>I allowed for some overhead, but even ifyou double or quadruple the space requirement, it's abundantly clear that space isn't an issue.
I think you'd have to more than quadruple the space, but sure, I do agree humans don't absolutely need to be spread across the world. Still, I think you're discounting things like resource extraction (mines), but I guess since people don't normally live in such places we can ignore those.
Personally I have wondered sometimes what the world would look like if almost everyone concentrated into cities laid out like Tokyo (i.e. very dense, and not very car-friendly). There'd probably be a lot of abandoned places.
>There are greenhouses and hydroponics - we would never spontaneously concentrate ourselves like this but if we did mass hydroponics and vertical farming would suddenly become much more economical.
Forgive me for not knowing that much about agriculture, but are greenhouses and hydroponics really viable for growing enough food for all of humanity? (Of course, they wouldn't be much help for growing livestock or seafood.) And has anyone really shown vertical farming to be viable? It looks like a nice idea in theory but seems to require advances in robotics to be economically feasible.
>Ontario happens to have an absolute crapton of water - 20% of the world total. But that doesn't matter. Water goes in a cycle.
Ontario might be OK here, but a lot of cities really do face freshwater shortages, for instance in the American southwest and Los Angeles. Of course, it'd help if people didn't use so much water for their lawns...
I think you'd have to more than quadruple the space, but sure, I do agree humans don't absolutely need to be spread across the world. Still, I think you're discounting things like resource extraction (mines), but I guess since people don't normally live in such places we can ignore those.
Personally I have wondered sometimes what the world would look like if almost everyone concentrated into cities laid out like Tokyo (i.e. very dense, and not very car-friendly). There'd probably be a lot of abandoned places.
>There are greenhouses and hydroponics - we would never spontaneously concentrate ourselves like this but if we did mass hydroponics and vertical farming would suddenly become much more economical.
Forgive me for not knowing that much about agriculture, but are greenhouses and hydroponics really viable for growing enough food for all of humanity? (Of course, they wouldn't be much help for growing livestock or seafood.) And has anyone really shown vertical farming to be viable? It looks like a nice idea in theory but seems to require advances in robotics to be economically feasible.
>Ontario happens to have an absolute crapton of water - 20% of the world total. But that doesn't matter. Water goes in a cycle.
Ontario might be OK here, but a lot of cities really do face freshwater shortages, for instance in the American southwest and Los Angeles. Of course, it'd help if people didn't use so much water for their lawns...