Timeline for If everyone were to be vegetarian, what would be the carrying capacity of the Earth?
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26 events
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| Jul 24, 2018 at 14:54 | comment | added | LShaver♦ | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
| Jul 24, 2018 at 14:34 | comment | added | Tim | If 98.9% of your body is riddled with cancer, it doesn't matter how healthy your little finger is — you're still going to die. Taking better care of that finger won't change the outcome. | |
| Jul 24, 2018 at 14:28 | comment | added | Tim | The core of the question revolves around the (apparent) assumption that switching to a vegetarian diet is sustainable. As mentioned in a comment on the original question, food — being a mere 1.1% of a westerner's total energy consumption — proves that diet is irrelevant to sustainability of a population with western lifestyles. Even if the West suddenly had no need for food whatsoever, 98.9% of the consumption would still occur and the planet's resources would be depleted. Western lifestyles are not sustainable. Basic math. There's nothing you can do to 1.1% to offset 98.9%. | |
| Jul 24, 2018 at 14:01 | comment | added | Tim | There are dozens of different ways to calculate how overpopulated the planet is. Overshoot Day is just one of them. Overpopulation Denial is a thing now. | |
| Jul 24, 2018 at 13:56 | comment | added | LShaver♦ | There's a discussion of the validity of the "Earth Overshoot Day" concept over on Skeptics.SE. | |
| Jul 23, 2018 at 9:37 | comment | added | Tim | Further, with August 1 being 2018's Overshoot Day, even if you went down the 'global average lifestyle' route, doing the math correctly would mean that the carrying capacity would by 7.6*213/365= 4.4 billion. A 3.2 billion overshoot cannot be fixed by dietary changes — so that's pointless as well. The reality is that people like to think that becoming a vegetarian is more sustainable. It isn't. People also don't like to hear that population control is the only answer, or that the USA is the biggest threat to life on Earth. That's why this answer is at -2. The truth is painful. | |
| Jul 23, 2018 at 9:32 | comment | added | Tim | Since carrying capacity is almost entirely about lifestyle, there is no point using a 'global average lifestyle', because that's not something the OP can relate to. By their use of the English language, it's highly likely that the OP is a westerner and thus an "answer in western units" is most appropriate. No-one here can relate to the lifestyle of someone in an impoverished part of the world. Since vegetarianism can't save the planet, and seems (to me) to merely be a lifestyle choice, I think that was the right call. | |
| Jul 23, 2018 at 6:59 | comment | added | THelper | Could you please back up your claims in your answer instead of in the comments? Also, not all people on Earth have an American lifestyle so if you use the calculations of Earth Overshoot Day for calculating the carrying capacity then why not say that given our current lifestyle the Earth's carrying capacity is 7.5 billion * 213/365 (august 1 = day 213), but it's declining? That's more accurate than stating it's 1 billion. | |
| Jul 19, 2018 at 2:21 | comment | added | Tim | The short answer is that planet Earth can support ~7.6 billion vegetarian humans only as long as we have oil. Once that runs out planet Earth can only support ~1 billion vegetarians. Vegetarian or omnivore actually doesn't make any meaningful difference to the population level that can be supported — planet Earth can only sustain ~1 billion humans with American lifestyles, period. | |
| Jul 19, 2018 at 2:00 | comment | added | Tim | The point I was trying to make was that both vegetarian and omnivorous diets are dependant on non-renewable fossil fuels (primarily oil). Once the oil runs out, neither will be able to be sustained. If the species switched to a 100% vegetarian diet today, and the oil ran out tomorrow, ~6.6 bn people would starve to death within a year. A vegetarian diet not only requires arable land — it requires oil (for all the machinery that prepares land, plants seed, fertilises soil, harvest crops, processes the food, distributes it, etc.). Without oil, no diet is viable for > 1 bn humans. | |
| Jul 19, 2018 at 1:47 | comment | added | user41965 | @Tim thank you for your answer, sorry if my question was misleading, but I only wanted to know about the things we consume as food, is there enough arable land for us to lead a healthy life eating only vegetation. My question was not related to fossil fuels or energy we consume for other purposes(as far as I understand your question), but if they are related, I would be happy if you can explain a bit more. Sorry if I didn't understand any part of your answer | |
| Jul 19, 2018 at 1:39 | history | edited | Tim | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 18, 2018 at 15:46 | history | edited | Tim | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 18, 2018 at 15:39 | comment | added | Tim | True, but pretty much all comparable countries have overshoot days in March/April/May. Whether the carrying capacity of Earth (calculated by that method) is 1.5 billion or 2.5 billion doesn't really matter. Overshoot is overshoot, and eating lentils instead of pork isn't going to make a lick of difference. Besides, a later overshoot day only means that things like oil will run out slower — it doesn't stop the oil from running out. Global commodities are global — what the Europeans save the Americans will squander. | |
| Jul 18, 2018 at 15:35 | history | edited | Tim | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 18, 2018 at 15:05 | comment | added | LShaver♦ | Many countries enjoy a similar standard of living as the U.S. without the same level of resource depletion. | |
| Jul 18, 2018 at 14:57 | history | edited | Tim | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 18, 2018 at 14:48 | comment | added | Tim | Countless ways to work it out. I used the planetary energy budget filtered through trophic layers. Perhaps the easiest way is to simply look at the USA's Earth Overshoot Day for 2018: March 15. That means if the whole planet lived like Americans, all of the planet's renewable resources would be consumed in only 73 days. That's 1/5th of a year. Thus if the world wants the USA's standard of living, there can only be 1/5th as many people. 7.6 billion / 5 = 1.52 billion. And that number is getting smaller as resources run out. It converges on 869 million by my math. | |
| Jul 18, 2018 at 14:34 | history | edited | Tim | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 18, 2018 at 14:31 | comment | added | THelper | Could you please provide a reference or explanation for the 1 billion humans carrying capacity? | |
| Jul 18, 2018 at 14:29 | history | edited | Tim | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 18, 2018 at 14:21 | history | edited | Tim | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 18, 2018 at 14:11 | history | edited | Tim | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 18, 2018 at 14:06 | history | edited | Tim | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 18, 2018 at 13:48 | history | edited | Tim | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 18, 2018 at 13:41 | history | answered | Tim | CC BY-SA 4.0 |