In the United States, the average lot size for a home is about 8,600 square feet, or roughly 1/5th of an acre. Keep that in mind for a minute.

Shown below is a map of the United States with Texas highlighted.

Texas is roughly 167 million acres in size. The entire US population is about 325 million, and the average household size is 2.6, or ~125 million households.

That means every household in the country could have slightly over an acre of land - more than five times the average lot size - in Texas alone, leaving the rest of the US land mass completely empty.

But that’s just the United States. If we constructed 35-story buildings on those 167 million Texas acres, instead of single-family homes, we could house every living person in the world.

The logistics of packing everyone into Texas wouldn’t make sense, of course, but in the real world we wouldn’t be trying to cram the world’s population into one place. My point is that we have plenty of space, and that the majority of the world’s land mass is uninhabited by humans. Even New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the country, is still about two-thirds wilderness.

There are vast expanses of undeveloped land throughout the world, most of which is perfectly habitable as is, and the parts that currently aren’t could be made human-friendly though modern technology. There are more than 30 billion acres of land on the planet. The majority of the Earth’s land mass isn’t occupied by humans, but could be.

About a third of it is desert, but that isn’t really a problem either. If we wanted to, we have the ability to pipe in desalinated sea water and make those deserts livable. One hundred fifty years ago, the area known as Las Vegas would have been considered uninhabitable, but today it supports 2.2 million residents, plus millions of guests. Same goes for parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and the like. Making “uninhabitable” land habitable isn’t difficult by today’s standards.

Now let’s talk food. My brother in law runs a small hydroponic farm. He’s able to grow more food on a half acre than a traditional farm can grow on 10 acres, and could stretch that to 20 acres and beyond if he wanted to go taller.

Hydroponic farms can be several stories tall, and can operate inside climate-controlled spaces. That means farming can be done today in any climate, without the physical space constraints we’re historically accustomed to.

Which brings me to the next “untapped” resource: the oceans.

Roughly 75% of the Earth’s surface area is ocean. At some point in the distant future, technology will probably let us utilize space on or under it too. With no aerial obstructions, and the constant motion of the water, energy can be generated from solar, wind, and ocean currents. Desalination would provide drinkable water and the ability to grow vast stores of crops through hydroponics. In a world connected through satellites and wireless technologies, a floating or submerged colony capable of supporting a human population could be a real thing one day.

As long as enough fertile land is preserved for livestock and crops that can’t be grown through hydroponics, our planet could support a human population that’s many times larger than what it is right now.

As the human population grows, we may reach a point where we need to manage resources a bit differently, but don’t kid yourself into thinking that population is a problem or buy into the doom and gloom nonsense. The planet is nowhere near maximum human capacity.

One more time for perspective…