How Many More Years Will Earth Hold Humans?

Introduction
• What is Carrying Capacity?
In Biology, the carrying capacity is “the number of organisms which can survive to the resources within
an ecosystem”. (Editors) In other words, there is a limit to how many organisms can live with the given
resources. This can be seen in a graph (called Sigmoid Growth Graph) (Study.com) below where it
displays the population growth of a specific organism.

Figure 1.1 (Study.com)

There is an initial growth called the exponential phase (or exponential growth in the graph above) when
the population of the organisms grow at a rapid rate with the unlimited resources. Then, the rate of growth
of organisms decreases as the resources become more limited but the production of organisms does not
stop at the transitional phase. Lastly, there is the logistic growth (also called the plateau phase) where the
resources eventually become limited and they are not available to every organism in the population.
Therefore, the number of organisms decrease and reaches the carrying capacity in that ecosystem. Lastly,
the carrying capacity line above showcases the maximum number of organisms with the indefinite
amounts of resources. (ALLOTT)

• What about for Humans?

For many years, the human population has been growing tremendously due to the unlimited resources
produced from agriculture endeavors. (Editors) The human population is currently 7.8 people on Earth as
of January 6, 2020 (Current World Population.) ; this may even extend even more as the years go on or
may even decrease to the recent deterioration of the Earth’s state due to climate change and such. However,
we do not know whether there is a limit to the population growth of humans. Our resources cannot keep us
in safety any longer as we have started to deplete and due to agriculture, there are many consequences that
affect our other resources like water and other such. We all should be aware when the Earth can reach the
limit of dealing with the gregarious amount of using its resources and how we place detrimental
consequences on the world we live in. (ALLOTT)

Limitations in Calculating the Carrying Capacity

To calculate the entire human population on Earth is quite difficult to calculate as there is many factors to
discern such as the availability of resources in that region, the natality and mortality rates, the
effectiveness of their healthcare, the amount of people immigrating and emigrating from different regions
or countries, and such others. Therefore, I will take data of the population growth over the past seventy
years of the five most populous cities in my country in the descending order: Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru
(the city I live in), Calcutta, and Madras.

Mathematics Used
 • Population Growth Rate

To model the population growth, I have to check the change in number of humans in a population growth
rate: dT/dN=rN (Exponential and Logistic Growth in Populations) where ‘N’ is the population size, ‘T’ is
the time over a period and ‘r’ is the rate at which the population grows. (Exponential and Logistic Growth
in Populations) There are two different types of this basic growth model: exponential and logistic growth.
In the case of the population have unlimited resources and space for the population to proliferate, then the
exponential growth model is the best to use.

Figure 1.2 The Exponential Growth (Exponential and Logistic Growth in

Populations)

However, this model won’t be used as this is an ideal situation where the population increases at great
numbers without any limitations to the environment and infinite resources in the environment. Therefore,
we would use the Logistic Growth Model.
• Logistic Growth Model

Figure 1.3 Logistic Growth Model (Exponential and Logistic Growth in Populations)

This model above is very much the same to Figure 1.1 as the shape is a ‘S’ like shape and has a limit to
the growth over time. The differential equation for the logistic growth model is
(3.4. The Logistic Equation 3.4.1. The Logistic Model)--- ‘k’ is the rate of the growth
of the population, ‘P’ is the number of individuals in the area and ‘K’ is the carrying
capacity of the population. (3.4. The Logistic Equation 3.4.1. The Logistic Model)

However, this equation gives us the change in the population over a period time in this model, so we have
to shift the equation around to isolate the carrying capacity.

Then we have to integrate both sides to remove the derivation signs and move ‘P (1- P/K)’ to the LHS
and the ‘dt’ to the RHS.
Mathematics Used (cont’d) (3.4. The Logistic Equation 3.4.1. The Logistic Model)
Next, we for now we ignore the integration sign and the ‘dP’ and solve the
and separate the answer into separate fractions.

Now, the separated fractions will be integrated, and we get ln on the LHS as integrating fractions produce
ln equations and simplify the LHS equation.

The ln portion would be cancelled out on both sides as the ‘K’ variable has to be isolated, giving the
inverse ln (also called ‘e’) for the ‘-k*t-C’ .Then, simplify the LHS and RHS equations by removing the
absolute value sign on the LHS and make e-C to ‘A’ which will be found in the next step.

To get the ‘A’ constant, we must substitute zero into the variable ‘t’ to give make the ‘e’ value 1 and thus
give the initial population.

To find the value ‘k’, we must use this formula using the past (1950) and present (2020)
population.(Wikihow)

Raw Data
Table 1.1 The Population in Delhi in the Past 70 years (Delhi, India Population 1950-2020)

Years Population
Change/ 1,000
people
1950 1,369,000
1955 1,782,000
1960 2,283,000
1965 2,845,000
1970 3,531,000
1975 4,436,000
1980 5,587,000
1985 7,726,000
1990 9,384,000
1995 12,138,000
2000 15,692,000
2005 18,691,000
2010 21,988,000
2015 25,866,000
2020 30,291,000 Table 1.2 The Population in Mumbai in the Past 70 years.
(Mumbai, India Population 1950-2020)
Years Population
Change / 1,000
people
1950 3,089,000
1955 3,726,000
1960 4,415,000
1965 5,314,000
1970 6,413,000
1975 7,685,000
1980 9,200,000
1985 10,686,000
1990 12,355,000
1995 14,135,000
2000 16,147,000
2005 17,257,000
2010 18,257,000
2015 19,316,000
2020 20,411,000
Table 1.3 The Population in Calcutta in the Past 70 years (Calcutta, India Population 1950-2020)
Years Population
Change / 1,000
people
1950 4,604,000
1955 5,219,000
1960 5,910,000
1965 6,589,000
1970 7,329,000
1975 8,166,000
1980 9,100,000
1985 10,004,000
1990 10,974,000
1995 11,992,000
2000 13,097,000
2005 13,595,000
2010 14,003,000
2015 14,423,000
2020 14,850,000

Table 1.4 The Population in Bengaluru in the Past 70 years. (Bangalore, India Population 1950-2020)
Years Population
Change /
1,000 people
1950 746,000
1955 939,000
1960 1.166,000
1965 1,377,000
1970 1,615,000
1975 2,111,000
1980 2,812,000
1985 3,397,000
1990 4,043,000
1995 4,754,000
2000 5,581,000
2005 6,786,000
2010 8,296,000
2015 10,141,000
2020 12,327,000
Table 1.5 The Population in Madras in the Past 70 years. (Madras, India Population 1950-2020)
Years Population
Change /
1,000 people
1950 1,491,000
1955 1,705,000
1960 1,915,000
1965 2,394,000
1970 3,044,000
1975 3,594,000
1980 4,187,000
1985 4,736,000
1990 5,332,000
1995 5,934,000
2000 6,593,000
2005 7,477,000
2010 8,506,000
2015 9,677,000
2020 10,971,000
Processing Data
Table 2.1 Aggregate Growth Rates for All Cities in India in the Past 70 years

City Number of People

Growing In Past 70 Year
Delhi 0.045233
Mumbai 0.027342
Calcutta 0.016870
Bengaluru 0.040882
Madras 0.028291

Calculation of Growth Rate (Using Delhi Data)

= 1.045232734-1
= 0.045232734 ~~ 0.045233

NOTE: This calculation was done for all the four other cities and the data values are shown above.
Finding the Carrying Capacity (Using Delhi Data)

NOTE: These calculations were done with the other four cities and mentioned below these calculations

‘t’= 70 years
‘P(t)’=30,291,000 people in 2020 as of January 2020
‘P0’= 1,369,000 people in 1950
The variable ‘A’ in the former equation is going to be substituted with the latter equation. Thus, we will
first find the first equation in the denominator.

Now, we will combine the denominator with the numerator and solve for the carrying capacity.

Error: It is million people, not people.

Processed Data
Table 3.1 Carrying Capacities In The Five Most Populous Cities
City Carrying Capacity/
People in Millions
Delhi 562.50
Mumbai 45.97
Calcutta 11.39
Bengaluru 11.70
Madras 9.62
Evaluation
The table above displays the amount of people that can be hold in the city itself in consideration of past
secondary data of the population growth on the basis of the number and how much space the city has.
However, these values above do not reflect such carrying capacities as they are many factors as said
before such as the resources available in the area and any biological factor occurs such as a virus or a
wave of migration or emigration could affect the carrying capacities dramatically.

If we do take into account of these carrying capacities that were just calculated, then it can be seen that
some of these populous cities have indeed exceed the carrying capacity and may soon reach, as seen
Figure 1.1, logistic growth. For example, for Calcutta, Bengaluru and Madras, these three cities have
exceeded their carrying capacities (11.39, 11.70 and 9.62 respectively) as Calcutta had this amount of
people in its city between 1990 to 1995 seen in Table 1.3 and Bengaluru had a population of the carrying
capacity sometime between 2015 and 2020 as seen in Table 1.4 as the population changed from ten
million to twelve million approximately. This case is similar with Madras as seen in 2015, the population
was 9,677,000 people which slightly, in this context, surpassed the carrying capacity.

However, in Delhi and Mumbai, the carrying capacity has yet to reach. In this case, also, we have to
understand and realize that the factors may differ to the other three cities mentioned before. Delhi’s
carrying capacity, 562.50 million people, would exist as the population growth has been quite exponential
over the years. As we can see in Table 1.1, within the last decade, the population in Delhi has increased
by ten million approximately (and it is still growing as of now as the data is from January 2020). In
Mumbai, yet, even though this extreme trend cannot not be seen, the growth of their population has
increased dramatically as it doubles about every five years,.

Conclusion
To bring back to the question, how many years can Earth us, humans? Well, with this small scale data,
this conclusion cannot be defined immediately. However, what can be seen from these five largest cities
in India is that in three out of the five cities, the carrying capacities have surpassed the population at a
certain time period which can exhibit that the land in India, is slowly being used up and will be hard to
hold more people. This can be supported with India being one of the most populous countries in the world
along with China and the United States. Thus, we may not have many years left unfortunately. With loss
of resources around the world, recent viruses spreading rapidly or even natural selection, it seems that
Earth is silently decreasing the human population by the moment.
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