How many people can Planet Earth host in a sustainable way? We are currently at 7 billion, and seemingly headed to 9 billion, and beyond. Are we already beyond Earth's healthy carrying capacity? I think at very least, we are right at very the limits of it.
For a stunning example of what happens when the carrying capacity of a finite environment is exceeded, see the first few paragraphs of Home Planet in the Cornell Alumni magazine.
One last quote from the above linked article by Frank T. Rhodes, Cornell President for 18 years: “......it’s easy to forget that we share the planet with two million other named species, and the effect we’re having on them is huge. We just assume that every other species gets out of the way while we take what we want. But there’s a limit to how long we can go on doing that, because like it or not we depend to varying degrees on many of these other species. We injure not just them, but ourselves, by the casual way in which we plunder the planet.”
For a stunning example of what happens when the carrying capacity of a finite environment is exceeded, see the first few paragraphs of Home Planet in the Cornell Alumni magazine.
One last quote from the above linked article by Frank T. Rhodes, Cornell President for 18 years: “......it’s easy to forget that we share the planet with two million other named species, and the effect we’re having on them is huge. We just assume that every other species gets out of the way while we take what we want. But there’s a limit to how long we can go on doing that, because like it or not we depend to varying degrees on many of these other species. We injure not just them, but ourselves, by the casual way in which we plunder the planet.”
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