What is the “carrying capacity” of the earth? How many people can the earth support?
DEBORAH: You know, that’s a good question. To my thinking it’s a theoretical question. There has been a long demographic debate, the arguments of which sometimes conflict, sometimes converge. There are two schools of thought on population growth. One is that population growth will far outweigh resources. That belief is commonly associated with the work of Malthus from the late 1700’s. The other school of thought is commonly associated with Ester Boserup, which is that technology shifts with population. So you have one level of population pushing out the technological innovations at any given time. So more population can create and sustain new technologies, which allow for greater populations to be sustained. These two views have established some form of conflict in population science. Environmental scientists have often adapted the Malthusian view, perhaps without sufficient rigor. It would be a very valuable thing for people looking at ecological and environmental change to look at bo
