[Zigurd]

This paper http://na.unep.net/geas/archive/pdfs/geas_jun_12_carrying_ca... by a UN group surveyed studies of the "carrying capacity" of the Earth. The bad news is that the largest number of studies say we are near the bounds of capacity. Worse, many studies say we have overshot sustainable capacity.

But there many studies that claim carrying capacity is much higher than current population, and that the projected 16 billion simultaneous living humans is within capacity.

It seems like whether we have a soft landing at the end of the oil age could dominate any calculation. The ability of renewables to scale up is only just crept past the starting line of a long, but necessarily urgent race. I'm not very enthusiastic about the odds.