China's One Child Policy is a great policy.

[HappySqurriel]

Kirameo said:

HappySqurriel said:

Realistically, as long as we continue seeing the kinds of technological advancements that increase our ability to produce higher density cities, we continue to see the increase in efficiency we have for the past several centuries, and we can actually take advantage of the abundant energy resources available I see little reason to believe that the earth could not support 10 times its current population with each individual having a standard of living higher than most people in the western world have today.

It may not be desireable to live in a city with 4 times the population density of New York, but that doesn't mean that the earth couldn't support us.

That's just a wet dream. The truth is that if we don't take care of the underlying problems of the world as it is today (poverty, hunger and lack of sustainable technologies/application of these), our society would collapse.

When you multiply they population by 10, you have to multiply the amount of cars in the world by 10, unless we work seriously on public transport. Multiply the amount of food produced by 10 and the water available by 10.

In the FUTURE all of this will be possible but we need SHORT TERM solutions if we want to see that future.

You're mixing up two seperate issues entirely ...

There are socioeconomic and political factors which make rapid population growth very risky for stability; but this is something entirely different from the Earth being able to sustain a very large population assuming we continue to see technological development.

Effectively, when population increases we would see a massive reduction in energy use per-capita because of increases in population density. In high density areas (like big cities) the amount of people who own their own cars and use them to drive substantial distances is small; and the amount of energy they use to control the temperature of their apartments is smaller than to get similar results from a home. If you have a city with far higher population density that New York (as an example) few people would travel anywhere using a car, and large appartment structures would be able to take advantage of the heat produce by people to keep the building warm in the winter; and they could trap the excess energy in cold water in summer, cooling the building and warming water for use with far less use of energy. 

The only "problem" with a population that size is the production of food, and (as anyone who has ever seen a grow-op can tell you) if you have enough energy you can grow practically anything. Between Thorium, Uranium, and Plutonium alone we have enough energy in the earth to power our current lifestyle for tens of thousands of years; and as we perfect fusion that will (probably) become hundreds of thousands of years.