• rekabis@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    Once a civilisation overshoots its biophysical limits, as ours did over 50 years ago

    We did it back in the 1920s, when humanity exceeded 2 billion. That is our carrying capacity, assuming a near-zero impact on the planetary ecology (beyond which we enter into overshoot), and with a totally vegan diet.

    It drops to about 500 million with a western-style diet involving meat. So technically it’s possible to pin it even earlier, at around the year 1650. But I like to be unreasonably optimistic sometimes, so the 1920s it is.

    • eleitl@lemmy.zipOPM
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      1 month ago

      I’ve seen a calculation from primary (photosynthetic) productivity which gave a ceiling of half a billion. I think real sustainable population at roughly Edo Japan level of technology is probably 100 million.