How do our lifestyles have to change to safely support 10 billion humans on one planet?

Question

Economic environmentalism - the idea that the economy SHOULD grow to the point of maximum benefit, and stabilize there. Beyond that point, economic growth is as dangerous as cancer. Think of a reef's ecology. They survive unchanging for centuries with no ill effects. Can't we do the same?

Answer 1

Some parts of the world can't sustain the population they have right now without outside intervention in the form of aid. That's partly due to local politicians being corrupt or incompetent but areas that can't produce their own food would be in for major trouble.

Obviously, moving away from an economy so dependent on fossil fuels is a good idea. You can ride a bike or walk instead of driving your car, unless it's too cold or too hot. You can buy a car that uses less fuel and hopefully in the near future you'll be able to buy a car that runs on hydrogen fuel cells or something like that, with little to no impact on air quality.

Population density isn't a problem since it's a big planet and you could put the whole population in Texas and have a population density lower than that of Tokyo. The main problems are feeding them and providing jobs and the consumer goods they require.

Can Earth support that many people? It was predicted it couldn't support 5 million and we're past that now so yes, but it would be better to tie our aid to controlling and then gradually reducing population growth rates. You can't just demand people in another country stop having children but you can find ways to encourage it.

The danger in an idea like economic environmentalism is deciding who gets to make the tough calls. Who decides how many is too many people and what do they do to stop future growth? If you have a recession, that means fewer resources to go around so do you have to 'cull' the population for the benefit of the majority?

Answer 2

Our lifestyles would have to change like this:

1) Everyone on the planet take the carbon footprint quiz

2) Everyone on the planet get to a zero impact with their carbon footprint

3) Everybody on the planet take the sustainability test and find out how many planets it would take to sustain their lives

4) Everybody on the planet get their lifestyle down to one planet per person.

-J

http://badhuman.wordpress.com

Answer 3

Hello

If we all of us not Change the Life Style,

One day all of Goes for STONE AGE life style.

No energy/Air & Water Polluted/Sea Water entered in our Earth.etc etc

Are you understand ?

[e-mail]

s.s.subbu

Answer 4

Stop eating meat, at least red.