per person would do it. Meaning add a rooftop/skylight garden onto each of those Houses... and supplement with food grown elsewhere in the vastly empty world.
All of that was discussed, are you intentionally ignoring it?
And we were not discussing people packed shoulder to shoulder but with a living space FAR larger than many live in today. 2000+ square ft PER person.and still the entire rest of the world would have room for food and energy production etc, natural resource acquisition, wildlife preservation etc.
You have bought into a lie.
Yep. People only believe THIS lie because most hunams (not an error. Inside Joke.) live in cities, so think that level of density is vaster in scale than it actually is. I've driven from one coast to the other in the U.S., it was hugely deserted for most of that trip, which got me thinking about the gargantuan amounts of space where these roads don't reach.
Something else to consider, is that Japan has roughly 1/3 the population of the U.S., yet is about the size of California. Somehow they aren't living in an overcrowded hellscape. Huh.
Japan is interesting case. For one, much of the archipelago is still fairly uninhabited. For another, the urban centers are remarkably easy to live in - little crime, no litter, everything runs very smoothly. The psychic quality of humans is a big factor in terms of the maximum population density.
Japan has . . . little crime, no litter, everything runs very smoothly . . . because Japan is 98 percent Japanese . . .
Another factor is simply technological. Human carrying capacity is highly elastic compared to any other organism.