How Many People Should the Earth Support?

EcoFuture (TM) Population and Sustainability - How Many People <I>Should</I> the Earth Support?: "Conclusions

Of course the point of this exercise is to point out that if we wish to grow the world population to the UN projection of about 12 billion near the middle of the next century, such growth will have to come at the expense of many things, not the least of which is compassion for people less fortunate than we in the U.S.

It also shows somewhat clearly what I have been saying for over 30 years, that increasing population density is inextricably linked to loss of freedom and losses of choice. In the worst of the above scenarios, we can forget the Bill of Rights. This was pointed out recently by M. Boyd Wilcox in his article, 'March 27, 1999: On the anniversary of the Rockefeller Report, Overpopulation Dilutes Democracy,' which appeared in the March/April issue of Population Press(8). A quote from that article: 'One need not pander to Malthusian or apocalyptic thinking to ask in all seriousness whether the biosphere can survive another century like this one. Arguably, it is not biological survival of the human species that is in danger so much as it is the moral or spiritual survival of what it means to be human and to be part of a complex living community. We cannot count the ways in which human identity, imagination, and esthetic appreciation depe"