'There is no planet B': the best books to help us navigate the next 50 years

Understanding animals, capitalism, the science of cloudseeding ... scifi author Kim Stanley Robinson shares his top picksAs wildfires burn in the western United States and the second wave of Covid-19 sweeps across the world, it's becoming impossible to ignore the disasters we are hurtling towards. The population biologist Joel Cohen examines one central issue in How Many People Can the Earth Support?, approaching this question from various angles to help us understand why it has received such widely varying answers. I've seen published estimates ranging from 100 million to 12 trillion people, but even if you dismiss these polemical outliers, the range extends from two to 30 billion. Since values are inherent in this discussion, there can be no "true" answer. But Cohen's clear description of all the factors involved offers an excellent starting point to inform future debates about the Earth's carrying capacity. Continue reading...