How many people can Earth support?

Our planet was not always so crowded as it is today.

The total population was between 100 and 10,000 at that time. It took 35,000 years for the human population to double in size due to the fact that there were so few people at the beginning. The human population doubled after the invention of agriculture between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago. It took the population 300 years to double. It took less than 100 years by the 19th century.

The Earth's population doubled in 44 years. Is the human population going to grow at this rate? Is there a limit to the number of humans we can support?

If humans go extinct, what will happen to Earth?

According to Cohen, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, a scientist and inventor of the microscope, predicted that the Earth could support 13 billion people in the 17th century. He took Holland's population of 1 million and divided it by 13,400 to come up with a figure. Cohen has collected 65 estimates over the course of 40 years. Cohen told Live Science that there is little consensus in how many people the Earth can support.

The term "carrying capacity" was first used to describe how much cargo a ship could hold. Wildlife managers used the term herd management in the 19th century to describe the maximum population of a species in a given area. If birth and death rates are the same, a population will be stable. The carrying capacity of a habitat can be increased or decreased by environmental changes. Carrying capacity is dependent on both natural constraints and human choices. Natural constraints include food scarcity. Human choices include interactions between economics and culture, such as how we produce and consume goods.

Patrick Gerland told Live Science that the future of the world population is driven by survival and reproduction. You can keep going to a stable population if you have a ratio of two children for every couple. From one generation to the next, your population will shrink if you get to a number less than two. The majority of people will survive if you are above that.

Many low income countries have high birth rates and large family sizes, but also high infant mortality and shorter lifespans. Gerland said that more and more countries tend to have less than two children per couple. While access to health care increases lifespans, this tends to happen in countries with a falling birth rate.

Since the 1960s, global population growth has slowed. According to the UN Population Division, the average birth rate in 1950 was five children for every woman. It fell to 2.44 children per woman in 2020.

According to the scientific consensus, the population of the world will reach a peak in the century to come. According to the United Nations Population Division, the world's population will reach 10 billion by the year 2080 and remain there until the year 2200. demographers look into the future and it becomes more speculative and uncertain

There is a number of people that Earth can support. Our environment will be able to sustain future populations on the basis of how we produce and consume natural resources. Gerland said, "It's a matter of mode of production, mode of consumption, who has access to what and how."

If the population of the United States switched to a vegetarian diet, the land used to grow crops for humans would be used to feed an additional 350 million Americans. According to Max Roser, director of the Oxford Martin programme on global development in the U.K., high-income countries with increased access to education and family planning tend to have lower birth rates and smaller family sizes.

We don't know what the upper limit is on the number of humans we can support. It depends on how we manage our resources. If we want to affect how many people planet Earth can support, we'll need to decide how many people want a four-wheeled vehicle and a four-legged one.

The original was published on Live Science in 2011.