Comment 10 by mmurray : At various times I've tried to find on the internet an estimate of a global sustainable population with first wold living standards. It is usually lower than 4-5 billion. Just wondering where you got that figure from ?

Michael

I think you will find that such estimates depend on when they were made, meaning which technologies and projections of near future technologies were taken into account and how comprehensively.

But the ceiling is definitely around 4 billion if every single person is to be in the middle class with all of its implied infrastructure, standards, luxuries and ecological equilibrium.

10 billion in not so near future sounds like hell on earth to me.

Lol, it reminds me of Krogan in Mass Effect universe where they can't keep their numbers in check so eventually completely devastate their own planet and other colonies given to them. Obviously developers were projecting our own future into that fictional alien race.