For 2007, I'd like to see Salon come up with another real reason to read Salon besides HTWW; an environment blog. Amanda Griscom Little's occasional pieces are great but far too few. How about it, Salon? Readers, Andrew, Amanda, can you push for this?

I'd like to see it all in one place, stuff like:

Faster carbon dioxide emissions will overwhelm capacity of land and ocean to absorb carbon

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/08/02_carbon.shtml

and:

Changing ocean chemistry threatens to harm marine life

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20060914-9999-lz1c14acid.html#

and:

Ice at North Pole could be gone by 2040, scientists warn - Dire news on global warming as Geophysical Union meets in S.F.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/12/12/MNGE5MTQ211.DTL&type=printable

Which among other things lead me to believe that there's no way human population can reach 9 billion, or anywhere near it, without immediately crashing thereafter. Just a thought.

Even the most optimistic folks acknowledge that growth is not indefinite. (unless you go for Star Trek fantasies of interplanetary colonization)

Where the real nitty-gritty lies is in the debate over what equilibruim will look like, and the fun lead-up to finding that value. Obviously, there's going to be some extreme global suffering once we pass that equilibrium value, but you hit the nail on the head when you asked about distribution. As times get hard, and grim truths become accepted, expect to hear the phrase "lifeboat ethics" floated about more. Right now, immigration policy is an economic & social issue, but with a scarcity of resources caused by overpopulation, that debate (already exceptionally congenial) will get really ugly.

Mmmmmmmmmmm....Soilent Green.....

The real problem with any abstract analysis of humans as numbers is that humans aren't numbers.

Simply put, as resources become more scarce humans will do something about it that will be either a) eat less food so that there is more for all or b)kill all those other people trying to eat my food and grind their bones into fertilizer.

Humans react is completly strange and unpredictable ways, and the very notion that there is a peak human population is a little strange for creatures with free will. Are we saying that at that point humans will no longer be able to reproduce as fast as we are dying off? Or are we saying that general population trends as related to societal wealth tend to favor reaching a point when people are wealthy enough to have fewer children and thusly fewer children will be had? Or are we just saying at that point we run out of food water and room for us, and by then we will have whiped out all the other competeing species?

It strikes me what is at the core of this argument is the idea that these numerous interelated factors won't alter any and all of these courses.

Peak oil could alter the food distribution systems of the planet, causing massive starvation, and hend a precipitous drop in population. Global warming could increase the ammount of fresh water available throughout the world and turn deserts into viable agricultural zones ending the mass starvation. New viruses could whipe out the developing world, leaveing the resources for the more desease resistant developed world, the developed world could find their cities ground to a halt and murderous anarchy rise once flooding from melting ice caps destroys the financial centers of the planet, leaving the developing world, their creditors now underwater to pick up the pieces and start fresh.

This sort of long term, or more technically short term, theorizing based on limited data can only lead to a wrong presumption.

Human population is shrinking throughout the developed world, as science pushes the date or reproductive viability furhter back, while allowing us to live longer healthier lives we reach equalibrium.

The final point is great tragedies are coming that will reshape the very nature of human society. But then again such great tragedies have been coming and going for the few milliion years. As a species we have survived, though many many of our ancestors did not.

Baring a comet strike (and quite frankly even in the event of a comet strike) I think man kind will go on, it's just a question of positioning yourself in a situation where you and yours can survive.

2050 is also the year suggested as when ocean food-fish stocks will be all but gone. This is ominous, as is the onrush of climate change (2040 predicted as the year when the Arctic is ice-free in summer).

These are developments, each alone worthy of concern, that I rarely if ever hear mentioned in connection. They presage a future of privation, refugee migration, hunger, water wars, and other undesirable ends.

I suspect that in short order, there will be a widespread recognition that we will need to devote virtually all industrial and agricultural activity to developing the means to adapt to the inevitable changes coming in this near future. Literally anything that does not either mitigate the impacts of these changes, or support the lives and work of those who are working on those mitigations, whatever those activities may then be, will need to be put aside, or humanity will have a very ugly future indeed.

The Manhattan Project and the Apollo Project will indeed look insignificant by comparison.

The one thing we do not need to hear is this: "We must save the planet!" Our ball of rock and iron, with its blue oceans and haze of atmosphere, will do just fine, with us or without us. The biosphere, well, that's another question...

"Build an Ark" is right -- enormous "market corrections" in the burdgeoning human popuation are coming, and coming fast. Starvation will do much of the heavy lifting, as the oceans slowly die and cease to be viable sources of food. Factory trawlers will continue to strip mine the sea right down to the bitter end, until steadily rising temperatures, sea water acidfication, and the ceaseless tide of man-made pollution have kiled off whatever complex life forms are left. Goodbye tuna and salmon steaks, hello jellyfish puree. As oil and clean water supplies grow scarce, the competition for these essential resouces will boil over into armed conflict in which the use of increasingly available nuclear weapons is entirely likely. Public health infrastructures worldwide will break down under increasing pressure and shortages of essential materials, the rise of more and more antibiotic-resistant bacteria will take an ever-larger toll, and ancient plagues will return to ravage first world societies that haven't worried about such things for generations. Malaria in NYC and Los Angeles? Super TB in Miami and Seattle? It's all coming, as the earth just keeps getting hotter and hotter. At a certain point, our inventive genius and technology will be unable to stave off the inevitable collapse -- the environmental chickens are finally coming home to roost, and they look a lot like vultures.

We have lived by the fast and easy creedo of the modern credit age: fly now and pay later. Ours has been a heady ride indeed, but we're coming in for a hard landing, and payment is due. We're a tenacious species, though, and it will take a lot more than this to wipe us out. Barring another big comet or asteroid hit, or some unlikely confulence of super-volcano eruptions, humans will doubtless survive for a very long time. Rather than rising to nine billion, however, our numbers will shrink dramatically over the next 100 years, while the survivors lead increasingly harsh, brutal, and much shorter lifespans. Law and order? Forget it. Our new society will be run by gangs and tribal warfare, the equivalent of Neanderthals with guns. Imagine the Old West with machine guns -- or increasingly large parts of Africa today. We face, quite literally, the end of life as we have known it.

It's been fun, though. Enjoy the rest of the ride.