[hx87]

Thanks for the background info, and I think you have a good point about carrying capacity degradation. I don't think "degradation" is a single variable though--it's a trade off current well-being, future well-being, and for a lack of a better word, "nature". We can absolutely provide a high standard of living for 9-11 billion people, but to do so we have to discard our desire to "preserve" the world as it is and actively take control of it to a far greater extent than we do now, i.e. large scale geoengineering.