Impact of life extension on world population and population sustainability

Is death necessary?  While radical life extension technology likely remains decades away, constant advances in understanding the processes of aging opens the door to the possibility that at some point in that not so distant future people may be able to choose to live lives that are much longer than a natural life span.

The link below takes a look at the impact of different factors on future world population growth, and also addresses the requirements of a larger world population.

One thought related to this is the role of death in the evolution of life.  Obviously, throughout history death has been necessary to advance life due to the limited resources available in the environment and the process of natural selection.  However, when people can expand their environment by leaving earth and can intelligently adapt to a changing environment by choice through technologies such as gene modification, death is arguably not a necessary element of human life.  The role of death would be in many ways obsolete.

Future population and radical life extension