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How Many People can the Earth Support? Joel E Cohen, 1995 W. W. Morton and Company, New York and London 398 pp ISBN 0393314952 RRP US$14.95
A MUCH-HEATED debate has evolved over the past few decades regarding the future of human population growth and the number of humans that the planet Earth is able to sustain. Some claim that Earth has already reached its human carrying capacity, where others argue that the carrying capacity of the planet is limitless given modern technology. What is clear is that the carrying capacity of the Earth and the future of human population growth is a subject of much uncertainty.
Joel E. Cohen is head of Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller University, New York. His goal in writing this book is to "give a view of the Earth's Human carrying capacity that recognizes the interactions among populations, economies, environments and cultures" (p. 12). Cohen examines the scientific basis for concerns that the world has, or soon will have, more people than the world's economies, environments and societies can accommodate in acceptable ways. Cohen addresses these issues in a review that discusses, synthesizes and evaluates models and theories pertaining to the human population in the past, the present and the future. He discovers that he is not alone in not...