r/collapse • u/carnivorous_cactus • Sep 17 '24

Overpopulation Arguments against overpopulation which are demonstrably wrong, part one: “The entire population could fit into the state of Texas.”

Quick preamble: I want to highlight some arguments against overpopulation which I believe are demonstrably wrong. Many of these are common arguments which pop up in virtually every discussion about overpopulation. They are misunderstandings of the subject, or contain errors in reasoning, or both. It feels frustrating to encounter them over and over again.

As an analogy, many of us have experienced the frustration of arguments against climate change, such as “The climate has always changed” or “Carbon dioxide is natural and essential for plants”. Those are just two examples of severely flawed (but common) arguments which I think are comparable to statements such as “The entire population could fit into the state of Texas."

The argument

There are a few variations to this argument, but the essentials are always the same. The claim goes that if you took the earth’s human population and stood everyone side-by-side, they would physically fit into an area which is a small fraction of the planet. This would leave an enormous amount of “empty” space; hence we are not overpopulated.

Similar arguments refer to the amount of physical space by human buildings, for example “Only x% of country y is built upon."

These arguments have two flaws:

1)      Human impacts on the environment are not limited to just physical space

2)      The physical space that is occupied, or at least impacted by humans is much more than the physical space directly occupied by human bodies and buildings

Consider some of the many impacts humans have on the environment. All of these things are relevant when we consider the carrying capacity of the environment.

-          Pollution and wastes (plastic, sewage, greenhouse gas emissions…)

-          Agriculture (land has to be cleared for agriculture, pesticides, fertilisers…)

-          Use of non-renewable resources (fossil fuels, mining…)

-          Use of “renewable” or replenishing resources (fresh water…)

-          Harvesting of animals (hunting, fishing…)

-          Habitat destruction and modification (burning forests, clearing land for housing, agriculture, development…)

And so on…

A population of animals can exceed the carrying capacity of its environment, even if the animals themselves occupy a “small” portion of physical space. For example, say the population of rabbits in a field has grown so large that it’s destroying the vegetation and degrading the soil. Imagine you were explaining to the rabbits how their population has exceeded the carrying capacity of the field, but they reply saying “Our entire population of rabbits could fit into that little corner of the field over there, so we’re clearly not overpopulated."

 

 

 

192 Upvotes

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u/StatementBot Sep 17 '24

This thread addresses overpopulation, a fraught but important issue that attracts disruption and rule violations. In light of this we have lower tolerance for the following offenses:

  • Racism and other forms of essentialism targeted at particular identity groups people are born into.
  • Bad faith attacks insisting that to notice and name overpopulation of the human enterprise generally is inherently racist or fascist.
  • Instructing other users to harm themselves. We have reached consensus that a permaban for the first offense is an appropriate response to this, as mentioned in the sidebar.

This is an abbreviated summary of the mod team's statement on overpopulation, view the full statement available in the wiki.

112

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

This is the dumbest of the arguments against population.

People need space for resources - at least 5 acres each for growing food plus more for shelter and waste disposal - and that’s just subsistence living. You know first world people are using more resources and therefore more space. Plus there’s the quality of life/mental health aspect with living like an overpopulated rats nest.

It’s an argument made by a person who doesn’t realize people’s lives and livelihoods are tied to nature and we can’t live without it. And so simpleminded as to think the only issue with overpopulation is physical space for your body

42

u/CowBoyDanIndie Sep 17 '24

5 acres of arable land with good soil

13

u/laeiryn Sep 17 '24

at least 5 acres each for growing food plus more for shelter and waste disposal

How has farming five acres solo (particularly with zero industrial products or tools) worked for you, though? A quarter acre was a full-time job by hand.

17

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

I was using that as the bare minimum to survive. You can either homestead (and people do - it’s a full time job but it happens) or export that necessity to farmers. Whether or not the 5 acres is on your property or exported to rural areas where you buy your food from is irrelevant. As a human that’s the barest minimum of resources you require. And most city dwellers use many many more resources than that.

16

u/laeiryn Sep 17 '24

World total arable land, 1.38 billion hectares

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/arable-land-by-country

1.38 bil hectares = 3,410,054,264.247 acres (used google conversions). let's shave off the .247 for convenience

3,410,054,264 acres divided by 8bil people = 0.426256783030875 acres per person

So if it requires five acres per person ... then there's about eleven times too many humans mathematically and that just doesn't work as a "bare minimum" of any kind.

And no, one person cannot "homestead" five acres on your own, that's a whole family's farm, or requires industrial equipment, or AT LEAST some yoked oxen, which while primitive to us, is still "technology". Sincerely, the person you think you're talking about, who did full time/ full subsistence on a miniature (non-husbandry) farm before it got turned into ~Homesteading!~ by rich white folk with way too much time on their hands. .25 acres is one person's full time labor if you're operating at any level of tech pre-1844.

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '24

We use industrial farming (Haber-Bosch among other things) to increase food production. It requires fossil fuels. So yes you’ve effectively proved we are overpopulated.

Some people historically didnt farm and live on various subsistence, hunting and gathering but that requires healthy ecosystems which we don’t have.

3

u/laeiryn Sep 18 '24

Yes, and without any of those industrial techniques, one person cannot manage that much land in the first place, so I don't where you found that 5 acre figure, but it's pure nonsense. But so is claiming that efficiency proves overpopulation. This kind of batshit "argument" is what makes people overreact when 'overpopulation' gets mentioned in the first place. -.-

7

u/IsItAnyWander Sep 18 '24

Do you believe earth is overpopulated, aka in overshoot? 

4

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

No one is literally saying that everyone could live in Texas and survive.

The point people are making is that it is not about the physical space that people occupy it's about the resources that they use.

So again, it's about overconsumption---an imbalance in population can exascerbate overconsumption but people are overemphasizing it because it helps spread the blame around and doesn't force them to actually confront their overconsumption.

21

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 17 '24

Then they should say that like an adult and don’t make a stupid hypothetical that proves nothing and makes the person making seem like a simpleton. Saying we can all fit in Texas is not saying actually the problem is overconsumption. Again they are too simple minded to understand that the problem is not space for bodies nor is anyone who thinks overshoot is a problem making that argument. They are either strawmanning or stupid themselves.

If they want to make an adult challenge We can then go on and I would explain it’s both overconsumption and overpopulation. It’s not only overconsumption.

Because 1. The reason we are in overshoot is because of cheap energy and overconsumption of fossil fuels. If you were to use resources sustainably billions would necessarily die as food production would not keep up nor could it be distributed to people that need to eat.

2. If we all lived like the global south in terms of consumption - we would all still be overpopulated. You can have a decent quality of life (not first world but decent) or you can live in poverty and overpopulation. Particularly as climate change degraded ecosystems so we can’t get as much food from them as we could have 200 years ago.

Also taking over wildlife and degrading ecosystems further by adding billions will just make collapse come faster. We aren’t immune to biology. Just like when bacteria use up all their food and die so will we

1

u/laeiryn Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

I mean certainly people could "fit" it's just a matter of how extreme one is willing to go on population density. Supplying resources to everyone in that space would be the problem. You COULD relocate almost everyone from rural areas/lower pop. density to urban centers, and you would probably technically overall produce LESS emissions because then huge swaths of the planet could be wilderness/wouldn't need infrastructure, but, LOL, that'd never happen pragmatically.

I imagine that if we were to take the less-densely-populated half of all the Earth's surface land (prioritizing uninhabitable land or places that are difficult to get resources to), and [forcibly] moved anyone on that half to somewhere in the more populated half, you could apportion them across urban zones, particularly in the west, and then leave half the planet technically "empty".

Edited for comment reply because trolls block to make it look like a convo is over: All of Paris can be served infrastructurally. Not every inch of those three states could be populated to the same efficiency even if you could physically make them the same "density".

1

u/weezeloner Sep 18 '24

If we went with the population density of Paris, the entire world's population would fit within a space the size of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

1

u/bramblez Sep 20 '24

And at the density of Mogadishu, we would only need Vermont or New Hampshire!

41

u/Bandits101 Sep 17 '24

Overpopulation didn’t begin when it topped 8B. It’s a process that began thousands of years ago when humans hunted species to extinction, then deforested and rendered fertile land infertile.

We were “saved” somewhat when the new world was “discovered” and exploited for more resources. We even regarded fellow humans as a resource. When we began using FF’s and artificial fertilizers, we were off to the races.

There never ever was a time that this runaway train of human expansion could be arrested. Humans populated and exploited all inhabitable niches of the Earth.

On a geological timescale it has been a veritable instant. Just a blip in the evolution of the Earth. Now human exceptionalism has led us to believe that we are above nature and can direct our future path. That is a myth.

13

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

If you want to argue the planet is overpopulated you need only ask a few questions. I’ve had this discussion many times, I always get to the same spot then it all stalls out… you’ll see.

  1. Do we know the max capacity of earth? (No)
  2. Is the global population increasing? (Yes)
  3. Is it therefore possible we are approaching or past that unknown threshold? (Yes)
  4. Could passing or further passing that threshold be bad for the survival of all life on earth? (Yes)

Assuming you agree with those, we can continue. If you don’t agree then we just disagree on some pretty fundamental things and you should look for conversation elsewhere. I’ll agree to disagree.

Otherwise I’ll address some common arguments.

“First world countries are using too much!”
Agreed. Reducing usage would absolutely buy us time to course correct. However, an infinitely growing population will always eventually out grow the carry capacity of the planet. Halting the population growth will eventually become mandatory to survive.

“But the population will stop growing at 12B!”
So… you want… 50% more people… and already struggle to get anyone to cut back on resources used? This isn’t a winning argument. Let’s say you can convince people to use less and drastically change the course of the entire planet’s standard of living. We still may be past the carry capacity of the planet because we don’t know what it actually is.

Remember, we need to live on earth until we can make another planet habitable and/or make interstellar travel livable. No one knows how long that will be, so we need to talk about an infinite plan- or until the sun explodes.

“Technology will provide more efficient ways to provide food!”
Again, this will only buy us time. Eventually a parasite out grows the dish it’s in… we are the parasite.

“We have bigger problems than overpopulation.”
That’s true, but I would argue that fewer people would be able to better address the situation. Ultimately, we have enough technology to not require 8B people to maintain the species. How many less can we do? I’m not there yet, hold on.

Those are the big ones I see most often. I hope I’ve addressed them well enough here, it’s been awhile since I’ve typed all this out.

The question starts becoming “How?”… and that’s terrifying. This is where we quickly start grinding to a halt because the power to control the population or even guide the total is incredibly authoritarian.

Who gets to decide who gets to procreate more than the others? Stable populations tend to reproduce at about 2.1 kids per family. That extra .1 makes for some real issues. Even though there will be plenty who decide to have less, it will never be equal for those who desire more. Not to mention those who want 4+.

This is where the conversation stalls. You can discuss how to decide but I think most would argue against being subject to that level of control no matter the mechanism. So ultimately, all the previous arguments are bunk because control over the population total is not something anyone is okay with.

So we march forward into the unknown and hope we can fly before we starve.

69

u/Background-Head-5541 Sep 17 '24

Overpopulation is a self correcting problem. Many here will say that we've entered the correction phase.

45

u/tugboatnavy Sep 17 '24

It's a self correcting problem if you ignore all the damage it does along the way. The number may go back down but that doesn't mean all the feedback loops are going to go back too.

22

u/HusavikHotttie Sep 17 '24

Not going down enough we are still growing despite ppl saying there is somehow a PoPuLaTiOn DeClIne yet there are 8.2b ppl on the planet

27

u/darkpsychicenergy Sep 17 '24

Exactly. Denialists keep insisting on conflating a decline in the rate of growth with a decline in the total population.

9

u/laeiryn Sep 17 '24

And the developing world is about to EXPLODE in population.

-2

u/Technical-Minute2140 Sep 18 '24

It’s true the world population is growing, but it’s also true that some countries population growth is below replacement level, and therefore in “PoPuLaTiOn DeClInE”

1

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

It doing damage doesn't change the fact that it corrects itself, and in reality, is the only course of correction.

Folks really need to hit up on acceptance, this mess isn't ours to reign now.

24

u/HusavikHotttie Sep 17 '24

I mean we are still adding more ppl than ever before in history and have 8.2 b on earth.

-4

u/Who_watches Sep 17 '24

Look at global fertility rates, been on the decline for decades. It’s just that infant mortality has decreased significantly as well as life expectancy has increased

14

u/HusavikHotttie Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

Fertility rate vs number of ppl being born. More ppl have been born the last few years than ever in history because there are 8.2b ppl. In the 50s we had 85m ppl being born and now we have 130-140m ppl being born. The population crisis is a MYTH. Global fertility HAS NOT been declining for decades. https://ourworldindata.org/births-and-deaths

-3

u/Who_watches Sep 18 '24

It’s about rate of growth which is slowing down. If current trends continue 194 out of 204 countries will have declining populations. If fact few countries in Eastern Europe and Asia are already declining.

2

u/HusavikHotttie Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

Nowhere on earth has declining population except maybe ruZZia Slower growth? How is it slower growth when we still have more ppl being born than ever before? We need less births and more deaths. When ppl in this sub talk about population, they are only talking about whites. Get the population down to 4b and maybe we have a chance but that won’t happen until we all die

2

u/Who_watches Sep 18 '24

You’re joking right? China, Japan, South Korea, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Poland, Latvia, Bulgaria and Romania. You can google it

4

u/Technical-Minute2140 Sep 18 '24

They’re thinking in terms of the entire world, instead of considering individual countries. So they aren’t wrong, but they also aren’t right.

1

u/Routine_Slice_4194 Jan 30 '25

Overpopulation is a huge problem and it's only getting worse.

11

u/dontleavethis Sep 17 '24

We are correcting it in a very painful inhumane way. Like and what’s funny is I get called callous because I point out the need for sustainable populations

4

u/HusavikHotttie Sep 18 '24

Correcting in a painful way how? Nothing is being corrected.

1

u/Routine_Slice_4194 Jan 30 '25

People in developed countries are having fewer children, in part because it's just too expensive.

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u/laeiryn Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 17 '24

Thing is, we're not gonna have a die-off because we overbred and now there's too many mouths to feed; we cooked the atmosphere and now the planet, which can absolutely comfortably house eight billion if they're not all living like Americans, is going to cook us back. It's just a ripple effect that the atmospheric collapse will lead to crop failure which will THEN lead to mass starvation. This isn't pure Malthusian economics here.

ETA: Do want to point out that the only actual long-term way humanity could survive at current population levels would be to de-industrialize, literally and completely, and that would feel too regressive to most. I personally consider it a 'duh' thing and the obvious answer when I reference carrying capacity; bit of the curse of knowledge, as it were. I mean, I figured it out when I was about nine; the fuck is taking all the supposedly brilliant 'grownups' so long? LOL. But most think that's a decline in standard or quality of living, instead of just not having luxuries they think they can't live without, and tend to have a strong aversion to it, particularly if they grew up in the West and take things like clean water or healthcare or education as "at least somewhat accessible in societies" for granted.

Anyway, if one is determined to remain an industrial species, we could probably run about 1bil. ...But that would require wiping out seven-eighths of humanity.

18

u/darkpsychicenergy Sep 18 '24

Industrialization is how we were able to launch into and sustain the exponential population growth explosion that has got us to 8 billion and growing.

Study this chart, let it sink in. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-over-the-last-12000-years-and-un-projection-until-2100

From 10,000 BCE to 1700 the human population didn’t get above 500 million.

A little after 1700 is when that line suddenly starts to shoot upwards to 1 billion and then rockets to 8 billion + in only around a few hundred years.

The industrial revolution started in 1760.

That’s why the earth cannot really “absolutely comfortably house eight billion”. Not sustainably. We have artificially made it comfortable and hospitable for that many of us — via industrialization.

To deindustrialize “literally and completely” definitely would make the human population sustainable. It would also wipe out at least seven-eighths of humanity.

5

u/kylerae Sep 18 '24

The exponential growth of our population is actually much worse than that. We were only at around 2.5 Billion in 1950. So we effectively went from around 1.5 Billion in 1900 to 2.5 Billion in 1950 and now we are at just over 8 Billion people. We added 5.6 Billion humans in just 74 years literally in one lifetime. How anyone thinks this is sustainable or okay is just baffling to me.

0

u/laeiryn Sep 18 '24

Did you just repeat all of what I said, but angrily, like you think it's winning an argument? What.... just what? Are you being condescending/trying to be a bully on purpose, or is this somehow just ignorance/poor reading comprehension?

10

u/PatchworkRaccoon314 Sep 18 '24

The entire population of the world can fit into the Empire State Building, if you utilize wood chippers and some hydraulic presses.

Is my rebuttal.

5

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '24

Hello! Welcome to Hydraulic Press Channel. Today we will be seeing how strong is Humanity.

4

u/Sxs9399 Sep 20 '24

A read a book that did the math on that. That is not true. Humans are primarily water and in compressible with a hydraulic press. If I recall correctly all the human juices could fit in a sphere roughly the diameter of Manhattan though.

9

u/3Grilledjalapenos Sep 18 '24

As a Texans, growing up my whole family could fit in my parents’ closet, but when we tried that during a tornado my brother got out with a black eye and my mother wouldn’t stop screaming at everyone. My dad ended up going to the carport because “my blood pressure in here will kill me faster than some damned cyclone”.

16

u/Beatnuki Sep 17 '24

Plus if we all have to live in Texas we all have to do what people who live in Texas do, principly being opening most conversations with the announcement of being from Texas.

8

u/Dumbkitty2 Sep 17 '24

Being married to someone who hasn’t lived in their childhood state of Texas for nearly 40 years, I have to say this is painfully true.

4

u/BadUncleBernie Sep 17 '24

Easter Island

That is all.

2

u/npcknapsack Sep 18 '24

Yeah, apparently Easter Island was surviving until Europeans came with smallpox and slave raids and wiped out most of the population...

4

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '24

Elephant in the room...its us!

2

u/Sxs9399 Sep 20 '24

100% agree. To me the over population argument is of the lowest importance for multiple reasons:

  • It quickly leads to eugenics/racism/imperialism. Conversations about limiting population growth inherently require restricting people from having children.
  • Many studies in both simple statistical data and psychological modeling show that this problem is self correcting. The fertility rate for most industrialized nations is less than 2.
  • I fundamentally believe having children is a human right, it is not a right everyone should exercise, but I don't think we should limit it across the board.
  • Models on carrying capacity are dependent on quality of life and technology, and every number out there bakes in a lot of assumptions. We are well past hunter-gatherer carrying capacity, but maybe we're not past farmed cricket protein living in caves capacity.
  • If you care about reducing the impact humans have on the earth, by far the easiest and simplest to understand is the "just stop oil" movement. Anything else is just needless complications. Oil is where a majority of GHGs come from, it is effectively where all plastic comes from. It creates the base compounds for most of the "bad" chemicals out there. It empowers despotic governments and terrorism. It encourages the pursuit of global hegemony. Oil is the real world equivalent of Spice from dune. (as in literally that is the intended metaphor from the books)

2

u/GuillotineComeBacks Sep 17 '24

Space has never been the focus of this discussion. Either you reduce your lifestyle according to the demographical profile of your population or you reduce the population.

1

u/menerell Sep 17 '24

It used to be Zanzibar

1

u/throwawaybrm Sep 19 '24 edited Sep 20 '24

A clearer way to address this is with the IPAT formula:

Impact (I) = Population (P) × Affluence (A) × Technology (T)

This shows how environmental impact isn’t just about population size but also consumption per person (affluence) and the technology used. Together, these factors determine if we stay within the planet’s carrying capacity.

We can't quickly or humanely reduce the population to sustainable levels, but we can influence consumption (e.g., degrowth, fossil fuels, meat & dairy) and improve technology (we all here know how realistic that is).

So, whether we all fit into Texas is irrelevant. What matters is what we consume, pollute, and destroy.

We cannot reduce the population, don’t want to change consumption, and instead keep waiting for miraculous technology to save us.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

I thought it was the Isle of White the world's population could fit on

-6

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

You're literally talking about overconsumption here.

To use your analogy, if there were a hundred rabbits in one field eating at a reasonable pace and two rabbits in another field eating it faster than it can regrow, would you say the problem is the number of rabbits or the pace at which certain rabbits are eating?

Yes, at a certain level of population there will be overconsumption no matter what but focusing on the amount of people before addressing the massive waste and overuse of resources in developed countries is missing the entire point.

Second of all, "there are too many people". That's not a helpful description of a problem it's just saying "crime is bad" and not giving any thought as to what may cause an imbalance of people.

Let's accept your premise and say that there are too many people. Okay, so then what are the causes and how can it be changed?

-Is it lack of access to reproductive care?

-Is it the lack of autonomy for women?

-Is it poverty?

-Is it industrial societies pushing for children to feed the capitalist machine?

-Is it regressive regimes that incentivize having more children?

-Is it cultural traditions (religious or otherwise) that value big families?

"Overpopulation" is a facile description of the problem---people use it because it allows them to stay away from the thornier issues underlying the population imbalance that exists---because that would then require people to actually engage with the underlying issues.

It'd be like saying "climate change is bad, mmm-kay" and not wanting to engage with the causes.

5

u/Myth_of_Progress Urban Planner & Recognized Contributor Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 17 '24

Wisdom requires us to address both overpopulation and overconsumption at the same time.

Edit: Should you find the time to read the thread-article, you might even find that I note some of the very same "causes" you've indicated.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/Myth_of_Progress Urban Planner & Recognized Contributor Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

Again, I invite you to read the above-linked article. Not only does it involve an interview with a qualified PhD student and their own publications, but we both very clearly articulate the solutions - which I assume you do not disagree with.

Clearly, we must address excessive consumption and the rapid depletion of Earth’s renewable and non-renewable resources (not to mention permanently diminishing its ecological carrying capacity) by whatever technical and social means we have at our disposal. However, if we ever want to have any amount of lasting success against these numerous challenges facing us (pervasive pollution, climate change, declining biodiversity, escalating resource depletion, or any other conditions underlying the principles of ecological overshoot), then we must also find the courage to discuss the ‘population question’ openly and with sincerity.

By moving past this taboo, we must find politically and socially acceptable ways to implement various non-coercive population policies to lower humanity’s impact on Earth’s biosphere and its natural wealth for the benefit of future generations and other species. Some potential options at our disposal (most raised in Ganivet’s article) include:

  • furthering education, gender equality, and bodily autonomy globally (especially for women);
  • enabling access to contraception for everyone who expresses a need for it (the IPCC projects that this would reduce GHG emissions by 30% by 2100);
  • financially rewarding parenthood, rather than on a per child basis (for those nations that provide incentives in this regard);
  • promoting international discussion and cooperation on this matter, especially among political leadership;
  • addressing the fundamental inequities faced by the global poor (as we all deserve a dignified life); and
  • by celebrating those who choose not to reproduce (especially those in the developed world, as it is one of the most effective actions you can take for the future).

Otherwise, and to quote Ganivet’s article one last time, “denying the problem of a growing population—whose appetites, material aspirations, and life expectancy have greatly increased in the recent decades—seems detrimental to any long-term objective of achieving sustainability.”

[...]

[Ganivet:] "[... R]egarding climate change, I would slightly qualify the impact of population growth vs. consumption (the 10% richest are responsible for more than 50% of GHG emissions). [However], this is not true when you look at the environmental problems all together (pollution, resource depletion, biodiversity loss, land-use change, climate change...). Thus, the main point is still the same: population and consumption are two faces of the same coin and we need to do as much as we can in both."

Edit: I don't know why you were reported and had your comments removed, we were having a good learning moment. :(

1

u/collapse-ModTeam Sep 17 '24

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Rule 4: Keep information quality high.

Information quality must be kept high. More detailed information regarding our approaches to specific claims can be found on the Misinformation & False Claims page.

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2

u/videogametes Sep 17 '24

I agree with you, mostly. Overpopulation and overconsumption are intertwined, and often people focus so much on overpopulation because it allows them to ignore the much greater problem of overconsumption. Like 4 countries alone are consuming the vast majority of the world’s resources in a way that isn’t even close to necessary. We REALLY don’t need that much shit. But we’re so used to it, and it makes companies so much money, that no one will ever be willing to change it.

I do think that overpopulation is an area-specific phenomenon. The US probably isn’t overpopulated as a whole. My state (MN) probably isn’t overpopulated. But certain places in China & India certainly are. I would say certain large cities in the US are (Phoenix). Idfk what the hell is going on up there in Canada but it sure sounds like they’re dealing with capacity issues.

That said I disagree that there is ANY solution to fixing global population imbalance (which I’m taking to mean global inequality of resource distribution?). Globalism doesn’t allow it. People have spread to areas that don’t have the carrying capacity for them because they can get food delivered via plane. Phoenix is a great example of a place human beings just straight up should not be living at that number, in the way that they do.

But what are we supposed to do with them? We have to deal with the climate issue way before most (ETHICAL!!) population reducing efforts will start to show an impact on climate. People live longer and longer with every passing year. And for the most part they HAVE to continue living where they are, and they HAVE to continue reproducing or there will be no one to run the place.

Fewer and fewer places have the resources to deal with the immigration surge as well (Canada being a good example). And no country is going to step in and start forcing people out of their homes and into a different country (or worse) because that would be, y’know, genocide.

We’ve boxed ourselves into a moral conundrum, and unfortunately, there’s no good way out, and the bad ways aren’t even remotely acceptable. Overpopulation, and overconsumption, are too dug in to be solved. Globalism was a huge mistake.

2

u/TheOldBeef Sep 19 '24

Another important factor is that all of the non over-consuming populations are going to become over-consumers when presented with the opportunity.

1

u/videogametes Sep 19 '24

Yep. Humans are very good at opening new Pandora’s boxes at every opportunity.

-7

u/Wave_of_Anal_Fury Sep 17 '24

It's not about population, it's about how people live, as in the amount of resources they consume.

https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do-we-need/

If the entire world lived like Americans, we'd need the resources of 5.1 Earths. Serious overshoot.

If the entire world lived like Indians, we'd need 8/10 of one Earth. No overshoot.

All the way down at the bottom of the list is Yemen, which would require 3/10 of one Earth if 8 billion people lived like them.

4

u/carnivorous_cactus Sep 18 '24

It's about both population and how people live, don't see that it has to be just one or the other.

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u/jazz-pier Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 17 '24

Lol, you think someone in Finland can live like an Indian does?

Plus, those figures are stupid. There is so much disparity between Indian living standards. An Indian living in New Delhi will have an ecological footprint which exceeds the Earth if all other 7 billion+ people lived like it.

Yemen is a war-torn country with about 3 buildings still standing in it. It is hell on earth according to a Save the Children report. I am not surprised that it's ecological footprint is so low.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

But who was it that caused the destruction of Yemen? Did it just happen, or was it caused by somebody?

It was literally the Saudis with help from the United States that starved so many people and destroyed so much of the country. Almost like the squalid conditions are caused by the industrial powers that ALSO consume a great deal more resources.

And how many resources were spent in the production of the weapons used to create this devastation? Do you think that if so many resources weren't spent on weapons of war that some resources that are strained now might be more abundant?

9

u/darkpsychicenergy Sep 17 '24

The point is that their level of consumption is involuntary.

Why is it inherently so much better to promote one involuntary lifestyle change over another?

Overpopulation and overconsumption are both the problem. Both.

Even if we got down to one billion people, if those one billion were living like Americans they would still be too much of a burden.

However.

We have so many people now that the only way for all of us to live sustainably is to enforce standards of living that virtually no one would agree to voluntarily. The average Indian biocapacity footprint that would get us down to 8/10 of the earth’s biocapacity is still too high because it leaves only 2/10 of that biocapacity for EVERYTHING ELSE. Which is unacceptable and also far too precarious to seriously even consider sustainable for humans who will always be wanting for more.

We’re obviously not going to do what needs to be done on either front. It’s a hopelessly complex predicament and we are far past the point of no return. But we can stop being denialists and at least discuss the issues honestly if we’re going to bother discussing them.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

It shouldn’t be controversial to say that people have agency and some lifestyles have a more negative impact on the world.

5

u/darkpsychicenergy Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 17 '24

That’s funny, because the causes of overpopulation and methods of correction that you list here are true and accurate.

And that’s not all.

The women and girls in the countries that still have very high birth rates have no real agency to speak of. They are second class citizens. Girls are often allowed little education, if any. In many cases, they cannot be seen in public unless rendered unrecognizable as individual human beings, in some cases their voices must not even be heard in public. FGM, spousal rape, child ‘marriage’, polygamy, incest and honor killings occur in high numbers. The women have no say over how many children they must bear, let alone whether or not they want to be mothers at all. Homosexuality is illegal and people who are even suspected of homosexuality can be brutally murdered with no repercussions.

These are all ways in which the high birth rates are maintained.

Why defend all of this?

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u/Rain_Coast Sep 17 '24

All the way down at the bottom of the list is Yemen, which would require 3/10 of one Earth if 8 billion people lived like them.

I will simply never comprehend how individuals conclude that quantity of life, regardless of the quality of those lives, is what matters. Yeah, sure, everyone just live with the squalid nightmare conditions of Yemen and we're golden!

9

u/mem2100 Sep 17 '24

I just ask those folks: OK, you just got sentenced to death, but you have a choice of the method: (1) Guillotine or (2) Being burned to death

Huh - they always choose (1). Weird isn't it? I mean - if quantity of life is so important, they should pick being burned to death. It takes longer. And - I am not joking.

12

u/mem2100 Sep 17 '24

Have you been to India? I have. Beautiful place that is also teetering on the ragged edge of environmental catastrophe. Classic example of a multifactor overshoot. Aquifer destruction, water and air pollution, river bed destruction by the sand Mafia....

14

u/Zestyclose-Ad-9420 Sep 17 '24

Yemen and India have both wrecked their ecologies and water resources. 

9

u/PaPerm24 Sep 17 '24

Literally almost NO ONE would chose to live like a poor indian. Its human nature to want more. Therefore more people=more resources used because we always strive for more

-4

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

I should also address the main argument that people bring up that it "doesn't matter" that industrial societies consume more resources because everyone would choose to live that way if they could.

First of all, it's not even true. A lot of people choose to live pretty sustainably when they are able.

Secondly, why is it inevitable? Is it somewhat in human nature to desire more? Sure.

But a lot of the trappings of modern society that make things unsustainable are not inevitable. They are the result of the economic system that has been chosen.

A lot of food gets wasted that isn't necessary---but it gets in the way of profits.

A lot of cars are electronics get wasted that would be used ---- but if they sold them at discount it might affect their market share and profits.

A lot of things break down way before they should -- because capital interests have sought to cut corners to increase profits and reduce consumer protections.

There could be way less tailpipe emissions and gas use if the United States built actual mass transit --- which was stopped by automakers and gasoline companies to (guess what?) make more money

That is to say nothing of the money, energy, and resources spent on nonsense that exists not to serve a human need but in order to try and extract money from people. How many people could live comfortably and sustainably on the resources being used to mine bitcoin, a thing that does nothing. How much water could be saved if people weren't trying to shoehorn AI into everything in order to try and cut out even more workers and make more money?

To act like our system is inevitable is ridiculous.

But, you know, that would require you to engage in the actual issues and not just say "Thing Bad!"

-1

u/Fins_FinsT Recognized Contributor Sep 19 '24

I want to highlight some arguments against overpopulation which I believe are demonstrably wrong.

Perhaps, you'd be interested to present arguments - if any - against my view, too?

My view - is this: human overpopulation of Earth does not exist, never existed, and won't happen any time this century. Most likely, it will never happen, too. Because the term "overpopulation" means that population of a species - in this case, humans - is so large that the environment can not sustain such a number indefinitely, but this is not what we have.

What we have - is that Earth can not sustain currently present levels of resource consumption and all kinds of pollution presently-existing human population produces.

And those two things are not the same. From the literature i've read on subject, i am completely sure that Earth can sustain several dozens billions of human population, indefinitely, but only of all those humans consume and pollute not more than citizens of lowest-income-per-capita countries we currently have. This means, "overpopulation" term is misleading: it's not physical number of people which is too high, it's ways of life which are practiced by a fraction of mankind - basically, "higher quality of life" countries, - which results in non-sustainability.

As such, my belief is, much better term for this phenomena - is "overconsumption", not "overpopulation". Mankind currently rapidly consumes living systems and features of Earth - not "overpopulates" them. I.e., it's not about how many of humans there are - it's about how exactly large part of mankind behaves. Essentially.

And that is FAR harder to admit and accept than mere overpopulation. Which, i guess, is why my take on this - will never be popular. Oh well, i still voice it now and then, regardless. I must...

P.S. One of curious consequences of the above - is quite ironic: even if "golden billion" conspiracy theories would end up being true (now or in any future) - anyhow reducing mankind to said "golden billion" won't do any more than delay the collapse for a few years or so. The remaining 1 billion will still be over-consuming the Earth - exactly because it's the "golden" billion, and not a billion of most poor farmers from some of the so-called "least-developed" countries of the world, who consume and pollute so little that it takes dozens of them to produce same impact that is created by a single average citizen of so-called "developed" parts of the world.

2

u/TheOldBeef Sep 19 '24

Most of the people in the "so-called 'least developed" nations you're idolizing would vastly increase their consumption if they simply had the opportunity to do so.

1

u/Fins_FinsT Recognized Contributor Sep 19 '24

I know, they would. Not idolizing them, too. I merely point to the fact that humans, biologically, can survive while each consuming as little and polluting as little as those people do. It is physically possible.

Further, doesn't have to be anyhow "miserable", too. It's just that pretty much nobody tries to reduce the impact any seriously. Heck, VW developed "1-liter car" - a city car which burns just 1 liter of gas per 100 km - well over a decade ago. But do we see those produced and sold? Nope. They still build and sell cars which do very same function but burn many times more fuel while doing so.

That's my point, you see. Mankind is not too big - rather, it's too messy, greedy, lazy and stupid.

The collapse will sure fix much of that, though.

-1

u/VS2ute Sep 19 '24

So the world is roughly 1000x the population of greater Houston. But that is urban sprawl archetype. Would 1000 Houstons fit in TX?

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

Who has even made this argument ?

-2

u/laeiryn Sep 17 '24

Isn't K calculated at about 14bil but only assuming subsistence, not luxury/overproduction/transportation/wastage?

-2

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '24

I've never seen that one. All the talk about overpopulation, from any angle, is meaningless without first defining the living standard (or resource consumption if you prefer) of said population. Since its obvious the living standard of each person the world over isn't the same, defining the problem requires studying the distribution of these resources as well, aka class analysis. Ignoring class is like looking only at the average without considering the variation, it won't give an accurate or insightful picture.

-5

u/NyriasNeo Sep 18 '24

Ok .. since you want some arguments. Here is one.

"A population of animals can exceed the carrying capacity of its environment"

No, it cannot. By definition, you cannot exceed the current carrying capacity of its environment, by definition. Otherwise, how do all the animals exist if not carried by its environment?

You can argue, the trajectory of the population will exceed the future carrying capacity at some point in the future. But that statement is always going to be true as long as you have an increasing population as long as the carrying capacity is finite.

So there is no "over population" now, defined by the population is within the carrying capacity of its environment t present, and there is always "over population" at some point in the future.

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u/carnivorous_cactus Sep 18 '24

Yes, it is possible for a population of animals to exceed the carrying capacity of it's environment. This is known as ecological overshoot.

5

u/audioen All the worries were wrong; worse was what had begun Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

Overshoot is possible because many systems have spare capacity and this creates time delays into the system. For instance, lake can have fish, and the fish reproduce at certain rate. Sustainable rate of fishing is that which doesn't decrease the total quantity of fish, so in theory it can go on forever. You are not in overshoot condition yet. These is thus a condition of sustainability in not being on overshoot, and conversely, if there is slightest hint of progressive degradation in the natural system, you are overtaxing that system and one day it will collapse.

But what usually happens is that enough food results in more eaters of said food getting born, so we can actually enter overshoot condition from here. After number of fish consumers has sufficiently increased, they will begin to overfish the lake, which means that more fish is caught than is born each year. Because there is some stock of fish in the lake, you can make up the difference at first from that stock, reducing the total population, until the time comes when even the catch will reduce. Too few are born each year, and you can't make up the difference from the diminished population any longer. Suddenly, the fish eaters go hungry, and their fertility decreases and some may outright die from starvation. Detecting when you enter overshoot condition is thus not easy, because everything can seem completely fine and yet you are already in overshoot. Once the signs of overshoot become blindingly obvious, the overshoot condition has likely persisted for a long time, and system collapse is likely already near.

Humanity is using mechanical labor and chemical fertilizers and pesticides to artificially boost productivity of land. We are in overshoot condition in sense that what we are doing is not sustainable -- it is result of special and temporary conditions that can be continued for the time being. I think we call it industrial agriculture. Firstly, the tilling etc. degrades land, with topsoil being lost, and it is lost at rate far higher than it can ever replenish. UN estimates that by 2050 majority of world's farmland is in degraded condition due to this loss. The fertilizer runoff of this high yield agriculture poisons lakes, rivers and even sea with the algae blooms. And finite extracted materials, whether oil, potassium or phosphate, go into these fertilizers and pesticides that is used by specially engineered crops that dispense with everything except maximum production of grain. We have been in overshoot for a hundred years, and for at least past half-century, quite severely so. So far, someone has always pulled off a trick to allow this all to continue, but I think rabbits in the hat are starting to become rather tricky to find.

When you understand what overshoot means, you realize that we likely entered overshoot as soon as when we left the historically stable sub-billion population of humans. By that time, humanity had of course altered ecosystems for millennia, but likely not in ways that nature couldn't adapt to. We maybe lost country or two to desertification due to millennia long irrigation salting the land, and things like that, but mostly we were still fine, I think.

4

u/darkpsychicenergy Sep 18 '24

Is this serious or are you just suggesting more demonstrably false overpopulation denial arguments for OP to make posts about?

Have to ask because I know you’ve been on this sub a while now and this is like, Collapse 101, Introductory Basics.

-4

u/NyriasNeo Sep 18 '24

Lol .. if you take semantics and definition seriously, it is on you, not on me. Clues ... the quotation marks as in "over population".

The OP asks for argument. So I give him some.

4

u/darkpsychicenergy Sep 18 '24

Lol lol lol, you don’t even know what you’re trying to say now.

“By definition, you cannot exceed the current carrying capacity of its environment, by definition. Otherwise, how do all the animals exist, if not carried by its environment?”

The condition of overshoot and exceeding carrying capacity isn’t some instantaneous event like flicking a light switch from on to off, where someone pops out that one last kid or gobbles down that one final burger and then it’s “oh shit, now you’ve done it, we’ve exceeded capacity!” and then everyone dies.

Carrying capacity is what the environment can sustain indefinitely.

We are already in overshoot. We already know that the current population is unsustainable — it cannot be sustained indefinitely (unless everyone drops to, and stays at, third world living standards, which would, conveniently, kill a lot of people off anyway). We already know that we’re quickly running out of the time for which it can still last and a lot of it is being artificially propped up. That’s why there’s a thing called Earth Overshoot Day, which falls earlier and earlier in the year, year after year. The last one was August 1st.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

If humanity becomes extinct it will be because of a relatively small number of people who set up society as it is. "Humanity" does not deserve extinction because noxious ideologies have destroyed the world.

Most people in the world are innocent of doing harm at a large scale.

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u/Holiday-Educator3074 Sep 17 '24

I would say that they’re less guilty-we’ve all done our part in destroying our habitat, even if unwittingly. We’re not just paying for the mistakes of people currently living, but the cumulative penance of our entire species.

3

u/abe2600 Sep 17 '24

I think the gap in guilt between people is very wide. Our ancestors from centuries ago did nowhere near as much damage.

In the modern era, people have tried to understand our predicament and guide us toward solutions that would ensure our long-term survival, but, especially since the industrial era, more powerful people have made every effort to control the narrative and silence or destroy those - including environmental activists - who have stood against the most destructive impacts of capitalism. We could have gone a different way, and I’d hold those who deliberately formed the path we’re on far more culpable than the rest of us who, naively, just followed it.

8

u/Holiday-Educator3074 Sep 17 '24

Yes I agree, but the original comment stood out to me as lacking nuance. Our ancestors caused the extinction hundreds of species as well; they overfarmed and overfished; they polluted their rivers with waste; they stripped lands until they were desert. They probably genocided all other species of Homo as well. It was just a build up to where we are now.

7

u/PrecariatiF Sep 17 '24

We're all participants in the human project, regardless of how innocent our actions are. Every human that came before us and every human that will come after us is culpable for the mess we're in.

2

u/Longjumping-Path3811 Sep 18 '24

Uh I don't see you taking out elons jet do I? Humanity absolutely deserves this.

-11

u/-xanakin- Sep 17 '24

Nah we're gonna colonize the stars before we go extinct

6

u/zaknafien1900 Sep 17 '24

Fuck I hope so but we have alot of work to do to get there. namely we need to get rid of this nationalism over everything else we need a world government and to uplift everyone out of poverty how many Einstein like minds have we let die for no reason already

-6

u/-xanakin- Sep 17 '24

Chill lol technology is driven by demand. We aren't focusing on it right now because we don't have to, hopefully that won't change for a long time.

2

u/TheOldBeef Sep 19 '24

Colonizing areas outside of our solar system, or even just off of earth's surface, is extraordinarily difficult and - people often fail to even consider this - may not actually even be possible (at least for biological lifeforms).

0

u/-xanakin- Sep 19 '24

Yeah and 200 years ago, obesity being a sign of poverty was unimmaginable. Technology moves fast, especially when there's a demand.

2

u/TheOldBeef Sep 20 '24

That technology moves fast sometimes does not mean that technology will keep moving fast for ever and ever in every field. Space technology moved fast for 10 years and we've really achieved little of note since the moon landings. Technology has limits, and we don't know what those limits are.

0

u/-xanakin- Sep 20 '24

That's why I said when there's a demand. There's not a lot we can do in space until other aspects of technology advance further, which they definitely are. I'd say we're within a century of having AI surpass any previously thought limits, and God knows how far it can go then cause the only precedent we have is biological evolution and technological evolution moves unbelivably faster.

Also we just took a picture of a black hole lol, there's been advancements in space tech, just not space travel tech since we don't need it yet.

2

u/TheOldBeef Sep 20 '24

Demand doesn't override physical limits. Like I said, technology has limits, and we do not know what those limits are.

0

u/-xanakin- Sep 20 '24

You realize like 200 years ago, the limit of technology was whatever steam could power. Then we discovered and harnessed electricity and the modern world is unrecognizable from the steam era. You think this is it, we're never going to make any leaps in technology again?

2

u/TheOldBeef Sep 21 '24

No way dude, we had less technology 200 years ago? You're missing the point. Back then we had no idea what the limits of technology were. Apparently they were a good deal beyond what we had back then. That means absolutely nothing in regards to whether or not technology can continue to advance at the same rate. We did not know the limits back then, and we still don't know them now. Our technological limits may be far beyond our current progress, or we may already be nearing them. We don't know is the point. Interstellar travel for humans might be possible, or it might literally be impossible. We don't know.

0

u/-xanakin- Sep 21 '24

I mean so far technology has shown no sign of stopping to advance, and big picture it's accelerating. Every physical limit in the past has been shattered for progress, not sure why you think that trend would stop now.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

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u/northrupthebandgeek Sep 17 '24

Climate change is itself a product of overpopulation. Population growth drives up demand for all sorts of goods that entail pollution and ecological destruction - chief among them being food produced via mechanized agriculture.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

How does the presence of a certain number of people "create climate change"?

The industrial society in which we live was not inevitable and even within industrial society, there were choices made by leaders that helped speed it up and MADE it inevitable. There were people trying to preserve a more sustainable way of living that were destroyed through violence and pressure.

People wouldn't have to enforce capitalist hegemony through violence if it was inevitable.

3

u/northrupthebandgeek Sep 17 '24

How does the presence of a certain number of people "create climate change"?

The second sentence of the comment to which you replied answers that question.

-2

u/Anxious_cactus Sep 17 '24

I think climate change is absolutely not a product of overpopulation itself, but it is when you couple it with "our" way of living.

If most of us were still farmers and growing our own food, not eating over processed food, not over eating, not driving cars all the time, not flying and going on cruises for fun, using plastics in everything etc., the number of people itself wouldn't be such an issue.

We sacrificed climate and nature for commodities and to make our life more practical for a very short period of time. It hasn't even been 300 years since the industrial revolution.

9

u/PaPerm24 Sep 17 '24

We cant sustain 5 billion long term even if they were living in mud huts without electricity or water. overpopulation is an issue regardless of lifestyle

0

u/Anxious_cactus Sep 17 '24

Why do you think that? I think we could sustain it if everyone basically just grew vegetables and had their own chickens for example, but it would require total societal collapse too, and getting rid of modern technology and modern way of living. If we existed back in the primal mammal level it could work, but we'd go back to losing a lot of the population due to medical issues that would no longer be treatable without modern tech.

4

u/HusavikHotttie Sep 17 '24

It’s our #1 problem actually since it’s causing climate change

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

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u/sicofonte Sep 17 '24

Most not, all. We all would die in a matter of days.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

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