I’ve spent 40 or so hours in the past month hovering above the earth’s surface, checking out civilization in airplanes. I’m particularly fond of golf courses from an aerial perspective. Unfortunately, there are many extensive housing developments shaped like two-dimensional lollipops wedged between all the golf courses. There is actually an unimaginable amount of houses in this country. And within those houses are even more people. In conclusion, there are a lot of people on this planet.

Economically speaking, people are capital. With the world population set to hit 9 billion by 2050, we’ll sure have plenty of capital to spare. This exponential rise has interesting implications for our planet in the minds of two wildly different people — one an economist, the other a poet.

Julian Simon was a skeptical economist that praised the growth of the population for its benefits to the world’s natural resources. Simon argued that with increased population, wealth and technology, the scarcity of natural resources would decline. This idea is based on economic thinking that population is the solution to scarcities and environmental problems because markets and people innovate. Simon’s ideas are in contest with much conventional wisdom. Simon once won a bet with environmental scientist Paul Ehrlich by claiming that the price of five metals of Ehrlich’s choosing would fall during time in spite of increasing scarcity and depletion. Simon’s book, “The Ultimate Resource,” verifies that prices for raw materials, including oil, aluminum and steel have steadily fallen from historical prices. It should be noted that Simon made claims that human activity made no contribution to global environmental damage, including ozone depletion and climate change.

In beat poet Gary Snyder’s environmental manifesto, “Four Changes,” he writes that society needs to implement drastic transformations in rising population, pollution and consumption. While Snyder accompanies this manifesto with poems rather than citations, his words might ring a bit truer than Simon’s. A few of Snyder’s proposed actions include a form of polygamy, legalizing hitchhiking and ultimately fine-tuning our lives to coexist in harmony with nature.

While these opinions are two extremes, the issue of increasing population seems to be more of a problem than a solution. Simon made a successful career out of going against the scientific grain. I don’t know if polygamy is the answer, but I surely agree with initiating some social transformation to become better stewards of our planet’s resources.