Carrying Capacity Quotes

The key to understanding overpopulation is not population density but the numbers of people in an area relative to its resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities; that is, to the area’s carrying capacity. When is an area overpopulated? When its population can’t be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources.... By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated

To bring about destruction by overcrowding, mass starvation, anarchy, the destruction of our most cherished values, there is no need to do anything. We need only do nothing except what comes naturally, and breed. And how easy it is to do nothing

… human population growth within the ecosystem was closely analogous to the growth of malignant tumor cells within an organism: that man was acting like a cancer on the biosphere. The multiplication of human numbers certainly seems wild and uncontrolled... Four million a month - the equivalent of the population of Chicago... We seem to be doing all right at the moment; but if you could ask cancer cells, I suspect they would think they were doing fine. But when the organism dies, so do they; and for our own, selfish, practical, utilitarian reasons, I think we should be careful about how we influence the rest of the ecosystem.

But we are not going to be able to survive on this limited planet if the population keeps on growing: there isn't going to be anything left.

I don't think anybody has the right to a huge family. There's already more people on the planet than our natural resources can even support, and if everybody were to have a high standard of living, we need three or four or five new planets to provide the resources. And this cannot be, so something has to change.

You will always see big, chunky bags around me. I have always been fond of bags. Bags are extremely essential because I keep my books in them.

The human population can no longer be allowed to grow in the same old uncontrollable way. If we do not take charge of our population size, then nature will do it for us and it is the poor people of the world who will suffer most

Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today

I've always been opposed to population control. In climate terms, population is not the biggest problem going forward.

The negative impact of population growth on all of our planetary ecosystems is becoming appallingly evident.

Earth was not built for six billion people all running around and being passionate about things. The world was built for about two million people foraging for roots and grubs.

Even a billion people is too much. There's no way back to the simplicity we once knew, but there may be a way forward to the simplicity that we once knew.

The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.

The Malthusian Theory - that mankind, for biological and sociological reasons, is so fertile, so fecund, that if you started out with the new continent and plenty of land for everybody, in several generations we would multiply our numbers.

We’re turning everything on the planet into food for humans so we’re cutting down the rainforests, displacing all of the animals, and we’re doing all this to feed humans... ... Imagine if there were only 2 billion people polluting? We’re already overpopulated. I feel we’ve become a parasite on this planet. If this population keeps growing, we’ll just keep devouring the planet, and I don’t think it’s going to stand for that very long.

Either a species learns to control its own population, or something like disease, famine, war, will take care of the issue.

I've been working a lot with Dick Smith on overpopulation.

Sustainability is especially ripe for political controversy and opposition because fundamentally it is a new paradigm that represents significant challenges to the status quo. The paradigm of sustainability, with its notions of limitations and carrying capacities confronts dominant paradigms of progress which do not recognize limits to unchecked growth

Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage.

Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.

The more people there are, the more food we need, the more space we occupy, the more resources and consumer goods we wish to have and the more development has to take place

I have no doubt that the fundamental problem the planet faces is the enormous increase in the human population

The idea that only a limited number of people can live in a country is profound illusion. It all depends on their cooperative and inventive power.

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio.

A billion could live off the earth; 6 billion living as we do is far too many, and you run out of planet in no time.