| Chairman-Mao said: Isn't it like 8-9 billion could live sustainably or something in that neighbourhood? |
Sustainably is a very bad word.
How do we define sustainable? I mean, of the 7 billion we have, we don't actually sustain all of them - there is famine and water issues in many parts of the world, so we're not sustainable as is.
On the other end, maybe we are sustaining them since the overall population is going up? If we hold to current levels of famine, water issues and poverty, we could probably grow a bit more than 8-9 billion.
In fact, we could grow a lot more if we found better ways of doing things:
We could build Arcologies to ensure that density per capita is handled very efficiently. 20 acres of Acros could replace a medium sized city.
We can desalinize water from the ocean to ensure drinkable water for the population.
We can genetically engineer more crops to yield better harvests, and there is also far more farmland to utilize than what is currently used.
So it is really a sliding scale based on corruption, infrastructure, and technology. We probably can't handle more than 4-5 billion 'well' as of today, but we could theoretically hold tens of billions under the right circumstances.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
