We both grew up in Vancouver and we’d always joke about cities with 24-hour traffic reports, overcrowding, and overpriced housing. Over the last few years we realized the joke was on us and moved to smaller communities.
When humans decide a place is no longer a fit we can move away.
Orcas can’t.
Salmon can’t.
Grizzlies, wolves and caribou can’t.
Alarmist claims about population explosions have likely been around since the first family kicked an annoying cousin out of the cave because it was too crowded. Thomas Malthus, Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore, and others have issued dire warnings about the earth’s carrying capacity, but earth is remarkably resilient at housing humans.
There were 1.65 billion people here at the start of the 20th century. Today there are over 7.7 billion and we’re looking at 11.4 billion by the end of the century. We won’t run out of space and we probably won’t run out of food (though we likely won’t share it either). But here’s where Malthus, Ehrlich, Gore, and others failed to carry the decimal point in their doomsday equations. They only looked at one species.
We continue to survive runaway population growth-and with enough creative condo developments all the people on the planet could probably squeeze into whichever U.S. states are coastal in 2100-but attempting to feed, clothe, and house humans has wiped almost every other creature off the earth. And that’s with only North Americans currently consuming at the pace of North Americans.