The earth's surface including oceans with the current population result in a density of only about .09 persons per square kilometre.

Living in a very dry country where the population density averages out at just over 3 persons per square kilometre I know how empty that is. The country however produces about 3 times the food that it needs.

Food is not the problem - water is.

The land covered by sea and ocean has not been started to be properly used for human habitation yet.

The problem is not overpopulation but too many seeing a half empty or cracked glass!

Sad to not be having any Earth day festivities today.

I wonder how those wishing for a pandemic now feel about the issue?

Vasectomies are great.

Hmmm...Are you a guy? How about suggesting men use birth control? You might be interested to know that the best approach to reducing births is education for girls. Educated women marry later, have fewer births, & better survival rates for the kids they do have. Lower infant and child mortality allows families to not feel the need to have "extra" kids just in case. Fighting poverty is also necessary for lowering birth rates. Countries in Europe where the standard of living is high and women have more equal education and staus are experiencing very low birth rates.

I need to point out that if all the time, money, lives, and efforts put towards gods & religions had been used to benefit scientific research & advances, we would not have this problem - we would already have colonies on Mars, and so forth - it's not that here are too many people - it's that there are too much fear of the unknown & the many superstitions about life that have held our species back.

BTW; I shared this to my group, [agnostic.com]. Great post....very important!

China tried - with mixed results - to enforce the 1-child limits. They had limited success. The greater promise is education; yes; the world is getting smarter....and the wiser are catching on to the cost to raise a child - both financial and emotional.

So the population growth curve is not growing as it was decades ago...but it's still growing.

Developed nations like growth. All DN's have tax incentives for larger families.

And the UDN (under-developed nations) are going through what us demographers call a "Demographic transition". The big question is will we transition to end fossil fuels, mitigate climate change, and slow the growth in time to prevent a catastrophic collapse?

Remember this little simple observation, made by Thomas R. Malthus - the father of Demography made in 1812 - over 200 years ago; "As the quantity of life (in any given area) increases, the quality of life decreases".

He made this comment in one of his papers criticizing London's growth - and the world was just turning 1 billion when he wrote this.

Today we are a 7.7 billion, and increasing (births minus deaths) at the rate of 158 per minute, 227,000 per day, 1.59 million per week)

[worldometers.info]

[bitsofscience.org]

Another question to ask is at what size population will the death/birth rate even out? I believe I've heard around 9 billion. So if that is the case then another question would be are we be able to sustain 9 billion (or whatever the actual number may be)?

To the 2nd question, I think so.This obviously wouldnt be the only metric, but the amount of food at restaurants that is dumped out each night could feed a small village. I once worked at Cracker Barrel and we would throw away almost 2 50 gal trash cans of food a night. I'm talking grits, green beans, potatoes, etc. If we could develop a more efficient system of handling food waste and also getting it those in need, perhaps we could at least make this aspect of this seemingly dire situation more suited to our needs.

On a similar note, I strongly feel that we should heavily invest more in the sciences, and especially so in space travel. We need more people in the STEM fields. We have a vacuum of personnel in these areas and these are the fields that would help to solve these kinds of issues. I say space travel especially, because that has to be the ultimate outcome if we intend on surviving as a species. Even if we somehow learn to coexist with this planet and have all the universal luck of not being destroyed otherwise, our sun will die and take this place with it. If we intend on saving ourselves, space travel eventually has to become a reality. But first things first, how do we develop ways to sustain ourselves long enough to even reach that point?

Good work on the charts btw.

A little bit of many things, plus the option to leave the planet.

2 great videos relative to our future on this planet and climate change. And its nice to see who some of the scientists working on these issues are.

All the above to your above survey!!!

1920 there were only 1.5 billion individuals on this planet!!!

Now in 2020 7.85 Billion individuals inhabit this planet!!!

No easy answer, no easy solution!!!

Like cockroaches humans have decimated this planet especially in the last 200 years!!!

This planet was once a real paradise!!!

We are just little bump in time for this planet!!!

It does not need us!!!

We need it!!!

Just look how it has been treated, like shit!!!

[newser.com]