How Many People Can the Earth Support? (1998)(nybooks.com)
nybooks.com
How Many People Can the Earth Support? (1998)
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1998/10/08/how-many-people-can-the-earth-support/
4 comments
I think you'll find Cohen anticipates this aspect.
Paywall: https://archive.is/E5AB8
Cohen is the leading authority on Earth's poplation limits and carrying capacity. He's the first to say that the question and answer are complicated, but that does not mean that there are no limits.
In his book, How many people can the earth support?, Cohen visits many estimates and/or claims regarding carrying capacity and explores the assumptions or logic behind many of these, which range from a low of about 100 million to highs over 12 trillion. Most such estimates cluster around 1--10 billion, and seem more credible than outliers, especially of the high-end group.
https://www.worldcat.org/title/how-many-people-can-the-earth...
https://archive.org/details/howmanypeoplecan00cohe
There are also a few articles discussing the question, though not with the detail of the book. Most are either paywalled (as in the submitted NY Review case) or in PDF formats (which seems to strongly discourage online readers). Their quality and expertise strongly reward expended effort, do please read these if you're genuinely interested in the question.
https://lab.rockefeller.edu/cohenje/assets/file/257bCohenHow...
http://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/allenth/Class-Readings-Passwo...
A review of Cohen's book, "On Human Carrying Capacity: A Review Essay on Joel Cohen's: How Many People Can the Earth Support?"
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2137692 (http://libgen.rs/scimag/10.2307%2F2137692)
And a hearty recommendation from science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/12/there-is-no-pl...
Cohen is the leading authority on Earth's poplation limits and carrying capacity. He's the first to say that the question and answer are complicated, but that does not mean that there are no limits.
In his book, How many people can the earth support?, Cohen visits many estimates and/or claims regarding carrying capacity and explores the assumptions or logic behind many of these, which range from a low of about 100 million to highs over 12 trillion. Most such estimates cluster around 1--10 billion, and seem more credible than outliers, especially of the high-end group.
https://www.worldcat.org/title/how-many-people-can-the-earth...
https://archive.org/details/howmanypeoplecan00cohe
There are also a few articles discussing the question, though not with the detail of the book. Most are either paywalled (as in the submitted NY Review case) or in PDF formats (which seems to strongly discourage online readers). Their quality and expertise strongly reward expended effort, do please read these if you're genuinely interested in the question.
https://lab.rockefeller.edu/cohenje/assets/file/257bCohenHow...
http://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/allenth/Class-Readings-Passwo...
A review of Cohen's book, "On Human Carrying Capacity: A Review Essay on Joel Cohen's: How Many People Can the Earth Support?"
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2137692 (http://libgen.rs/scimag/10.2307%2F2137692)
And a hearty recommendation from science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/12/there-is-no-pl...
Thanks for the submission and links, That question is something that i have been wanting to research.
A good example would be "How many people could the Earth support at the European energy-usage level?" That answer to that would be larger than having the population at the US energy-usage level, and smaller than having the population at the African Nomad energy-usage level.