With (apparently) unlimited resources, the doubling of a population at regular intervals is called an exponential growth rate. It happens in many types of animals/plants/bacteria/fungus etc. For humans over the last 200 years, that interval is about 40 years. That is, if you look at the population at any point over the last ~200 years, you'll see it double 40 years later.
Two interesting things about this growth rate:
- There is a population crash once the resources are mostly used up.
- The penultimate generation experiences life as idillic.
The second last generation sees lots of resources available, but 40 years later, when there are twice as many humans competing for the remaining resources, things get nasty.
How do we regulate human population growth? Is anybody proposing some population limiting strategy? I haven't seen it yet. What does this place look like in 40 years? 80 years?
Graeme