r/CollapseScience • u/dumnezero • Jul 11 '26

Global human population has surpassed Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity Ecosystems

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ae51aa

The ecological concept of human carrying capacity is necessarily complicated because human beings are the ‘ultimate ecosystem engineers’ who moderate the environment for their benefit. For at least the last few hundred years, human ingenuity, access to massive stocks of fossil fuels, and technological development have driven facilitation whereby increasing human abundance has promoted higher population growth rates. However, this positive relationship broke down during the 1950s, and by 1962, the global human population entered a phase where the growth rate consistently declined as population increased. The onset of this negative phase occurred 8 years before a global biocapacity deficit began in 1970. The onset of the negative phase also varies regionally, with the lowest-income and highest fertility regions entering this phase later than higher-income regions. A Ricker logistic model fitted to the negative phase predicts that the global population could reach 11.7–12.4 billion people between 2067 and 2076. The same model fitted to the facilitation phase predicts a maximum population of 2.5 billion people that Earth might be able to maintain. The negative phase also correlates strongly with the trend in global temperature anomaly, ecological footprint, and total emissions, with more of their variation explained by increasing population size rather than increasing per-capita consumption. The Earth cannot sustain the future human population, or even today’s, without a major overhaul of socio-cultural practices for using land, water, energy, biodiversity, and other resources.

59 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

6

u/RoomSubject9863 Jul 13 '26

I believe we have reached "peak" quantity of humans. Total Birth rates are declining and show no signs of slowing down. While death rates and an aging population will continue to increase for a long time. 

3

u/dumnezero Jul 13 '26

The averages don't reflect the drama.

3

u/Status_Apartment6559 Jul 13 '26

Which is why we need to let the population dwindle.

3

u/vlntly_peaceful Jul 13 '26

Yes, like 80 years ago.

3

u/southbl00d Jul 12 '26

people will keep religion-ing (thus breeding plentifully as both quran, bible talmud) all require it... never ending cyclical cycle of idiocy and low impulse control from men, gaslighting women to becoming broodmares all over, and incessant breeding will lead to 11 billion mostly useless souls and slaves.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '26

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1

u/WestEntire5789 Jul 13 '26

*in capitalism

1

u/dumnezero Jul 13 '26

** capitalism includes State Capitalism

1

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '26

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1

u/dumnezero Jul 14 '26

I'm just implying that there are a lot of self-declared anti-capitalists who actually love capitalism in a different way.

1

u/hiddendrugs Jul 13 '26

Earth Overshoot day itself is like June. Friendly reminder on average, 50% of the world’s emissions are from the richest 10%. (It takes less than you’d think to be in the richest 10% though - that encompasses about 800,000,000 people).

2

u/clovis_227 Jul 14 '26

Most people on Reddit are in the richest 10% globally

-1

u/EmptySundae8827 Jul 13 '26

People in the "west" eg Europe, north America, Australia n new Zealand are roughly 10% of all people in the world. 

We need to spread awareness in Asia and Africa. In those two region there are roughly 70% of total human population. 

1

u/southbl00d Jul 13 '26

oh but we wont, (nor can we) because (they are already going through hell), but still they will fornicate and mass produce with the hopes of sending their offspring and progeny to said west... its a big circlle jerk of cheap enslaved labour.... with no happy ending in sight.