Final answer:
The question relates to Thomas Malthus's concerns regarding the limits of population growth and the planet's ability to sustain it. It reflects on whether humanity has already exceeded Earth's carrying capacity, a core concept in Malthusian theory, which is relevant today through neo-Malthusian perspectives highlighting environmental sustainability challenges.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question at the end of the map story, "At what point does the human demand on Earth outpace the planet's ability to support our species and those we live alongside—or have we overextended our reach already?" is closely related to Thomas Malthus's concerns about the limits of population growth and resource availability. Malthus theorized that human population growth would outstrip the production of resources, leading to famine, war, and disease as controlling factors. While subsequent technological and agricultural advancements have exceeded Malthus's predictions, allowing the population to continue growing, neo-Malthusian views and observations from researchers like Paul Ehrlich have renewed concerns regarding environmental sustainability and carrying capacity.
Malthus's Malthusian theory, which posited war, famine, and disease as 'positive checks' to population growth, underlies the inquiry of the map story. This theory has been updated to consider modern challenges such as environmental degradation and overconsumption, brought to attention by neo-Malthusian perspectives and theories like Ehrlich's Zero Population Growth and the opposing Cornucopian Theory which has faith in human ingenuity to overcome such constraints.