To the Editor:

In the mid-1970s we overshot Earth’s human carrying capacity.

Since then, our profligate consumption of nonrenewable natural resources, the loss of arable land through desertification and aquifer depletion, and the dramatic drop in energy returned on energy invested has substantially reduced Earth’s carrying capacity.

A good guess is that, assuming European levels of consumption, only between 500 million and 750 million people are sustainable.

Nor does this number allow any margin for unforeseen problems from runaway climate change, or room for upward mobility, the “opportunities” we want for our children. Half that number would provide welcome flexibility. Any greater number would require unsustainable tradeoffs between ecological, economic, and social well-being.

There is an equally compelling reason to voluntarily reduce our numbers well below carrying capacity. Nearing 80 years old, I have memories of living in the country surrounded by farm fields, fishing streams and hunting woods where I could ride my bicycle safely all day on county roads. Towns were small and friendly. Gardens were large and broadly shared. Extended families shared meals regularly. It was a simpler, slower, sweeter time. Could such a life be possible again?

At the very least, young people should be able to look forward to the opportunities I enjoyed as a youth, a world long on possibilities and short on competition, one in which whether they ate meat or not was of concern only to them, not everyone else on the planet.

Donovan C. Wilkin

Woodstock

