Ted Nordhaus’ disappointing essay in Aeon Ideas provides encouragement to those who would deny the need to end human population growth. Of course Earth’s carrying capacity is not fixed, but regardless of what future technology may bring, it will always remain several orders of magnitude less than “standing room only”. And allowing growth before ensuring that it can be supported will just guarantee more of the hardship and starvation that was happening before the “green revolution” (whose primary author was adamant about its giving us only a “breathing space” in which to come to terms with our looming “Population Monster”(*))
(*) From his Nobel Prize address in 1970: “The green revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only. Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the “Population Monster”…Since man is potentially a rational being, however, I am confident that within the next two decades he will recognize the self-destructive course he steers along the road of irresponsible population growth…”[34]