Can the world support a growing population? Photo from: http://www.iskconinc.com/2012/07/15/extreme-sports-event-tickets-sold-out/
In “Overpopulation Is Not the Problem,” Erle C. Ellis talks about the popular misconception that the Earth’s environment creates a limit on population. He refers to our ancestors about how they made advancements in technology and adapted to their ecosystem in order to sustain themselves. For example, they would create tools out of stone and learn to make fire. Later, they would find depend deeply on agriculture. There is an estimated 7.2 billion in the world right now, and it is expected to reach nine billion by 2050. Ellis expects that future advancements in technology will allow us to sustain that amount of people, just like it has with population growth in the past. As a biologist himself, he has always learned that there is a mathematical limit, but Ellis ultimately believes human sustenance is a social science, and the real limit is on what we know technologically.
