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Superlongevity Without Overpopulation
A reading of economic and social history quickly makes
one thing plain: throughout history people have envisaged
overpopulation. Even the great nineteenth century social
scientist W. Stanley Jevons in 1865 claimed that England’s
industrial expansion would soon cease due to the exhaus-
tion of the country’s coal supply. [15] However, as shortages
developed, prices rose. The profit motive stimulated entre-
preneurs to find new sources, to develop better technology
for finding and extracting coal, and to transport it to where
it was needed. The crisis never happened. Today, the USA
has proven reserves sufficient to last hundreds or thousands
of years. [16] If one resource does begin to run low, rising
prices will encourage a switch to alternatives. Even a vastly
bloated population cannot hope to exhaust energy supplies.
(Solar energy and power from nuclear fission and soon fusion
are practically endless.) So long as we have plentiful energy
we can produce substitute resources and even generate more
of existing resources, including food. Even if population were
to grow far outside today’s highest projections, we can expect
human intelligence and technology to comfortably handle the
numbers.
Human intelligence, new technology, and a market econ-
omy will allow this planet to support many times the current
population of 6.2 billion – it can support many more humans
than we are likely to see, given trends toward lower birth rates.
Many countries, including the USA, have a rather low popu-
lation density. If the USA’s population were as dense as Japan
– hardly a crowded place overall – our population would be
3.5 billion rather than 265 million. If the USA had a popula-
tion density equal to that of Singapore, we would find almost
35 billion people here, or almost seven times the current world
population. New technologies, from simple improvements
in irrigation and management to current breakthroughs in
genetic engineering should continue to improve world food