Agnostic Paladin said:
The longer humans live, the faster the population increases, and some people think that we're already beyond the Earth's long-term capacity.
Wrong, on a few accounts:
#1- The nations of the Earth with the longest lived, richest populations have the lowest growth rates- look at Japan, Italy, or the Scandinavian nations. France, Germany, Britain and Canada don't have very high growth rates either. The only thing that is keeping the US at above replacement rate is immigration and the tendency among the poorer strata of society to have larger families. (Democratic Socialist nations, with less of a poverty problem, tend to have dropping populations) Russia, despite it's impoverished state, is also declining in population. China is quickly bringing their population under control as well with their one-child policy- it should stabilize around 1.4 Billion people by 2025. In fact, the world's population should stabilize around 8-10 Billion around midcentury.
#2- The Earth's long-term capacity is much higher than the doomsayers think- I'd estimate that 20 billion would be about the optimal population of the earth. Remember that we only inhabit a tiny fraction of the planet, and much of our current building practices are extremely wasteful. The oceans are completely uninhabited. Huge swaths of the world, such as most of Russia, the Western US, and Canada, are very sparsely populated. The US is already producing a large enough food surplus to feed all of the world's hungry- if only we had the incentive and the resources to feed them. (I think that the $457 Billion that Pres. Bush just had appropriated for weapons would be better spent on an anti-hunger program, but that's just me.
) Our cities are poorly designed, sprawling messes- by building upwards and using design strategies similiar to those advanced by Paolo Soleri, we could develop cities designed for housing much larger populations using much less territory. Combined with clean industry based upon emerging chemical technologies (biotech, nanotech) and energy resources (wind, solar, tidal harnesses, OTEC, even perhaps fusion or zero-point), we could end the destruction of our enviornment and reverse the damage by the end of the century.
Extending lifespan is very important to me... I feel that denying our impulse to live beyond our current span is to deny the potential of the human race. Same goes for not colonizing and terraforming other worlds. While the technology to do this may seem far out now, take a look at Ray Kurzweil's predictions- he estimates that the amount of technological change we'll see in the 21st century will be equal to that of the entire last 20,000 years of human history. We're in for a wild ride, folks- and I plan to see the whole thing.
