You don’t hear too much about the “population crisis” anymore. People assume that one way or another we can feed as many people as we want. And somehow we think it is good that as many people as possible should be kept alive.
I’m an old curmudgeon who thinks the population levels of my youth in the 1950s were just dandy. Humans had managed to mess up parts of the planet, but a lot remained pristine. The oceans thrived, and climate alteration was moderate. So I believe that a lot of our problems would be solved if we just lost 5 or 6 billion folks, taking world population levels back to that time.
I know we could support a lot more in some kind of tight fragile matrix. Perhaps the natural world as I remember it fondly was already beyond many of its tipping points. But I believe that when all is said and done in the long run the natural numbers level of the species, if it survives, will be much lower than now.
Civilization would be fine with a “mere” one or two billion. Depending, of course, on the way that level comes about. But I had my life and times, and I can only hope something like it could one day arrive again.
“Life” doesn’t really care. Bacteria are happy no matter if the dominant species is humans, dinosaurs, mice, or cockroaches. Or trees, for that matter. And I suspect that no matter how inhospitable the Earth finally becomes, it will remain nicer than Mars or anywhere else for a few billion years more.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 