And how do we achieve an optimal condition? I think these are the most important philosophical questions of our time, yet I don't see anyone working on these problems. Unless you count war and other forms of self-destruction...
2007-10-23 04:23:57 · 11 answers · asked by Who Else? 7 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
Depends on who they are.
Slackards - don't need too many of them - maybe 2 or 3.
Intelligent, compassionate humans -maybe around 1 billion is the right number.
2007-10-23 05:52:46 · answer #1 · answered by What me worry? 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The real question is 'optimal for what?'.
If you want every human to live like a king in huge palaces and with vast resources at his fingertips, then you are probably talking about something in the millions. If you are willing to have people sleep in shifts in bunk beds, consume exactly enough food to stay alive, and live within walking distance of their workplace, you could probably stack thirty or forty billion people on the planet at current technological levels without too much strain. And if you want to have no footprint or interference with nature of any kind, you're probably only going to get that with no humans at all.
And keep in mind that technology changes exactly how many humans the planet can carry drastically. It's not too long ago that upwards of 90% of a population had to farm for everyone to eat, and with modern methods it's more the other way around (America has gone from 39% farmers to 2% in just the last hundred years - link 1). Thus guesses at exact figures are going to change from year to year... and dramatically.
But that doesn't stop people from guessing! Joel Cohen, taking a range of conditions into account as well as other people's estimates, guessed in a paper in Science magazine that the Earth's carrying capacity for humans was between 7.7 to 12 billion people. And that was in 1995... I would expect (for reasons stated above) the current estimates would be higher by now. Since the current world population is estimated to be about 6.5 billion people, we'll either be there soon or we have a long ways to go.
2007-10-23 05:24:38 · answer #2 · answered by Doctor Why 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
At present (2007) the world is populated with 6.6 billion humans, give or take a million or two.
Some scientists contend that the earth could feed and sustain over 10 billion people with the existing land masses.
The problem seems to be that even with "just over 6 billion people," the earth is being strained, today, to provide life to those inhabitants. We have massive famine, curable diseases that prove to be fatal, overcrowding, wars over resources, and climate change due to global warming attributable to human activity. And, that's in the world, today, with the current population level.
I think we have already surpassed the number (maybe 4, or 5 billion) that the earth can sustain with any genuine quality of life. But, people keep on reproducing, so we'll probably find out as a species where the cataclysmic tipping point of world population is.
2007-10-23 04:48:58 · answer #3 · answered by BuckBunt3 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
There have been several studies on that subject. If you take the 'average' middle-class American lifestyle to be the baseline then, depending on whose numbres you believe, the planet can sustain somewhere between 3 and 4 billion people. So it's not really any big surprise that with 6.5 billion (give or take) that there are a lot of people who have nothing.
Doug
2007-10-23 04:53:39 · answer #4 · answered by doug_donaghue 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
We don't have to worry about them because nature does that for us.
We are no different than animals in that respect. Where I grew up, the deer population was quite large. If there were no hunters, the deer population would eat itself out of its food supply and there would be deer starving all over the state.
Same would happen to us.
Already, though we have declining birth rates in some countries(or slower growth in rates than years past), wars that help thin the herd.
2007-10-23 07:01:59 · answer #5 · answered by gryphon1911 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
It is the number of people that can live with no more or less than what they need to live. It is impossible to live that way with the structure and division that currently exists. Someone is always extravagant and someone is always starving.
2007-10-23 04:32:16 · answer #6 · answered by @@@@@@@@ 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
My opinion is the earth could do so much better without man on it. Just let nature do it's thing and don't interfere.
2007-10-23 04:29:38 · answer #7 · answered by Charley 4 · 1⤊ 2⤋
3 - me and the Brazilian women's beach volleyball team.
2007-10-23 04:33:55 · answer #8 · answered by zoomjet 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Vastly less then now.
2007-10-23 06:47:41 · answer #9 · answered by Freethinking Liberal 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
none.... you think my laptop is helping the earth... every step we take hurts the earth.
2007-10-24 01:17:53 · answer #10 · answered by Anastasia 1 · 0⤊ 2⤋