Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Earth's Carry Capacity & 2012



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As 2012 approaches, we can clearly see that our planet is grossly over populated. Resources such as food, water, arable land, and energy are running low. Decades of pollution from our fossil fuels, factories, farms and cities has made the planet is less viable than ever before. How can “Mother Earth” continue to sustain more with so much less?



Wiki defines Carrying Capacity –



The carrying capacity of a biological species in an environment is the population size of the species that the environment can sustain in the long term, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment. For the human population, more complex variables such as sanitation and medical care are sometimes considered as part of the necessary infrastructure.



In 2012 the World’s population will top 7 billion, more than three times the Earth’s estimated carrying capacity. We are at a crossroads and if the proponents of the Gaia Hypothesis are correct, the Earth will respond by correcting this imbalance. How this will take place is unknown.




Dr McConeghy's Environmental Science -


When scientists say that the carrying capacity of the Earth is 2 billion, they are not forgetting that we have 6 billion already. What they are saying is, that if you add up all the supplies in the world, and divide them up according to the amount that a typical American uses, then there is only enough for 2 billion people. If we have 6 billion people, the amount of fuel, water, electricity, etc. is just not enough to go around. Some people are going to be left out. We know that this is the case because, as we said in class, only about 1.2 billion people live in MDCs while the other 4.8 billion people have to make do with less.

http://mmcconeghy.com/students/supcarryingcapacity.html

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