Chat Log Part 2: Electric Fuck You.

Maintaining current levels of wealth is impossible given the amount of land.
Currently, our global wealth depends upon finite commodities, most notably metals (precious and semi-precious) and oil. Neither of these things are being produced anymore.

We need arable, mineral and oil rich land, things which are rapidly disappearing.
China has lost something like 1/3 of its arable land in the past 50 years due to massive deforestation and shortsighted farming methods. Many other countries have experienced desertification, and climate change has exacerbated this process.

If Montana or Texas had the population densities of many asian countries, per capita wealth (relative) would decline to levels at or below those of the more densely populated countries. This is also in addition to water quality, pollution, and dietary issues that would occur due to massive overpopulation.

As it stands now, ONE COUNTRY, Japan, has almost successfully overfished the worlds' oceans. This is a consequence of their exceedingly high population on a small landmass. Although per capita impact tends to decline over time in densely populated areas, TOTAL impact still rises. As this happens, further mineral (NON RENEWABLE) use also increases in a TOTAL fashion, while per capita wealth decreases.

The environmental impact of extremely dense populations upon surrounding areas would cause massive ecological deterioration due to edge effects, as well as any increased infrastructure would further break up already fragmented ecosystems. Unfortunately for the planet, these ecosystems play a vital part in the water, nutrient and energy cycles. If land use, globally, reached levels that were similar to those in the most heavily populated areas, per capita wealth would decline dramatically, ecological disasters would become routine, and NO, people would not live very fun or wealthy lives.

In this sense, yeah, we have run out of land. We've run out of land in the sense that AT THE POINT WE ARE ALREADY AT, we no longer have untouched arable land. It is possible to make desert into an oasis, but eventually the water tables will sink to the bedrock, or you will have to desalinate gross quantities of seawater AT TREMENDOUS ENERGETIC COST.

Imagine if the whole world was like Dubai. You can have lots of people, great technology and good quality of life for SOME, but in general it will be energetically costly, if not prohibitive, and the vast majority of people will be living substandard lives. So yeah, we have fucking run out of land.

(but we have land)

If you count desert, permafrost (not so permanent these days) and ecological areas which are necessary for PLANETARY SURVIVAL, then yeah, sure we do.

The world needs green space in order to sustain life. We can only push against the natural order for so long before the cycles fall out of normal and hit us right in the back of the head. Human civilisation shows record after record of this overuse of resources, collapse of society and rebuilding on undamaged land. We are currently a bit short on undamaged land.

If you want to look at the real culprits of global warming, don't look at oil, don't look at plastics or emissions. Look at what happened to the East China Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the new deserts in Spain, Portugal and China. When new deserts are created we lose massive carbon sinks that are critical in maintaining a balanced biosphere. The loss of those areas is catastrophic, in the loss of potential food sources, livable areas and the ultimate global effects that this decline will have.

Things might seem fine in your backyard, but we are seriously pretty fucked.

Further Reading: http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=21714139#itemanchor_21714139