LAND

Why did anyone believe that indefinite growth on a finite planet could ever work out? What are the environmental, climate and resource consequences of overpopulation? And in today’s automated, high tech age, where are the jobs for all these people?

Earth’s Overshoot Day is Earth’s natural resource report card. which first began in 1971. It’s date signifies the day that humans have consumed all of the natural resources that the planet could produce within a year time. The date did better during the pandemic years, however we’ll see what it is for 2022

‘if we continue consuming the way we do in the next 40 years, we will need to produce as much food as we have produced for the past 8,000 years!!!’ explains Ernst van den Ende, Managing Director of Plant Sciences at Wageningen University. The university located in Holland is known as the ‘silicon valley’ of agriculture and leads the way for increased productivity. The video covers both the science in development at Wageningen and at Sanan Sino-Science in China, where a three-story/one acre size building produces 1.8 tonnes of produce every day.  

It took 200,000 years for human population to reach 1 billion, and only 200 years to reach 7 billion.

The Haber-Bosch synthesis of ammonia to produce synthetic nitrogen fertilizers led to the tripling of crop yields and the abundance and affordability of food.  Population is determined by the number of people that can be fed, and therefore the Haber-Bosch invention provided the means to feed the many.

Joe Scott tackles overpopulation; can Earth support10 billion people? The short answer probably, but not at current rates of consumption. And to get to a sustainable plateau it’s going to require some changes in lifestyle: waste not and waste less resource.