Does the world have a "carrying capacity"?

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Mark Evans

Does the world have a “carrying capacity”?

Throughout human history the growth of the overall population has been significantly small however in more recent times this has changed. The population has grown from around three billion to over 6.4 billion in the last 40 years.

 

When examining the statement “Does the work have a carrying capacity” there are three view points: The optimist, the pessimist and the realist.

The main realist’s view came from Malthus who stated:

“…the population is increasing at an exponential rate…while the limited amount of land available will mean that food supply can only increase at an arithmetic rate… ”

Therefore we can deduce that there will eventually be a point where population growth will outstrip food supply and we will be unable to grow enough food to feed the population. However at this point famine will set in and the population should drop significantly. This is the idea that Malthus suggested would eventually stop the population from significantly outstripping food supply: natural checks. Events such as wars, famine and disease as well as people’s moral restraint (later marriages and abstinence from sex) would all work toward reducing the population.

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However relying on such events to occur and people to avoid having sex is too risqué and is obviously not totally true as, especially in LEDC’s, wars and disease are likely to encourage couples to have more children to increase the likelihood of one surviving hence a greater crude birth rate.

A rather more gloomy theory was put forward by the Club of Rome who released a report entitled ‘Limits to Growth’. In it they stated:

“If present day trends continue…the limits to growth…will be reached in the next one hundred years”.

They came to this conclusion as ...

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