That's assuming we build a bunch of tall buildings in Texas though, right? No way you get that high of population density without building upwards.
Yes.
Without building upwards, each person would get something like a 4ft x 4ft square =P
I don't think you can justify what humans have done already, because of my main point -- it's not sustainable.
I think we've boiled down into a war of definitions. I define sustainability as necessary to justify something, while it appears as though you don't. We can't get much farther if those remain true.
Sustainability is a silly criterion for considering something "justified".
A man, 25 years old, lives with his wealthy aunt and uncle and has never had a job. His parents were also wealthy, but died when he was a boy, leaving him a large sum of money when he became an adult. He parties often and spends his parents' money. Is this behaviour sustainable? Certainly not. Is it justified? Why wouldn't it be? It will lead to his demise if he continues, but why should that now mean his behaviour was somehow unjustified?
You are letting the survival of the human race come into play when it really doesn't have to. We can say "this man can do what he wants, and he's been able to up until this point, but if he doesn't stop, he'll be in trouble". If we remove ourselves from the human race momentarily as observers, we can say the same thing about the human race.
I don't call becoming a dominant species "waging war against the world." I call it waging war when that species refuses to consider the biotic limit of the earth as a barrier to growth, and instead of stopping the production of new organisms they cultivate more and more land for agriculture, which increases the population, which increases the need for crops, etc. I call it waging war when that species make dramatic changes to the environment that, if continued, will have drastic effects.
lol "refuses to consider"
We are the only species with the ability to "consider" in the first place. Consider the termites brought up by BPC. Let's say they reproduce incredibly quickly and are incredibly resistant. It comes to be that it's projected that they will have devoured every tree within ten years. Can you really say the behaviour of these termites is then "not justified"? None of them know the potential effects of their actions on the rest of the world. They are acting only according to their basic survival instinct. Perhaps they eat all the trees, and then as a result the world changes so that they can no longer live, so they die out. This is all part of the natural world.
We can apply the same thinking to humans. If these termites don't need justification, why should humans?
