Could you move a little to the left?

Something terrifying today: the carrying capacity of the planet.  I was watching some Neil DeGrasse Tyson videos the other day (as I am often want to do), and they were talking about the Marvel MCU and how many good scientific principles were relayed.  There was one rather terrifying one: "Thanos was right." 

I learned a new term called the "carrying capacity" of a planet for a given species.  It is related to not just the space available to the species but also the natural resources available to support the growth and life of the species.  So I began to dig a little.  Many scientists believe that the carrying capacity of this planet for humans is about 9 to 10 billion of us.  Knowing that: take a look at this:

World Population by Year

It's getting crowded!  I was born in 1969 and since then we've added a little over 4 billion people.  I'm 54 years old.  The number of people we added in the 54 years before I was born was around 2 billion.  So in the time I've been alive, we've doubled our production of humans as compared to the 50 years prior to that.  And the rate of growth has increased as well.  In the 50s we were adding about 50 million humans a year.  Now we're adding about 80 to 90 million humans a year.   

Now remember, that's resources for us.  What about other sentient life forms, for example animals.  Our ecosystem is fragile.  I'm not worried about the planet (unless we COMPLETELY strip it down to nothing in the centuries ahead) because it can bounce back if everything that's consuming it slows down its rate of consumption.  But the environment in which we life is going to get weaker and weaker in its ability to sustain us.  

We either need to SERIOUSLY slow down the baby-making machinery, have a LOT more deadly wars, or find another planet to start living on fairly soon.  Otherwise, our descendants in 100 years or more will be fighting for the most basic of resources just to live.  Long live Tank Girl (if you don't know the reference, do yourself a favor and google the movie and watch it ASAP).

That's all for now, I guess.  Home life is meh at the moment.  More on that later, when and if I feel like it.