We know how many people the earth can support

Christopher L. Tucker
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引用次数: 2

Abstract

A quarter century after Joel Cohen asked the essential question “How Many People can the Earth Support?”, this article offers an answer, based on new science and geographical analysis, and asserts that we have long ago exceeded our planet’s long term ecological carrying capacity that optimistically can only support 3 billion modern industrialized humans. While agreeing that strategies based on reducing consumption are sorely needed to live within our planet’s carrying capacity, the impending explosion of the global middle class promises to render consumption-only strategies inadequate, in the face of runaway population growth and the accumulation of massive ecological debt. Noting recent studies that project global population to begin to decrease in 2064 after peaking at 9.7B, it is asked why we don’t act now to accelerate this already inevitable trend with enhanced investment in women’s empowerment, education, and access to family planning technologies. This paper calls for a goal of achieving 1.5 total fertility rate (TFR) by 2030 to bend the global population curve, begin relieving the ecological burden humanity has foisted on our planet, and to decrease human population as we approach 2100 to something closer to the long term ecological carrying capacity of our planet.
我们知道地球能养活多少人
在乔尔·科恩提出“地球能养活多少人?”这一基本问题四分之一个世纪后,这篇文章基于新的科学和地理分析给出了答案,并断言我们早就超过了地球的长期生态承载能力,乐观地说,这种能力只能养活30亿现代工业化人类。尽管人们一致认为,为了在地球的承载能力范围内生活,迫切需要基于减少消费的战略,但面对失控的人口增长和巨额生态债务的积累,全球中产阶级即将爆发,这将使仅消费的战略变得不足。注意到最近的研究预测,全球人口在达到97亿的峰值后,将于2064年开始减少,有人问我们,为什么我们现在不采取行动,通过增加对妇女赋权、教育和获得计划生育技术的投资来加速这一本已不可避免的趋势。本文呼吁到2030年实现1.5的总生育率(TFR)的目标,以扭转全球人口曲线,开始减轻人类强加给我们星球的生态负担,并在我们接近2100年时减少人口,使其更接近我们星球的长期生态承载力。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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