The Good Earth is Dying, updated

In 1971 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Isaac Asimov</a> wrote an essay called The Good Earth is Dying, which begins with the question, “How many people is the earth able to sustain?” Asimov lays out the following logic: Since the mass of plant life on the earth cannot increase without a corresponding increase in solar radiation (or in the efficiency of photosynthesis), and plant life is the ultimate food of all animal life, the earth can only support a limited mass of living tissue. Assuming the total amount of living tissue currently on the earth is equal to that limit, every additional unit mass of people comes at the expense of other animals. So, if human beings set out make as many human beings as possible, we would eventually be the only form of animal life on the planet. What would that look like? Asimov describes it this way (p. 70): <a href="https://danielisilver.medium.com/the-good-earth-is-dying-updated-13c6f9446ba0">Website</a>