Space on our mother ship Earth is limited How many humans Earth can sustain has been the subject of speculation ever since the 17th cen tury The current population count is 7 67 billion More recent research shows our planet s life sustaining capacity to range between 500 mil lion to as many as 65 billion peo ple In most calculation models the range is between 8 and 16 billion Why are there such vast differences between these figures The reason is that the calculations they re based on are highly varied and have been performed using diverse methods Another question is whether or not they take only a single limiting factor such as food into account The Stock holm Resilience Centre for instance names nine processes that indicate our planetary limits climate change acidification of the oceans loss of ozone nitrogen and phosphorus cy cles fresh water consumption land use loss of biodiversity aerosol concentration in the air and chemi cal pollution This is what the expert proposes The approach pursued by economist Graeme Maxton Secretary Gener al of the Club of Rome until 2018 is the concept of a sustainable equi librium economy It s based on the notion that economic growth has to stop driving social development because economic growth itself is driven by a growing population and increased efficiency Both Maxton warns accelerate environmental de struction and global warming The current state At the moment Maxton sees the economy of moth er ship Earth as being off balance Given the ecological footprint Glob al Footprint Network N D of 7 6 bil lion people today it seems likely that the maximum population would need to be much lower than this he writes However accepting the number of people on the planet as a given means that equilibrium can only be achieved by a reduction of the material standard of living In the light of this is humanity con demned to stagnation By no means says Maxton Humanity can still de velop Rather than boosting material consumption it can grow artistically culturally intellectually and tech nologically Human development according to Maxton will have to be overhauled Societies will need something like a new Enlightenment to redefine just humanity s role and purpose Can technologies have a positive im pact on creating equilibrium With respect to global warming which Maxton is seriously concerned about as well they might be able to help In fact the power of the sun wind and water is sufficient to cover hu manity s present and future energy demand multiple times if we had the technologies that are necessary to generate store and transport en ergy Feeding all the people on our planet is another great challenge Even at this juncture intensive and high tech farming confronts environ mental protection with serious prob lems Research and technology can assist in making better use of water and fertilizers We personally have to do our part as well for instance with respect to what we eat The con sumption of meat which is far too high and rising especially in thresh old countries has an extremely neg ative effect on the environment Maxton s urgent plea We are stand ing at the turning point of the 21st century No Hollywood hero will come to our rescue We must act now OVERPOPULATION The current size of Germany s population equates to the number by which the world population is growing per year Source Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung 80 million people are starving while 2 1 billion are overweight Source United Nations 800 million Given our ecological footprint today it seems likely that the maximum population would need to be much lower Graeme Maxton Club of Rome One of Africa s great challenges of all the planet s continents the poorest one has the fastest population growth global 19

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