this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 22 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Technically, earth's land area is big enough to sustain around 24 billion people. Consider this diagram:

It shows that we're using around 50% of all habitable land for agriculture. Most of the land that we aren't using is either high up in the mountains (where terrain isn't flat and you can't use heavy machinery) or in the tropical regions on Earth close to the equator (south america, central africa, indonesia), or in areas where it's too cold for agriculture (sibiria, canada). so you can't really use more agricultural land than we're already using without cutting down the rainforest.

In the diagram it also says that we're using only 23% of agricultural land for crops which produce 83% of all calories. If we used close to 100% of agricultural land for crops, it would produce approximately 320% of calories currently being produced, so yes, we could feed 3x the population this way.

However, it must be noted that there's significant fluctuation in food production per km², for example due to volcanic eruptions. So it's better to leave a certain buffer to the maximum amount of people you could feed in one year, because food shortages in another year would otherwise lead to bad famines.

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[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 21 points 4 days ago

Most of the 8 billon people are living in the third world and which less resources waste, most recources a wasted by less than 10% of the world population.

[–] Sidhean@lemmy.world 17 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Oh, I know!

wE sHoULd KiLl HalF oF ThEm

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

I was going to say "No one is saying that", but there are many going down that road.

The preferable approach is degrowth. A lower birthrate leading to a smaller population with no deaths required, just vastly fewer births and lower consumption until human civilization can not only fit with our planetary boundaries, but restore a lot of wildlife and wildlands, then stabilize at a population and consumption that is healthy and comfortable.

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[–] flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 12 points 4 days ago (3 children)

But image if we can provide so much for 8.5 billion, it means we can provid double for 4 billion. There is no reasonable excuse to keep increasing the human population.

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[–] TheGuyTM3@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

From what i've heard, with the aging population in developed countries and the birthrate getting lower due to longer life expectancy, population should soon stabilise itself around 10 billions. Seems viable.

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