Population and Carrying Capacity Forum

Despite a widespread complacency among many, humanity’s central problems today include, among other things, (a) the impending arrival of our 7th, 8th, and 9th billions between now and mid-century, along with (b) the extreme levels of overpopulation and environmental impacts that we already exhibit. (For a PowerPoint overview of item (a), visit here.)

This forum provides a home for discussions involving population, environment, and carrying capacity and their humanitarian and biospheric implications during the decades ahead. (For an overview of these topics, including CO2, climate, climb-and-collapse, and “the open-space delusion,” click here. The supporting mathematics for this document is posted here.)

Twice this year the PBS program “WorldFocus” has broadcast a Hunger in Haiti report depicting schoolchildren being forced to fight their daily hunger pangs by eating “cookies” made out of mud and “baked” on the sidewalk. For details on the program, visit the World Focus website.

These topics are also worth discussing for other reasons. For one thing, current U.N. “medium” population projections of approximately nine billion around 2050 may well be underestimates that may be overwhelmed by potentially-dramatic extensions of human lifespan might well emerge from laboratory research that is already underway. (A contemplation of such possibilities is posted at Demographic Implications of Life-extension.)

Finally, in the past, we have always been able to count on the functioning of earth’s natural systems as a given. Today, however, in light of unfolding events, it may be unjustified to suppose that such systems will always continue to function in the future, no matter how much abuse, destruction, disruption, pollution, and eradication that we heap upon them or how many billions of us try to inhabit the planet.

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