 How would the world function if getting old stopped being a thing? If our bodies could rejuvenate indefinitely, would the world become overpopulated? Or would humanity expand into the cosmos? Will an aging cure only help the rich or bring more people out of poverty? Would older generations always be wealthier simply because they were here first? Would people in government literally never leave office? Or will ageism cease to exist? Is it weird for a 300-year-old to date a 70-year-old? These are the questions we're tackling in this four-part series on our Ageless Future. Welcome to Lifespan News, I'm your host, Emmett Short. We try to bring you the latest breaking news about longevity science, but being forward-looking and trying to anticipate trends and problems is also something that we here at Lifespan.io and Lifespan News are thinking about all the time. I'm personally fascinated with the future because it always seems to play out similar to what we expect in some ways and just wildly different in others. So I've gathered a bunch of different news and statistics to share with you to help you form a vision of the future post-aging. I'll explore four specific societal aspects transformed by the end of aging, impacts to the environment, the economy, government, and our own self-perception. Today's episode is all about the environment. So usually the first objection you hear from people who would rather we all die, I guess, is that the population will explode, will run out of space, will run out of resources. But Earth just can't support more people. Really? The Earth is finite, so we should all die? That's the argument, it's pretty flimsy, if you ask me. Have you seen space? There's a lot of it. I, for one, think civilization, intelligent life consciousness, can spread throughout the cosmos and that it should. Let's not limit ourselves to remaining forever locked to our planet. But since that may be far in the future, let's explore the more immediate effects of an aging cure on our planet. There are many statistics that point to climate change worsening, but it's not as simple as just more people equals more pollution equals environmental collapse. For instance, from the 1960s to 2024, Los Angeles's population grew from about 2.5 million to almost 4 million, yet air quality improved significantly over that time due to stricter emissions regulations and technological advancements in cars, most recently with electrification. Today, it's not the LA smog that's going to kill you, it's all the driving and tick talking. But what about the food, huh? How are we going to feed everyone? They're making our food out of people, next thing they'll be breeding is like cattle. Silent breed is people! The idea that we'll run out of food and have to resort to cannibalism is about as outdated as that clip. I've heard people say the earth can't support more than 10 billion meat eating humans because there just isn't enough land area to grow enough food to feed the animals that we would then eat. They say the math just doesn't work out, it's about surface area. I called bullshit on this and I took it to chat GPT and I'll share my thread in the description so you can verify it's calculations for yourself. But here's the quick math on a few different scenarios. We can calculate the maximum number of meat eaters supported by estimating the total meat production possible from the available land and dividing it by the average meat consumption per person. Poultry is more efficient than beef soap, the back of the napkin GPT math says theoretically we could already support 131 billion chicken eaters or about 32 billion beef eaters. This scenario doesn't even take into account technological advancement, but have you googled farm tech recently? It's awesome! Look at these urban farms growing organic produce inside cities to reduce transportation costs and carbon emissions. I mean, we've got robot farmers, we've even got moving chicken coops giving chickens and exercise while keeping the soil healthy. But what about water shortages? There's not enough water to feed the crops. We're not in any danger of resource collapse. But lots of people don't have enough food or water. Water, we will run out of water. Earth is 70% water by surface area. But you can't drink that. Decellination is absurdly cheap. Why don't we do it then? We do it, it is done. You have a lot of free time. It is done. There is a lot of desalination done. Yeah, he's right. Major breakthroughs have been made recently to turn ocean water into drinking water cheaply and efficiently. And they're currently being implemented on a massive scale. Desalination could vastly increase the land surface area available for cities and agriculture. So I asked Chachi BT about a couple other scenarios involving desalination, urban farming and aquaculture. And we got up to 320 billion meat eaters. If we all gave up meat or figured out healthy, tasty, lab-grown protein, we could probably be in the trillions. And look, all the breakthroughs don't have to be technological, they could be social. Sometimes making different choices makes a huge difference. Bill Marr just made this suggestion to Gavin Newsom. Almonds. No one ever asked you about almonds? Oh, I'm going to ask you about almonds. We grow a boatload of almonds here. I'm well aware. You know how much water it takes to grow? Any gallons. 1,900 gallons to grow a pound of almonds. We come on, man. Take on big almonds. Take on big almonds. On the list of things I'm willing to give up, almonds are at the tippy top. Almond milk. Right up here. The point is, the resource challenges of today are not actually due to a lack of resources. They're mostly due to a lack of logistical technology to allocate resources to our densely packed cities. Changing policy, implementing existing technology, and researching new technology is the strategy we're already using to grow. And my guess is it will continue to work. Okay, but what about wild animals? Where are they going to live if humans expand everywhere? Hear me out, urban ranges. I'm kidding. Kind of. But there are many strategies for responsibly expanding into the vast amounts of space that we have available in America alone. Just type what is the plan for human expansion that takes animals into account and read all about it. If we can solve aging, then we probably have a good shot of creating healthy lab-grown meat, huge carbon capture devices, vast floating cities, and theme parks on the moon. Why not? Do I have all the answers here? Nobody does. But the point is there are plenty of reasons to assume human ingenuity can keep pace with the population. Have you heard of this little thing called AI? It's definitely going to help us solve all these problems if it doesn't destroy civilization. And if civilization collapse is your concern, then the fact that people are dying faster than people are being born should be way more of a concern. In fact, if birth rates continue their current trend, a cure for aging will be the only way to save civilization. So if you're someone who thinks a cure for aging is going to cause population growth and environmental and civilizational collapse, have I changed your mind? And let me know what the top technologies are that you think will help humanity grow the biggest. The next video in this series is about the economy and how we'll deal with inheritance and hoarding and more in a future where no one ages. I'm going to put the video right here, so make sure you click on that when it's out. And if you're still watching, think about hooking us up with a like and a subscribe and heading over to Lifespan.io for more on the cutting edge of longevity science news. And I'll see you in the next one. Bye.