Overshoot of Carrying Capacity
Posted by feww on January 15, 2008
Lifestyle
Submitted by MIRVA, Committee Member, CASF
The committee members have identified Overshoot of Carrying Capacity (increased ecological footprint and “overpopulation” in “developed” countries) as a major cause of collapse. We also call for the world population to be stabilized at its current levels.
The world is in a drastic overshoot of carrying capacity in energy, material, food, clean water, and many other resources. The major cause of this overshoot is the unsustainable lifestyles of the populations in developed countries; it can hardly be blamed on the entire world population. Half the world population live on less than two dollars per day! See below for a comparison:
High income countries (GDP per capita – PPP)
Luxembourg: $87,400
Norway: $47,098
United States: $44,765
Finland: $37,957
Canada: 36,984
Less Developed Countries
Afghanistan: $700
Malawi: $600
Congo (Kinshasa): $700
Brundi: $600
Liberia: $19 (2007 estimate)
Now compare the energy consumption for the same countries:
High income countries (per capita energy delivered in watts)
Luxembourg: 14,416W
Norway: 14,670W
United States: 11,383W
Finland: 8,075W
Canada: 14,582W
Less Developed Countries:
Afghanistan: 21W
Malawi: 64W
Congo (Kinshasa): 56W
Brundi: 40W
Liberia: 11W
MIRVA, Committee Member, CASF
Related Links:
The Effective World Population
Flap Your Wings to Save the World
This entry was posted on January 15, 2008 at 12:27 am and is filed under clean water, Ecological footprint, energy, food, lifestyle, Overshoot of Carrying Capacity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
One Response to “Overshoot of Carrying Capacity”
Leave a Reply Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Fire Earth 
feww said
To the one half of the world who live on less than 2-dollars a day (they receive 300 times less per capita energy than the average in the US) the world must look extremely overpopulated with an effective population of about 57 billion! [The EU27 with per capita GDP of $29,900 would account for 21 billion and the United States—per capita GDP of $43,223—for 18 billion of the total effective population.]