Would the death of 50% of the human population drastically reduce carbon dioxide levels?
It is well known that in respiration, we produce carbon dioxide, while plants, via photosynthesis, absorb CO2. My question is, if 50% of all people die today, will the total amount of CO2 decrease drastically or will it be too small a change to notice?
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Some basic statistics:
- Number of humans on Earth: ~7.3 billion people
- CO2 output per day per human: ~1.0 kilograms
- CO2 output per year by vertebrates: ~220 gigatonnes (=220 trillion kilograms)
This means that humans annually breathe out ~2.66 trillion kilograms of CO2 per year - less than 1% of the total natural output by vertebrates. If all humans died today, there would be no effect from breathing out carbon dioxide.
However, human activities spew out over ten times as much as we breathe out each year. If we got rid of about one half of the population, we could cut that down significantly. That would make a huge difference.
Also, as Cort Ammon said infrastructure would pretty much collapse. The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman, is an interesting starting point for figuring out what would happen.
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