Why the land issue regarding population is misleading ...
I see often where someone asserts that we have so much land that the human overpopulation issue is not important.
Years ago, someone asserted at that time you could stick every person on earth in LA County, California by just giving them 5 square feet to stand in.
Another person when discussing the population issue showed a picture of landscape with beautiful flowers up in, I think Montana, and said: Look, there’s plenty of land for more people.
While land is indeed a resource especially arable land, land size in and of itself doesn’t properly show that most resources we consume are scarce.
For example, nonrenewable resources like fossil fuels, are not limitless and using them over time will eventually exhaust them.
Crude oil (petroleum), for example, is found in deposits located around the world. Geologist have studied these deposits at length and determined their potential for usage. The deposits are summarized on what they call proven reserves based on such criteria as cost of extraction relative to the current market value of the crude oil.
In other words, what amount of crude oil will be available year after year accounting for its depletion and what will the price consequences mean for everyone.
Other major resources like copper are likewise found in deposits and similarly analyzed to determine the quantity that can be extracted.
Since resource deposits are located in relatively small land areas, the relationship between land availability globally and whether scarce resources are proportionate to same, does not hold.
In any event, sustainability economists’ goal is to achieve what is called sustainable prosperity where the goal for the global population using resources long-term can be summarized simply:
Consumption = renewable resources
Their research balances the global demands for resources mapped to the global population in order to achieve the above mentioned long-term sustainable result.
In closing, it’s vital we understand the relationship between land and resources and what that means.
It’s through our political discourse on important topics like population that we arrive at a consensus that benefits everyone regardless of where that live on earth.
This Substack blog is focused on helping expose the complete ecological and economic picture by positively contributing to the discussion on important issues like the one addressed in this post.