Martin said:
Ian, where do you get this claim that the Earth can only accomodate 1 billion people? I've never heard that theory before..
All food on the planet is made from energy from the sun. Plants and photoplankton get their energy from the sun, and other animals eat them. Through the use of fossil fuels (to boost production) and unsustainable cropping (clear cutting or burning forests to plant or graze, cultivating millions of acres of land with single hybrid crops, etc.) we've boosted the temporary ability of the earth to provide food, by exploiting the regressive sunlight (the sunlight that has been used to construct something likes), or ancient sunlight (regressive sunlight that was transformed over millions of years). This boosted production is temporary and eventually will backfire. Using current sunlight, and sustainable levels of regressive sunlight, the earth can support approximately one billion historically.
