{"id":49563,"date":"2019-11-12T10:23:03","date_gmt":"2019-11-12T15:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49563"},"modified":"2019-11-12T10:55:35","modified_gmt":"2019-11-12T15:55:35","slug":"bodhi-paul-chefurka-carrying-capacity-overshoot-and-sustainability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49563","title":{"rendered":"Bodhi Paul Chefurka: Carrying capacity, overshoot and sustainability"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/energyskeptic.com\/2019\/bodhi-paul-chefurka-carrying-capacity-overshoot-and-sustainability\/\">Bodhi Paul Chefurka: Carrying capacity, overshoot and sustainability<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ever since the writing of Thomas Malthus in the early 1800s, and especially since Paul Ehrlich\u2019s publication of&nbsp;<em>\u201cThe Population Bomb\u201d<\/em>&nbsp; in 1968, there has been a lot of learned skull-scratching over what the sustainable human population of Planet Earth might \u201creally\u201d be over the long haul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This question is intrinsically tied to the issue of ecological overshoot so ably described by William R. Catton Jr. in his 1980 book&nbsp;<em>\u201cOvershoot:The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change\u201d<\/em>.&nbsp; How much have we already pushed our population and consumption levels above the long-term carrying capacity of the planet?<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this article I outline my current thoughts on carrying capacity and overshoot, and present five estimates for the size of a sustainable human population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Carrying Capacity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Carrying_capacity\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Carrying capacity<\/a>\u201d is a well-known ecological term that has an obvious and fairly intuitive meaning:<em>&nbsp;\u201cThe maximum population size of a species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment.\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unfortunately that definition becomes more nebulous and controversial the closer you look at it, especially when we are talking about the planetary carrying capacity for human beings.\u00a0Ecologists will claim that our numbers have already well surpassed the planet\u2019s carrying capacity, while others (notably economists and politicians\u2026) claim we are nowhere near it yet!<br>\u00a0<br>This confusion may arise because we tend to confuse two very different understandings of the phrase \u201ccarrying capacity\u201d.\u00a0 For this discussion I will call these the \u201csubjective\u201d view and the \u201cobjective\u201d views of carrying capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The subjective view is carrying capacity as seen by a member of the species in question. Rather than coming from a rational, analytical assessment of the overall situation, it is an experiential judgement.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bodhi Paul Chefurka: Carrying capacity, overshoot and sustainability *** Ever since the writing of Thomas Malthus in the early 1800s, and especially since Paul Ehrlich\u2019s publication of&nbsp;\u201cThe Population Bomb\u201d&nbsp; in 1968, there has been a lot of learned skull-scratching over what the sustainable human population of Planet Earth might \u201creally\u201d be over the long haul. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[11836,1499,11859,3197,27270,5975,1371,21067],"class_list":["post-49563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-alice-friedemann","tag-carrying-capacity","tag-energy-skeptic","tag-overshoot","tag-paul-chefurka","tag-paul-ehrlich","tag-population","tag-thomas-malthus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49564,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49563\/revisions\/49564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}