This question of how many people can live on planet earth is a subjective

question based on different people's ideals of what is an acceptable number, and

what is the standard way of living. There are undeniable figures and statistics
which shows that our current way of living with the amount of people in the
world is far surpassing the number of people that the planet is able to sustain in
the long run. There have been a number of studies, and in 2012 the UN
conducted an estimate consisting of different factors to provide a range of
estimates in relation to different people's way of living. Such numbers ranged
from 2 billion to over 1000 billion.

A main figure is the amount of air pollution, and emission in the air. Although
there had been great technological booms over the years there is an undeniable
huge boom in CO2 levels in the atmosphere, which has a strong correlation to
human numbers. The similarities can easily be seen over the past 10 000 years,
and even more clearly so over the past 150 or so years. Since about 10000 years
ago, the CO2 concentration was about 260 to 280 parts per million (ppm), which
didn't deviate much. Then came the human population boom, which suddenly
brought the figures up to 400+ ppm. This number hadn't changed for thousands
of years, and it started to increase by the start of the 1800s, when our
population started going past the 1 billion. This could be an avid
environmentalist's definition of how much the earth can sustain. Changing past
its natural causes already causes impacts to the environment. This present
concentration is the highest it has been for the past 800 years. The increased
levels of CO2 in the air directly related to global warming.
The 2 graphs below, both beginning at about 1700, shows the increase of both
population and change in CO2 levels. It was also the start of the industrial
revolution, causing a huge technological boom. As the years moved on, the
levels have been growing exponentially. If we were to have more people, the
levels of CO2 would increase, speeding up global warming. Many scientists agree
that about 350 ppm of carbon dioxide is safe level of carbon dioxide. Currently at
400 ppm and growing by 2 points every year, unless we are able to rapidly turn
that around and return to below 350 ppm this century, we risk triggering tipping
points and irreversible impacts that could send climate change spinning truly
beyond our control.1 If we were to reduce the parts of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere down to about 350 per million, it would require at most 4.5 billion
people (refer to graphs below).

1 https://350.org/about/science/

Food is increasingly difficult to produce more efficiently, as we are using our land
almost as efficiently as we can. Even in the case of maximum efficiency, in which
all the grains grown are dedicated to feeding humans (instead of livestock, which
is an inefficient way to convert plant energy into food energy), there's still a limit
to how far the available quantities can stretch. The figures would be around 10
billion people, growing food on 1.4 billion hectares of land if everyone became a
vegetarian. But that seems pretty unrealistic, making everyone become a
vegetarian. As a result of such, 1.4 billion hectares can feed about 2.5 billion
omnivores, because so much is given to livestock and poultry. 10 billion would be
the absolute limit to how much the world would support, at least in relation to
food. This being said, even with the population 3 billion shy of the maximum, we
are already facing problems due to food. 1 billion people, are starving, and
another billion is suffering from nutrient deficiencies. Every year 11 million
children, under the age of five, die from hunger or hunger related diseases. In
recent decades, food supply hasn't been growing nearly as fast as human
population, there had been a decline in over 51 developing countries whilst only
rising in 43. 25 countries in Africa alone, saw a decline in food production as well
as another 17 in Latin America. Only Asia managed to keep production slightly
ahead of population, only through the heavy of use of pesticides and agricultural
chemicals. There are 2 main solutions, 1 to decrease population over time and
sustain it. This way would be both better for the planet and human population in
the long run. Or we could find a temporary solution like Norman Borlaug to find a
temporary solution to combat the increase of the growing population, such as
engineering foods to grow much faster than naturally.

Such are the main reasons as to the limit of our population from two different
perspectives, both naturally occurring. These have always been a problem since
some time ago, but not many people are quite aware or have done much to
implement it. It will have disastrous impacts on the world as we know it. The
numbers of 10 billion and 5 billion are provided from different problems that we
face at the moment. These are only 2 of many problems and the numbers may
change with each. The population that our world is undeniably growing too large,

and for all we know, this could be the maximum amount of people capable of
living on earth.

http://documentarystorm.com/how-many-people-can-live-on-planet-earth/
http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/will-the-earth-ever-fill-up
http://www.abc.net.au/news/linkableblob/4680308/data/keeling-curve-shows-300years-of-co2-readings-data.jpg
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160311-how-many-people-can-our-planetreally-support
http://www.livescience.com/16493-people-planet-earth-support.html
http://www.livescience.com/33311-food-prices-global-hunger-skyrocket-2030oxfam-warns.html
https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/publications/Files/WPP2012_HIGHLIGHTS.pdf
https://metinmediamath.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/worldpop.jpg