Merely physically speaking, do you think there are enough natural resources on the planet to feed all of the humans that inhabit it?
If it were somehow possible that enough humans could and would cooperate in such an effort, would there be a way to actually ensure that at least 99% of all humans would not go hungry?
If the world could get on the same page as the US agriculturally, I don’t see why not. Third world countries would have a better chance if the despotic leaders in those areas think more of their people rather than power and wealth.
Yes easily if the world decides to cooperate with itself and treaties, no if not.
Quote, “Projected growth linked to sustained progress in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment
The projected population trends also depend on achieving a major increase in the proportion of AIDS patients who get anti-retroviral therapy to treat the disease and on the success of efforts to control the further spread of HIV. In the 2008 Revision, the impact of the epidemic was modeled in 58 countries where adult HIV prevalence reached 1 per cent or higher at some point during 1980-2007 or where the number of people living with HIV/AIDS was at least half a million in 2007. Among those 58 countries, 38 are in Africa and 15 had an adult HIV prevalence of at least 5 per cent in 2007
2008 Revision of World Population Prospects: Key Findings
. . . . . . 19. Increasing longevity also contributes to population ageing. Globally, life expectancy at birth is projected to rise from 68 years in 2005-2010 to 76 years in 2045-2050. In the more developed regions, the projected increase is from 77 years in 2005-2010 to 83 years in 2045-2050, while in the less developed regions the increase is expected to be from 66 years currently to 74 years by mid-century.”
Department of Economic and Social Affairs (Population Division), WORLD POPULATION TO EXCEED 9 BILLION BY 2050: Developing Countries to Add 2.3 Billion Inhabitants with 1.1 Billion Aged Over 60 and 1.2 Billion of Working Age, available at http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2008/pressrelease.pdf
With shown in the data above, the Earth cannot barely sustain our population within this century.
The regeneration of the Earth cannot recover with her loss. As I recalled in a recent scientific finding, consumption of the world population is over 4.5% out of the regeneration. This is an amazing figure.
Over 80% of wealth in 20% of countries (not even population). Production of food can [b]no longer[/b] reach the overall expenses of our total population. Belief (enthusiasm) in technology/science cannot cover the population growth.
You see people suffering from over-population now.
Money is no longer a decisive factor because of the over-crediting that contributed to the collapse of our currency systems. Control of resources by wealthy countries (developed countries).
You see donating functions in broadcasting. You think the wealthy class is so mean.
They’re not.
In fact, they save your lives. Some of the intellectuals already acknowledge it.
Why?
When they donate those under-developed countries with plenty of resources, it may turn out to be a famine in their homeland.
A fact in silence. A fact that the public properly don’t know.
A fact I want you to know (in my Contemporary Lun-yu).
Teru Wong
Sure, the earth can sustain as many people as possible - if we use technology effectively. Via increasingly tall buildings and skyscrapers, and underground housing complexes, there is no limit to the number of people earth could allow. Real estate space is created all the time, and there is no limit to this potential, especially if we consider the possibility for ocean-based floating cities or large mega-city structures that tower miles into the sky and span a square mile of land area. Some technological developement is needed for such projects, but for a large part the means currently exist. And even considering standard building construction only, there is no reasonable limit to the number of people that can be comfortable housed and provided living space.
In terms of food, technologically we can sustain any number of people’s food supply using modern technology. Genetic modification yields far greater numbers of crops, and we are getting more efficient as time goes on. If people were to eat closer to the bottom of the food chain then this would become even easier, as 90% of energy is lost each step up the food chain we go.
Of course it comes down to economics and politics. There will be no rational innovation and investment in technological food and housing production across most of the world, because most of the world lives in relative poverty under oppressive dictatorships of one sort or another - these governments have no interest in their people’s well-being. But if we were to allow for a mass liberation of much of the world’s people through instituting constitutional republics and free local economies, then we could conceivably see the problems of starvation, malnourishment and overpopulation severely reduced within our lifetimes.
But certainly, this is unlikely to happen.
So in terms of the way things are going, the lack of technological progress, lack of individual political rights and economic freedom, and oppressive tyrannical dictatorships across the world surely put a sharp limit on the number of people that can live comfortably in any given area. As any other animal, these environmental limitations will curb future population growth. As it stands now, many areas of the world seem unable to sustain their populations without severe poverty, disease and overpopulation. This is unlikely to cease any time in the near future, because the realization of true political and economic freedom in most of these areas is a virtual impossibility.
No, not if you consider that population is growing at an unsustainable inflationary rate.
Are you saying that real human population growth-rate will approach infinity? 
Those graphs are misleading and unrealistic, and not to mention, yours here is not even labeled. Population growth is a curve, yes, but it does not “shoot up” to infinite growth rate as your graph shows. It always levels off and cycles between various rates of increase, and sometimes, decrease. And even so, your graph does not address the fact that technological progress has been able to meet the food demands of an increasing population well beyond previous predictions of global overpopulation. People make arbitrary claims about X population outstripping food capability, yet we have surpassed such predictions time and again - because of unforseen technological progress. There is no reason to assume, certainly no reason from your posting a simple and inaccurate graph, that technological progress in agriculture and food/nutrition will not continue at the fast pace that all science has progressed for the last 100 years. Show me a study that takes into account the improved agricultural capabilities estimated by future predicted technological innovation, based on past and current levels of such technological progress, that compares this factor to growing world population. Saying that current food production levels will be outstripped in X years by population growth is like saying that current oil deposits will be outstripped in X years by oil extraction - we discover new oil, new methods of extracting oil, all the time.
Let me fill in a few of the blanks:
When exponential growth reaches a physical limit, it must end one way or another. It may be smooth or abrupt. Growth in human population and resource use have reached that limit. They must end in the current generation. The end will either be voluntary or it will be painful. Most population growth now is in poorer countries. But people the world over want more than their parents had. Resource use is growing faster than population because peoples’ expectations are soaring. The technological power and pollution rates of individuals are inflating as well. The finite earth cannot continue to meet the inflationary expectations of so many people.
I’m going to say yes for right now because everyone who is presently on Earth is alive, and if this were not being sustained they would not be alive.
Of course, if these numbers were not sustained (at a future point) everyone on Earth (at that point) would still be alive, so the answer to the question (when asked at that point) would still be yes.
(I’m just messing around, though my answers are technically right because the phrasing of the question assumes the present tense)
Don’t worry i was about to say the same thing…
Or, it will equalise out to a rough median value.
What makes you come to this conclusion? There are no facts supporting this statement, it is just an arbitrary opinion of yours. There is no limit to resource use, because we create new resources all the time. Likewise with housing and land space for populations to live on.
In reality there may be some limit based on current technological levels. But this says nothing about future technological progress, growth in housing developments and agriculture, nor about the possibility that world population growth will simply level off naturally, as most populations in nature tend to do when they approach real environmental limits. There is no reason for panic.
Humanity has already surpassed the limits of what is physically and biologically sustainable. The present level of population will lead to the collapse of the environment’s ability to support our species and much of the rest of the biosphere unless we act rapidly and effectively to reduce our impact on the planet.
As I just said, this is only your opinion.
I have given several reasons why you are wrong about this. Reasons which, I might add, you have not addressed or attempted to refute. You keep repeating the same alarmist propaganda, without addressing my various reasons why population growth is not nearly as big of an issue as you indicate.
Your main argument is that technology will solve the problem somehow. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I don’t think you do either. I would say it remains to be seen. You have not acknowledged the significance of the historically unprecedented population inflationary growth. You call the my citing of this fact “alarmist”, perhaps it alarms you. I don’t see how technology can solve the problems that will be created if population continues to grow at the present rate.
Population cannot continue to grow at any rate indefinitely. It cycles up and down. We are in a global acceleration rate because of technology, in part - in otherwords, the existence of technology has altered the global environment such that it can sustain more humans and a higher rate of population growth. Now if technology were to disappear or be reversed largly then we would have a problem. Likewise, if technology continues to develop in ways which further increase livability factors then the number of people capable of being sustained by the planet will continue to rise.
There are two issues here: the total population that can be sustained within a niche, and the rate at which population increases or decreases. Technology impacts both, but primarily the first directly, and the second indirectly, through the first. But the second factor here other than technology is simply the filling of as-of-yet-unfilled niche potentials: A niche (in this case, we can look at the globe itself for simplicity, but in reality we are talking about targeted niches within nations, primarily identified by geographic/agrucultural/economic features) has a capacity X for sustaining a given Y number of individuals - when this capacity is increased then there is a lag period within which Y needs time to increase to the new X. So as this applies to our current global situation (the sum of all localised niches), technology over the last 100-1000 years has increased X by an astronomical amount - and the greater the increase, the longer lag period is needed to fill this new capacity - so Y is steadily increasing to accomodate the new capacities of X.
I am using symbols here for simplicity sake. But if you prefer: technology has allowed vastly more people to live together than previously was possible, and so people begin to live together in these new capacities. This “filling” takes time. Further complicating the issue is the fact that technology development has not stopped, nor is it steady, but is itself increasing. Thus you get the exponential growth rates of overall population, which themselves are a product of ordinary statistical unrestricted population growth in a natural setting combined with the exponential growth rate of the capacity of the niche to sustain a given X number of individuals (i.e. the exponentially increasing rate of technological development).
What does all this mean? It means, at its most basic, that your assumption that the earth cannot sustain its current population, much less an increasing population, is unfounded. On the surface the fact that earth is sustaining its current population, by definition, refutes the basic claim itself. And when we look at projected future populations we see that not only is there no reason to assume that we can know for certain what the given carrying capacity is within the global system of aggregate local niches, but also we cannot know the impact of exponentially increasing technological development.
So basically I reject your assumption that earth has a set carrying capacity which is fixed (carrying capacity is changing all the time as a result of local conditions, the most powerful of which is technological application and economic development [e.g. India, China]), and further I reject the assumption that this carrying capacity can be known to any great degree across the entire globe. The fact is that there is no basis for alarm, no reason for panic. Populations fluctuate naturally, and where there is too great a strain on available resources by a growing population then naturally the rate of growth will decline, until actual population reaches a more stable level. Some niches (countries) are growing extremely fast, others are barely growing at all, and some are decreasing population. Replacement rate in first world nations is dropping below 2.1 in many cases. And we already see signs that global population is starting to reign in its exponential rate of increase.
But dont worry - elite globalists already have plans to address your cries for depopulation. Global population reduction by as much as 80-90% has been an unofficial but nonetheless openly stated goal of international organisations such as the UN for some time now. Without a doubt they will accomplish their goal, and you can then rest easy that the world is now “safe” from the horrors of “overpopulation”. . . that is, as long as you are one of the survivors.
But how long is even the present level of population sustainable? The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed and one-third is starving. Over 4 million will die this year due to starvation. One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. The supply of fresh water is limited. Overpopulation has increased pollution.
Each individual’s political power has been reduced with increased population. Social funding per capita has been reduced when the population grows. This contributes signiicantly to government deficits, as well as reducing the quality of education.
As population density increases there is a decrease in housing affordability. Supply has not kept up with the demand for housing. Continually growing urban communities experience problems due to sheer massiveness.
Traffic problems are a result of overpopulation. Hundreds of thousands of hours are wasted in traffic congestion each year. Idling motors add to the pollution problem.
Inequities in distribution of resouces and population contributes to record numbers of migrating human populations which create immigration crises and social upheaval in many parts of the world. Human population and habitat expansion contributes to irreversible losses in terms of diversity of life on earth.
Catastrophic changes in biodiversity have been more rapid in the past 50 years than at any time in human history. Rates of species extinction are expected to continue at the same pace or even to accelerate.
Besides, while population growth has leveled in a few areas, worldwide population growth is inflationary as I have shown. In the 20th century, the world saw the biggest increase in its population in human history. In 2000, the United Nations estimated that the world’s population was growing at the rate of 75 million people per year. The world human population increases by 220,980 people every day according to Wikipedia.
Of course, societies will try to continue to meet needs using technological advances. But obviously we are using up natural resources at an unprecedented rate. You can’t possibly know if technology will be able to keep up with population growth or not. It’s comforting to suppose that someone will find a solution somehow. Hopefully someone will, but it’s by no means certain.
There are only two practical “solutions” to the “problem” of overpopulation: mass forced sterilisation, or mass murder. Take your pick.
The globalist-supernational authoritarian agenda of front organisations such as the WHO and the UN also has no problem with these “solutions” either. Aspiring globalist dictators created the perception of a problem specifically so they can now offer the “solutions”, similar to the rhetorical brainwashing tactics used against the germans by Hitler (the “final solution”).
Mass murder for profit? For a political agenda? For global hegemony? What’s the difference?
TLM–Seems you are overreacting my friend. Even China’s draconian efforts to curb population inflation didn’t resort to mass sterlization. India has made some progress without using China’s methods. By saying that dictators created the perception of a problem, are you denying that population inflation is a fact? You called me an alarmist for citing facts. It seems to me that your rhetoric is alarmist not mine. If the facts I cited aren’t accurate just produce ones that are. That way we avoid the histrionics.
Probally not but I guess were all going to find out overtime eventually.