I kinda went on a little research spree on economics this afternoon but at one point I figured it’s probably good to know if it’s possible for, say, at least 98% of people on earth to live a happy fulfilled life at all.
I know there’s plenty of people who’d be more than happy to have literally nothing more than a house, food and water, but that still leaves a whole lot of people who want other things in life.
Do we have any metrics or data on wether the earth can sustain roughly 8 billion humans?
Yup. Scarcity is manufactured.
There is scarcity - resources aren’t evenly distributed. You can’t have a fruit farm on the tundra, and you can’t mine uranium on Hawai‘i. It’s not possible to locally sustain a city in Arizona (ie food and water). A significant adjustment of the lifestyle to which we’ve become accustomed would be required.
More locally, I live on some prime farmland, with (usually) ample water and some pretty decent climate for a wide variety of crops. Our country is busy converting this into poorly built housing and warehouse space. There are also large portions of the country wholly inhospitable to farming, which are disdained. A similar concept is the ongoing market gardening of vegetables in the California desert. Some people are big on urban gardening and that’s fantastic, but it’s not going to supply the caloric needs even if it’s all potatoes. Vertical farms conveniently leave out the massive energy inputs (not just light and heat and water, but fertilizer and pest control too).
If we continue to abuse the resources which we have available, humanity is doomed.
Yeah people really don’t get it. Certain resources are only in certain places. Hence why most countries populations are on rivers, coasts, and other crop viable areas.
Which is also why most of the worlds population on livings on like 3% of it’s landmass. Vast majority of the land in the world is uninhabitable.