Carrying Capacity
We decided to choose a carrying capacity of 10 billion people for our model, because analyzing the current human impact on the planet shows that the current way of life is not sustainable. Currently, humans’ global ecological footprint (a measurement that tracks how much biocapacity there is available and how much biocapacity people use and consume) suggests that it would take 1.5 Earths to sustain the current population, and it will reach a predicted 3 Earths by 2050. Clearly, the current way of life is very wasteful, as people are overusing natural resources, and the planet is not able to adequately replenish those resources at the same rate. Furthermore, along with growing temperatures and rising sea levels, species are continually going extinct, available land is quickly disappearing due to erosion, and new infectious diseases are quickly appearing. Life is quickly becoming unsustainable, and death rates will most likely increase over time, which will limit the global population. Of course, scientific advancements in clean energy and food production will attempt to combat these upcoming changes and make life more sustainable, but the human population as a whole will not be able to adjust rapidly. Furthermore, agronomists have recently lost faith in their belief that food production will be able to keep pace with the rising global population, which suggests that Earth is rapidly approaching its carrying capacity for humans. All in all, the numerous amounts of data suggests that humans are quickly approaching their carrying capacity. Evidence describes that the human population will be able to continue rising due to scientific advancements, but the changing climate and its other effects will prevent further additional growth. Therefore, 10 billion people is our carrying capacity, because the population will continue to rise drastically, but it will eventually slow and become stagnant due to limiting factors such as scarce amounts of food, new diseases that will infect millions of people, and disappearing land and space. Afterwards, human life will have to adjust to these new conditions, and the population will remain stagnant at 10 billion.