The World Book Encyclopedia of 1970 says of today’s population: “If all the people of the world were distributed evenly, there would be about 63 persons for every square mile [640 acres] of land.” This would mean about ten acres of land for every person living today! Yes, earth can accommodate many more than its present population.

So those who are alive today represent a sizable number of those who have ever lived on this earth. In fact, in 1966 a speaker at the Florida State Pharmaceutical Association convention observed: “It is now estimated that 25 per cent of all the people who have ever lived are alive today.”​—Jacksonville Journal, May 18, 1966.

On the basis of that estimate, the population throughout all human history would be only some 14,000,000,000 persons. But suppose that many more than that have lived on the earth. Let us add 10,000,000,000 more persons and assume that a population of 24,000,000,000 is involved. Would there be room for them? Well, since the earth has over 36,000,000,000 acres, there would be more than an acre and a half of land for each person! But would an acre and a half be enough to produce the needed food? There is good reason to believe that only a fraction of that acre and a half per person would be needed for food, leaving room for recreation areas and sanctuaries for animal and plant life.