If you look at Japan in Google Maps, in satellite view like this, you’ll notice that Tokyo is a big grey blot that stretches about half the width of the nation. That grey blot is 10 stories tall, principally made of concrete, and looks exactly the same no matter you drop yourself in it. As of ~1850, Japan was still a feudal state with samurai and castles. In a 150 years, they’ve converted perhaps 10% of their land into a concrete block ten stories tall.
The average American will, in his life, be able to afford a house with a yard. The average Japanese person will have an apartment slightly larger than a room in an American university’s dormitory.
The problem with population isn’t so much one of feeding everyone, but rather that having an expanding population is really pointless and just lowers the quality of life for everyone since it shrinks the ratio of resources to people. And once you get to the point where you’re living in a concrete block and thinking, “This sucks.” All that nice green stuff is pretty much gone for good.
I rather like this talk, despite what Curtis might think of Paul Ehrlich. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, and I’m on a slow connection, so I can’t really sum it up, but he makes some interesting points I don’t usually hear in these discussions.
It’s not really about “crowding” or “overcrowding”, the real question is - how many people can the earth sustain? And at what level of quality of life? As large, poor countries develop industrial economies, will the earth be able to sustain us at a high quality of life? If Chinese and Indian people owned cars at the same rate of ownership as people in Western nations (which, I have to say, would be a complete disaster in India, anyway, given the state of traffic already), how long would we have sufficient energy?
So, basically, it depends on how we live. There isn’t really a number you can hang on the question. If we make an effort to live in a sustainable fashion, we’re okay. If we waste shit, we’re not. How well we’re doing at the moment seems to vary depending on who you ask.