Run Like Hell

As the basis for this research blog, my focus will be on the theories and myths of the Earth's "Carrying Capacity"; the disagreements, discrepancies, and potential dangers of unchecked population growth on a finite planet (Meadows, Meadows, Randers and Behrens III, 1972; Harding, 2006). In definition: 'The maximum population, also called Earth's carrying capacity, is the maximum number of people that can live on the food and other resources available on planet Earth' (Franck, von Bloh, Müller, Bondeau, and Sakschewski, 2011). It is a balance between 'totality of ecological services the Earth system can provide (“supply side”)' against 'totality of ecological human needs according to judicious minimum standards (“demand side”)' (Franck et al., 2011). 

Figure 1: The graph to the right is a median projection of the Earth's population trajectory (UN), by the end of the 21stC heading towards stabilising between 9 and 10bn people on earth, a very popular and widely used image. Not shown on this graph, was the margin of error given to this calculation, showing a 3bn range either side of this path, even heading further beyond 12bn.  

Franck et al. admitted their results did not account for other limitations besides very intensive land use. Particularly such crucial problems as water consumption, nutrients, crop protection, energy, and land-use patterns. I would include resource wars, disease, climate change, cataclysms (super-volcano, meteor impact etc), that would potentially have devastating consequences on not only our species and the earth, but our capabilities and overall CC.

In the"Anthropocene", the fact that humans have re-defined natural processes into a new geological epoch (where we sift more material than natural processes for example). 'Humans, with their unrivalled capacity for ecosystem engineering' (Ellis, 2011: 1029), particularly in the past 300 years overwhelming data supports the theory of we have/are turning the biosphere into an interconnected web of Anthromes (anthropogenic-biomes) (Ellis, 2011). 'This transformation (to an anthropogenic biosphere) remains incomplete, as significant wildlands persist … novel ecosystems (have been) altered significantly but not completely' (Ellis, 2011: 1029). 

Since 1970 the global population has doubled (reaching 7bn in October 2012), and is seen as a sign of a healthy global economy (Peters, 2011), but even in 1995 demographers such as Cohen were claiming 'the possibility must be considered seriously that the number of people on the Earth has reached, or will reach within half a century, the maximum number the Earth can support in modes of life that we and our children and their children will choose to want' (p112-113). It is not only a strain on our own species, in fact 'the sheer magnitude of the human population has profound implications because of the demands placed on the environment'  on the Earth in its entirety.