Les Knight, the founder of the VHEMT movement and I agree that due to our very HUMAN NATURE, we are not going to stay within whatever artificial limit placed on our population.
Therefore, zero is the carrying capacity LONG TERM, per your question.
You may know that we're all, everyone of us, related to 200 or fewer individual humans who lived about 70,000 years ago, in East Africa. That what the geneticists have found...
Therefore, even after a really big die-off, figure way less than 70,000 years and we're back to where we are today, since not everything we now know about leveraging technology to support human life (and destroy the rest of the biosphere) can be expected to be unlearned, regardless of how brutal it may be for many many years for those who survive.
There are numerous "carbon footprint" websites that suggest several millions of us (as many as 2 billion by one estimate) could live "in harmony" with the environment, if we were, as you suggest, careful.
If you want to be depressed, check this out: http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator1.html
Here are my results, I'm not proud...just glad to be childfree.
- Your footprint is 1.20 tonnes, (per month) which equates to 13.38 tonnes per year
- The average footprint for people in United States is 20.40 tonnes
- The average for the industrial nations is about 11 tonnes
- The average worldwide carbon footprint is about 4 tonnes
- The worldwide target to combat climate change is 2 tonn
Each of us can decide to do the moral thing, and not breed.
Here's a neat synopsis of Earth Carrying Capacity, that does and doesn't answer your question!
http://mmcconeghy.com/students/supcarryingcapacity.html
Another site (http://www.dieoff.org/page174.htm) submits this conclusion:
"With a democratically determined population control policy that respects basic individual rights, with sound resource use policies, plus the support of science and technology to enhance energy supplies and protect the integrity of the environment, an optimum population of 2 billion for the Earth can be achieved. With a concerted effort, fundamental obligations to ensure the well-being of future generations can be attained within the 21st century. Individuals will then be free from poverty and starvation and live in an environment capable of sustaining human life with dignity. We must avoid letting humans numbers continue to increase to the limit of the Earth's natural resources and forcing natural forces to control our numbers by disease, malnutrition, and violent conflicts over resources."
If you think that sounds plausible, you may be the only one who does! The whole point of VHMET is that the final sentence is impossible to achieve, and, the limits of Earth's resources are being reached, way sooner than anyone suspects, and, "natural forces" will do what they do and we won't be around REGARDLESS OF WHAT WE DO TO TRY TO DELAY OR DENY IT.
Technology has always "bailed us out" in the past. Now Human Technology is not just overcoming natural boundaries, it is overwhelming natural systems. So, those who maintain that more technology is the answer have a grand tradition behind them and NO FUTURE at all!
Therefore, don't have kids, so that fewer suffer at the end!
The reason I submit this to this Atheist thread is that RELIGIOUSITY will attempt to thwart efforts to control population, as seen in the recent Economic Stimulus discussion of condoms...the "moral majority" are neither moral, nor the majority, but...they do control things way beyond their numbers or rationality would suggest they ought.
It is just as immoral as the position: "Let's fight them there, so we won't fight them here!" Since when is commiting war on someone else's territory (without provocation and by our own choice) moral in any way shape or form?
Oh well, humans aren't particularly rational, as this group certainly knows in spades!
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 6:15 PM, Chuck A <webinfo49@att.net> wrote:
Frish,
That was a very interesting website.
I guess I was a VHEMT without ever having heard of them.
www.vhemt.org
I didn't read every word on the site, but I looked around, read about half of it, and am still left with no answer to a question I've had for a long time.
Perhaps you have come across some answer(s) to this.
The question is: What is the long-term carrying capacity for humans on this planet? Assume that long term is a million years or longer, and that we were immediately reduced to this number, and stayed within 1% of this number "forever".
My guess is perhaps a billion or less, but I really don't have any evidence to back up that guess.
What do you think (or know) about this?
yours,
Chuck A
At 10:49 PM 2/15/2009, frish wrote:
How droll. Is it fair that we pay taxes to kill people in Iraq, in an illegal war? there are plenty of things we ought not subsidize but we do, and birth control, contraception, abortion are in the public interest, and so should be subsidized.
Condoms ought to be free with every happy meal.
Abortion has been shown (Freakonomics) to reduce crime. Condoms are even cheaper.
Libertarians ought to realize (but won't) that VOLUNTARY Human Extinction is the only MORAL choice since it is the best way to reduce our population in the face of the coming "Armageddon" (sorry for the biblical reference, but it applies, in spades).
I am just sorry that any tax incentives still exist to support procreation.
Like tax credits for kids.
Like tax credits for big suvs that subsidize big families.
It is DEFINITELY in the government's interest (if we still have government by,of,for people) to subsidize birth control, abortion, sex ed and anything else that will reduce population.
But, my view is definitely far less "popular" than atheism. And, I'm a "libertarian" too!
There is no "biological clock" only social forces and ignorance that keeps people procreating.
Oh well. Live long and die off!
Dima, there are people starving right here in America.
But that's not the point. The future is filled with starvation and a biosphere that CANNOT support human life, regardless of the "technology" we throw at it. Our momentum and human nature will preclude solutions to the situation, and, we'll be extinct regardless of what we throw at the problem. Oh well.
I don't suspect/expect any of you agree. VHEMT is far less acceptable than atheism.
Frish, who is pleased every day that he's a volunteer!
Take a minute and read, it is a serious site...we're Vehement!
www.vhemt.org
