Limiting humanity to Earth is also dangerous. In case of a planetwide disaster, humanity can die unless we have self-sustaining colonies on other celestial bodies or constructed in space. Such a disaster could come from outside, in the form of a giant meteorite; inside, in the form of a pandemic disease; or be self-inflicted, in the form of a global nuclear war.

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President Josiah Bartlet: Sweden has a 100% literacy rate. 100%! How do they do that?
Leo McGarry: Maybe they don't and they can't add.

I kinda think that's why the exponential growth in population size may become a problem

It would, given that humanity would have such a growth. We do not any more, as indicated by the declining and even negative growth rate in most developed countries.

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President Josiah Bartlet: Sweden has a 100% literacy rate. 100%! How do they do that?
Leo McGarry: Maybe they don't and they can't add.

Yes we are in a dangerous situation BECAUSE physics limits us to the earth into the foreseeable future. You need a thousand years to solve the problems by trying to leave Earth. I'll take the 100 year plan in which time a meteor deflecting method can be devised, all disease overcome and we can learn to live in peace.

Anyway, until you appreciate the magnitude of the obstacles you need to overcome we will keep going in circles so I'll leave it at that.

When you consider the global population as a whole the UN still predicts the population to be 9-10 billion by 2050. That is another 3-4 billion people that need to be fed, clothed, sheltered, etc... Eventually we do run out of land to grow food on, and we end up with famine (assuming some other catastrophe spares us in the meantime).

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

I know, and after this time the UN predicts that the curve flattens out and may start to drop.

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President Josiah Bartlet: Sweden has a 100% literacy rate. 100%! How do they do that?
Leo McGarry: Maybe they don't and they can't add.

I rather think you do not look so far into the future as I am. This has happened to me before when debating this issue. This is also why I give examples on scientific progress over the last century, because many people do not look farther into the future than maybe a decade or two. (I do not say you do not, but most people do not.)

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President Josiah Bartlet: Sweden has a 100% literacy rate. 100%! How do they do that?
Leo McGarry: Maybe they don't and they can't add.

Why are you so negative on this issue? I think earth can easily sustain 30 billion people. It is not desirable but certainly possible.

I don't think the earth can sustain even the 6 billion we have already if everybody expected to live like i do.

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

That could only happen if after 2050 the whole of the world is developed to the same degree as the west. That is insanely optimistic.

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

That issue is not how far you look into the future. The issue is that we don't have the time to wait for the laws of physics to be turned on its head, for Einstein and Newton to be proven wrong, and then actually put to some practical use (requiring decades of research, development, bureaucracy,...)

Why bother when we already know how not to destroy the ecological basis of our existence anyway. You far off vision of space travel might one day be a reality, but it would be very unwise to just rely on that as a solution to current problems.

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

What about the growth rate over all? Or is it that those folks are smaller and don't eat as much.

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...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

I have addressed you already on all points raised here. This is just too repetitious to be interesting and does nothing to deal with the OP in any practical sense.

So you do not believe in the UN prognosis for the time post 2050, just for the time before that?

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President Josiah Bartlet: Sweden has a 100% literacy rate. 100%! How do they do that?
Leo McGarry: Maybe they don't and they can't add.

Actually on further thought they may be correct.

The associated rise in food availability to feed 10 billion people will have to be matched by an appropriate rise in fossil fuels to produce and transport that food. Fossil fuels are finite and the peak-oil literature puts oil production in decline sometime over the next 50 years.

We may get to ~10 billion and then see a rapid decline as more and more people starve to death.

It has been calculated by the US government and the UN that for 6 billion people to live as per the typical western developed lifestyle we would need at least 6 more earth sized planets worth of resources to achieve that.

So in a way i agree with you, but probably for different reasons. The more i think about this issue the more i think we will see a population decline, most likely through famine, disease, and war brought on by resource depletion and ecological destruction.

It seems the only way out of this is a repeat of the 'green revolution' that brought modern fertilizers and agricultural techniques to poor countries as per the OP. I won't discount the possibility of this at some distant point, but it seems like wishful thinking. At some point there is a limit to how much food can be grown on X amount of land and X amount of time. I think we have already approached that limit.

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown