Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc
It's not simply about having the space to physically accommodate these people, but rather the space to sustain these people. Ever take a cross country flight across the USA, there isn't much land that isn't used for human consumption. The Chinese and Indians historically have been poor developing societies and the Chinese went to great lengths to lift themselves out of poverty and still aren't quite there yet and the Chinese have far less arable land then the US.
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There is plenty of land that is not used or extremely underused.
Pick a city. Muscatine, Iowa can easily become a 10 million people city without disturbing any nature. All those farms nearby would just become multifamily housing. US produces plenty of food as is, way more than 330 million people can consume. We just don't have enough people in this country, so most land, even the one that is developed by humans, either lies fallow, or has low productivity uses such as farming.
If we fit 500 million people just in Midwest alone, I think it would still be less dense than Germany...
Adding 55 million people just to Michigan alone would make it the same density as the current UK.
And I am not even talking about our areas such as Pacific Northwest that barely even have any cities, despite having relatively mild climate.