patrick.net

A recent post on birth control go me thinking, how many people can Earth support? While some would argue that there are too many people in the world even today, we really do not utilize our natural resources very effectively. For example if the world invested less resources into there military's, we could build solar plants in the desert, pumping stations could pump the water from the oceans into the desert, then the solar panels could boil the water purifying it into drinkable water. This water then could be irrigated to grow crops. Some of the solar panels would generate electricity others would just be used to boil the water. Since roughly 1/3 of the land on Earth is desert, in theory, we could easily double the worlds food production capacity. Actually only 6.1% of the earths surface is used to grow food currently, a 10% increase in crop land, which includes raising cattle and other livestock and growing cotton for clothing would give 150% production output increase. People of course need more than just food, water and clothing. They need places to live, resources would be needed to build homes, transportation and other infrastructure. My point is better utilization of the worlds resources could easily support 20 or even 30 billion people without destroying the planet ecologically.

Of course the question is how many people can the earth suppose. So cut those rain forests down, wildlife is something only found in Zoo's. Utilizing all of the world resources for just humans 60 billion would be obtainable. Live stock eating too much of our crops? Well we can't have that, limit the amount crops your allowed to feed to livestock, a cheese burger is something only the wealthy can afford on a rare occasion, that gives us enough food to feed another 10 or 15 billion people.