spuriousmonkey, How much is the (biological load) limit? not sure, but it is determined by a balance between byproducts of organic material(ie. cocky) and the earths ability to sustain itself.
It's got nothing to do with the Earth's ability to sustain large numbers of animals. It's the unique and disfunctional behavior of humans and the fact that we have chosen to live outside of local ecosystems that is the problem. It's pollution, deforestation, industrial scale agriculture and fishing, wars, ect...
i was referring to humans. our civilization took the concept of anything that works to get to where we are and it did work but these methods are not sustainable and are stopgap solutions. to do things right and to elevate us to "type one" civilization is going to take incredible ingenuity which tbh may be beyond our capabilities. i see no other alternatives. how advanced are we? are we much further along than the industrial revolution?
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And still, no one has been able to provide any substantiated scientific studies of any kind that defines or even dictates a population limit. Until that time, this thread, and all the people who support the idea of a "population limit", are nothing but religious freaks basing their opinions on faith.
It's not population numbers, as I said, but the behavior of that population. In America, the great plains used to support buffalo as far as you could see, and they are huge.
Good living = .5 billion OK living = 2 billion World poverty nightmare + environmental holocaust = 9 billion
Pretty much, I read that it would take 5 earths to give everyone the standard of living found in developed countries. I agree with the ideal population being 500 million. Large enough for us to become a type I civilization, but low enough to be ecologically sustainable.
Type I: Climate control, fusion, nanotechnology, post-fossil fuel economy, solar system colonization, world dominated by EU-type economic zones. Type II: Think Star Trek, beginings of interstellar collonization, Dyson Spheres. Type III: Read Asimov's Foundation novels, galactic civilization
huuum... I think we needed to grow this big to eventually become a Type I... Remember this... you cannot make a chick without hatching an egg....
I'm not saying that we should destroy the planet, but we should also remember that it takes a lot to become a Type I civilization. That's the biggest leap...
There are three hundred million in the US alone, and it's mostly empty! You want five hundred million on the entire earth? I doubt that's enough to support the development of the ultra high tech you would like to see to make us a "type one" civilization. I think you're putting the horse before the cart. AFTER we develop the technologies you speak of, we can establish colonies on other planets and move most dirty industries off planet. Until then, we need all the people we can get. Otherwise, who's going to develop your nanotech and colonize the solar system?
This is an urban legend in the making. Pianka did not actually say the things he is being reviled for. He was quoted out of context, sentences were torn apart and the pieces put together, and most of what has been printed about him is commentary by people who claim to have been there rather than actual quotes. There are a lot of crazy people in Texas or we wouldn't have had Presidents Johnson, Bush, and Bush, but they're not crazy enough to give an award to the fictitious person that was made up in these reports. Pianka simply thinks that humanity will not be able to stop destroying the earth--its own habitat--and therefore will end up destroying itself. That is hardly a remarkable opinion. But it is wrong. The second derivative of the population curve has already gone negative: the aggregate world birth rate is falling. The first derivative is predicted to go negative before the end of this century. The earth's population may never actually reach ten billion. Prosperity always correlates with smaller family size. Virtually every people on earth--even the most abjectly poor ones--are becoming less poor. Places where people used to have twelve children are having eight. Where they used to have eight they're now having six. Etc. The birth rate has already fallen below replacement level in "The West." The only thing that's propping up our bankrupt social security systems is the immigration of people who are still having larger families.