What is Earth's true 'carrying capacity', in human terms?

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

When the deer on Vancouver Island got to dangerously high levels, Conservationists re introduced a wolf pack back into the ecology. The deer stopped eating themselves out of house and home and returned to a level of population that their island home could support. Maybe Planet Earth is over run with people, and you have to be cruel to be kind and somehow start to 'thin the Human herd'?

In some African nations, women are regularly attacked and killed by crocodiles. But people accept this as inevitable in the same way that Western people accept road traffic accidents as just an inevitable fact of life.
Neither predators nor accidents have a significant affect on population levels.

In spite of famines, plagues and other natural disasters, human populations continue to steadily rise.
The real brake on human population levels is contraception, most widely practised in the (underpopulated) West.
The UN estimate once that Earth could support 12 billion people; Conservatives in the past have tried to prioritise jobs, income and education towards white men men and regard even white women as somehow 'more expendable' or 'surplus to requirements' - so what is Earth's true carrying capacity, and how do we arrange to meet it?

Comments

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Crocodiles select to attack only women or there's something I'm missing here?

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Who, in these lands, usually goes down to the river to get the water, do you think?

My money is on the fact that it's usually women.
For details, see the book ' Death in the Long Grass' , by Peter Hathaway Capstick.

This chap was a big game hunter, writing a book about his life on leading tourists on Safari in Africa. For me, as a conservationist, it was an interesting look ' across the aisle', so to speak.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

The father in the family and his sons usually take a boat to get some food from the river, by the way.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

yet the women taking water get ambushed more than boats it seems - according to Capstick , anyway.

predation and road traffic accidents do not significantly dent human population levels as much as contraception does, apparently.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Dunno, I don't have any stats, I'm just trying to think logically.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

PHC was a big game hunter, who talked about the incidence of women getting eaten by crocs in one of his books.

He also says that hippos kill more people in Africa than any other predator. So, probably hippos (being more aggressive) go for boats or anything that gets too close.

In the book , he mentions the fact that crocs are harder to spot, and that women getting water are the most common victims. The stats on crocs could still allow most of their victims to be women and still give the hippos a bigger body count.

But, yes, it is logical to wonder why women are more likely than men to be attacked. It seems to be linked to water carrying.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Crocs lurk in the shallows.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Yah, this is what I was going to say, the way crocs hunt they're more likely to take someone getting water than getting into a boat.