Projecting Indias Resource Use in 2050

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Projecting Indias Resource Use in 2050 A
Provisional Carrying Capacity
Steven Augarten Laura Cole Madeleine
Goldstein Leigh Huffine Rosalind Parry
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Our Approach to Carrying Capacity

• Traditional carrying capacity, the moment at
  which a population of people is unable to sustain
  itself, is defined as the limitations placed on
  the population by resources
• We created a reverse carrying capacity Rather
  than examining how resources limit the
  population, we looked at how the population
  affects the resources
• We examined the effects of lifestyle and
  population growth on the availability of resources

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Methodology Scenarios and Growth Rates

• The Status Quo Scenario
• The American Way Scenario
• The J. Lo Scenario
• The Crunchy Granola Scenario

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Methodology Scenarios and Growth Rates

• Constant growth at 1.4
• 25 reduction of growth to 0.83
• Reduction to a pre-industrial growth rate to
  .265
• Reduction to a 0.0 growth rate

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Zooming in on the American Way

• A 0.0 growth rate
• A population of 1,522,524,845 people
• Is Americas resource consumption sustainable
  within Indias current resources and production
  rates?

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Agriculture and Food Production

• The required amount of consumption
• 150 million metric tons of food per year

• This is 80 million more metric tons of food per
  year than they now produce

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Water Use

• The total water withdrawal in India would have to
  be
• 2.50759842 x 1015 m3 per year
• Indias current per capita water availability
• 2.619184266 x 1012 m3

• India is 2.504979236 x 1015 m3 short of
  sustaining this amount of water withdrawal

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Energy Use

• Projected energy consumption 508.05 EJ
• Total energy production in 2002 18.46 EJ
• With importation (17) they can obtain about 21 EJ

• Is not sustainable

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Households

• Average size of a US household 1795 feet2
• Average number of people per household 2.5
• Area of India 3,287,590 km2
• Other considerations

• Is sustainable, but increases the demand on
  resources

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Concluding

• Indias resources would be incapable of
  sustaining anything close to our current
  consumption in America
• Illuminates issues of sustainability,
  development, limited resources, population
  growth, and a global market economy

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