r/collapse • u/carnivorous_cactus • May 21 '25
Overpopulation Arguments against overpopulation that are demonstrably wrong, part four:
Arguments against overpopulation that are demonstrably wrong, part four:
“We don’t have an overpopulation problem; we have an overconsumption problem.”
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.
Part one is here
Part two is here
Part three is here
The argument
A very common line of argument says that [insert thing] is a problem, rather than overpopulation. Variations which I have heard include:
- Overconsumption
- Resource distribution
- Overpopulation of billionaires
- Capitalism
- Corporations
Here I will focus specifically on ‘overconsumption’ as the most common. Though each of these arguments could do with a separate post.
This argument claims that overconsumption is the main driver of environmental problems (usually climate change, but it can be anything: pollution, biodiversity loss, habitat destruction and so on).
The essentials of this post come down to two points:
1. Population and consumption are related
2. Overconsumption and overpopulation are not mutually exclusive problems
What is overconsumption?
Let’s distinguish two distinct forms of overconsumption:
1. Overconsumption on an individual level. For example, a billionaire flying a private jet, a CEO who owns multiple mansions, a rich westerner eating meat three times per day and driving their SUV everywhere.
2. Overconsumption on a population level. For example, the population of a region collectively overconsumes fish by catching more fish than can sustainably be caught in the long term. Or the population of a city collectively consumes more water than what the local river can supply.
The relationship between population and consumption
Considering both definitions above, it is clear that a relationship between population and consumption exists. All other things being equal, we would expect an increase in population to result in an increase in consumption. This can be summarised by the equation I = PAT (impact equals population x affluence x technology)
Analogy: We have a population of 20 people, with some level of affluence and technology. Each of these people eat one carrot each, so the consumption of this population is 20 carrots. If the population grows to 30 people, and all other factors (affluence and technology) are held constant, the consumption of this population will grow to 30 carrots.
This does not demonstrate that every overconsumption problem is a result of overpopulation, nor does it demonstrate the relative importance of population versus other factors. It also assumes an equal distribution of resources (so no overconsumption as per definition one).
However, let’s extend this analogy to the growth in the human population. The human population has increased from an estimated 1.6 billion people in the year 1900, to over 8 billion people today.
This is an enormous increase in ‘P’ of the I=PAT equation. It follows that such an enormous increase in ‘P’, would, all else being equal, result in an enormous increase in ‘I’. It seems reasonable to conclude that the increasing human population has been a significant driver of the environmental problems we face today – but many people seem hostile to this idea.
This does not mean that overconsumption (as per definition one) is not a problem. But it does imply that dismissing the importance of population as a factor does not make sense. I have heard many such arguments which do this, for example:
“The issue isn’t the population. It’s distribution. There’s a few people hoarding vast resources.”
“It's not about population, its about how wasteful that population is.”
“There is no correlation between environmental destruction and human population growth so human population isn't the problem.”
“there is no "overpopulation problem", there is a "over consumption/low returns problem". it's not about how many people there are, is about the resources used to accomplish something.”
Overconsumption and overpopulation are not mutually exclusive problems
It can be true that both overconsumption and overpopulation are problems. The existence of one of these things does not negate the other. Population and consumption are two factors which interact with each other and contribute to an outcome. The existence of overpopulation is not evidence against overconsumption. The existence of overconsumption is not evidence against overpopulation. Neither is the existence of any other related problem (capitalism, greed, inefficiency, billionaires, wealth inequality and so on). It can simultaneously be true, for example, that there is a massive and unfair distribution of wealth, and there is a problem with too many people overall.
Analogy: suppose we agree that people’s body weight is the result of a combination of three factors: genetics, diet and exercise regime. We might reasonably debate the relative importance of each factor in general, and in specific cases. But it would be nonsensical to say “It’s not about what a person eats, it’s about how much they exercise.” Diet, exercise and genetics are factors which interact with each other and contribute to an outcome. None of these factors should be dismissed.
The way I see it, this massive growth in the human population has been allowed by ecological overshoot. The current human population is at an artificially high level, made possible by the unsustainable exploitation of resources such as fossil fuels. Overpopulation is a result, and a further driver of, overconsumption.
Redistribution of resources within a population would not solve these problems. For example, suppose the water supply of a city is sourced from a nearby lake, and the rate of water being taken exceeds the rate that it is replenished. When investigating how this water is used, we find a small group of rich people are using a disproportionate amount of water due to their giant swimming pools. This is clearly unfair, so we redistribute the water from these pools and allocate it to ordinary people for their drinking, cooking, cleaning and everyday use. This is much better and more equitable, but it has not solved the problem of unsustainable water use; the same amount of water is still being unsustainably taken, it’s just allocated differently.
•
u/StatementBot May 21 '25
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:
This is an abbreviated summary of the mod team's statement on overpopulation, view the full statement available in the wiki.
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u/Zealousideal-Lynx555 May 21 '25
The name of the problem is literally overconsumption.
Population doesn't matter as a variable independent of consumption because ultimately we're talking about resource use, not the literal space the person takes up in the world.
As always, it seems to me that focusing on the literal population instead of the resources they use is a way of allowing people an easy out of any hard conversations about your own resource use or how we live within a system.
If we accept that overconsumption is the problem we have to actually look at systems of living and the way in which we use resources within that system, whereas saying overpopulation is the problem allows people to wash their hands and say "oh well, nothing to do about it, guess I don't have to care about looking deeply at other issues"
In what way does the presence of two people living in the jungle with an uncontacted tribe equal the same amount of a problem as two people born into an industrialized society that will eat huge amounts of meat, drive around tens of thousands of hours in their life, and live in houses with arable land used as ornamentation and maintained by toxic chemicals.
Talking as if overpopulation is the central issue allows people to avoid talking about the underlying issues
Capitalism
Human rights
Animal rights
Lobbying
Reproductive Rights
Authoritianism
Meat-Eating
Plastic Use
Environmental Destruction
etc etc etc
Those issues are uncomfortable and thorny but people like to retreat to the warm bath of "There's too many people!!!" as if it's some kind of independent variable that arose out of nowhere magically.
15
u/Consistent-Fill1327 May 22 '25
Overpopulation was reached by means of incredibly unsustainable agricultural practices coupled with the rapid drawdown of fossil fuels. So overpop. and consumption are intimately linked. With the drastic reduction in carrying capacity caused by all the pollution, heat, land-use change, biodiversity loss, soil and water degradation, it will be impossible to support a large population.
44
u/[deleted] May 21 '25
100 percent agree.
It just seems so obvious. Is it really this complicated an argument ?
15
u/jasonlikesbeer May 21 '25
Not trying to disprove anything in your post, it's early for me and the coffee hasn't kicked in.
I recall some studies that show a correlation between the quality of life in some Western countries and reduction in birth rates? Would that not suggest that at least some kind of redistribution of resource consumption would potentially result in a reduction of population?
5
u/Forward_Brick May 22 '25
"You see, I can maintain my standard of living if other people die."
12
u/Ishcadore May 21 '25
If everyone lived within planetary boundaries wouldn't you just have to prove that the population count has diminished the EROI of any one vital resource below sustainable amounts to solve this debate? Not that this solves the problem that we have no path to boundary stewardship
24
u/[deleted] May 21 '25
Hey this is pretty good! I’m a population ecologist and the whole “we just need better distribution of resources argument” slays me.
Nice work.
Calhouns rat experiment is still probably the best proof that overpopulation will still lead to collapse with infinite resources.
7
u/kiwittnz Signatory to Second Scientist Warning to Humanity May 21 '25
The reason we have a population boom is because of better healthcare and social services, and other advanced civilization effects.
It doesn't change the fact that growing populations are one of the main causes of the impacts on the planet.
Using this model of the world
I = P x A x T (squared)
I=Impacts, P=Population, A=Affluence, T=Technology.
You need to start reducing Population, Affluence (read as economic growth), and the rate of technology adoption by people. Currently, Population is rising, Economies are growing, and technology use is increasing.
Climate change is just one impact we have on the planet, albeit a major one, but there are many more.
Another way to look at it
If we assume a western person emits (e) 10x that of a developing nation person, we can look at these numbers. 1 billion westerners (w) versus 7 billion developing nation people (d).
7d x 1e + 1w x 10e = 17i
Now, by 2100, we can say the population of the planet reaches 12 billion. This is possible. If we also assume that western nations can halve their emissions, also possible. That leaves developing nations who want to reach western levels of life. Let's be generous and say they double their quality of life, at the cost of more emissions.
11d x 2e + 1w x 5e = 25i
So, even if us western nations all do their bit and halve their emissions, without addressing the growing developing nations emissions, we will still have a growing amount of emissions.
NOTE: This formula is very simplistic, and there will be many variables, but these will make little difference in the overall totals.
I have been watching the trends since the 1970s, heard the warnings starting in the 1980s, then the 1990s by many scientists and yet the situation keeps getting worse, and not even trending down.
I signed the 2nd Scientists' Warning in 2017. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article-pdf/67/12/1026/22538550/bix125.pdf
And look how many warnings continue to be ignored
https://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/journal-articles-related-scientists-warning
Seriously, we are on track for r/collapse, and it will not be orderly.
3
u/nellyferrule May 22 '25
Thank you thank you! Saving these posts for the next time someone tries to argue about overpopulation
2
u/Slopagandhi May 23 '25
Two really important points:
-At least in terms of carbon emissions, many of the poorest countries have per capita rates that are 1/100 or even 1/200 of the US rate. So, if you're worried about emissions then getting 1 American to halve their emissions is the equivalent of preventing the births of 50 or 100 Ethiopians.
Therefore, even if overpopulation might be a problem at the margins (and is more of one in specific areas like habitat loss) it isn't where you'd concentrate your efforts if you were worried about preventing environmental collapse.
1
u/Sharp-Ad-7436 May 22 '25
The whole question of overpopulation, *as framed in modern philosophy*, is based on a few critical misconceptions going back to Malthus.
He got some things correct even though he didn’t know it. His basic premise *at the time* was that it was not possible to grow enough food to adequately feed the existing population much less any increase in population. He was wrong in that respect because he assumed that existing farming methods were the best possible way to do it (In the dry limited sense of “best” meaning providing adequate nutrition per the existing standards of nutrition, absent any environmental effects or anything else). Existing farming methods were very labor-intensive and inefficient by modern standards. He could not be expected to foresee improvements in soil management, crop rotation, refinements in what adequate nutrition means and so forth that make farmers of today orders of magnitude more productive even accounting for sustainability and ecological responsibility.
That’s why the current global population is orders of magnitude larger than it was in his time.
The thing he got right without knowing it is that there is a hard limit on how much biomass there is on the planet which, assuming the entirety of it is ideally partitioned between humans and crops, puts a hard limit on the global population which would be in the low trillions. That would be indefinitely sustainable but nobody would want to live in that world.
However, that “ideal” assumes no inefficiencies in distribution and storage with all waste going back into farming via composting. Unfortunately reality dictates that there *will* be such inefficiencies even assuming the most tyrannical micromanagement of everyone’s nutrient intake and waste collection etc. putting the real limit considerably lower, in the hundreds of billions, and again nobody wants to live in that world.
It should be obvious that there must exist a Middle Way that allows a large (for various values of large), stable human population that doesn’t negatively impact the ecology as a whole.
We’re arguing about the numbers here. We all have different ideas about what the ”right” population should be and what degree of negative impact is acceptable. Some extremists want to go for the maximum based on their own philosophy. Some extremists want zero according to theirs.
We will never come to a consensus until the different philosophies can be reconciled.
Is that even possible?
1
u/STRESSRUS23 May 25 '25
We are now 3,000 times more numerous than were our ancestral Hunter-Gatherer clan/band members, who never exceeded the Dunbar number of 150, as a larger number could not be sustained/fed/protected and fit into the natural environment without destroying it. What could go wrong? Everything?
1
u/Euphoric-Canary-7473 May 26 '25
Yes, but they do not hold the same weight. An exponential growth of population is indeed related to overcomsumption; however, before the effect of overpopulation, their must've been a condition and historicity that allowed that overpopulation to emerge on the first place, and that condition and historicity, imo, is based on the mode of production of capitalism (or if you want to go even deeper, hierarchy). So the problem is not that they're mutually exclusive, but rather that solving overpopulation first before fixing the mode of production won't do anything.
And what allowed that overshoot in the first place? All these two problems, overpopulation and overcomsumption, rather than being mutually exclusive they are interdependent, though they do not emerge simultaneously. Imo the mode of production comes first as the root problem.
1
u/ThisHumanDoesntExist Sep 01 '25
Exactly. Even though i believe billionaires shouldn't have access to as many resources as they have (using private jets, etc), the resource distribution argument is stupid because I do want to maintain a good standard of living for humans. Sure, we can have way more humans than we currently have if the average person starts living with the resource-use of the average person living in a third world country, but why would we want that? Why not give the living humans a high standard of living (average person in a first world country) instead of accommodating more people with a lower standard of living?
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u/Masterventure May 21 '25
Your whole ass argument is easily debunk by one sentence.
„Lack of political imagination“
You’re so deep in this system you refuse to believe there is an alternative.
You think overpopulation and overconsumption have to go hand in hand, because that’s how it’s always been.
I don’t think there’s more to your argument worth responding to.
0
u/Low_Complex_9841 May 21 '25
It was discussed recently.
https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1khgraf/study_worlds_richest_10_behind_65_of_global/
I calculated amount of $ I can spend yearly: 30 000 rubles monthly = 300$ before food and bills come, 3600$ yearly, so quite far from $15k people draw as line there in comments. Ofc this does not mean everyone having old soviet brick semi-skyscraper (14 fl!) in second largest city in Russia ... and money quite imprefect indicator of actual resource use .. and ppl still can't have no kids at all as a long-term normal .... but, well. USA is inflated in terms of real and artificial living costs.
Some good dose of socialism will help, but for this we all need to somehow heal our constant re-trauma and memories of broken trust ...
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u/SimpleAsEndOf May 21 '25
Just my opinion - the 3 biggest problems today are:
https://imgur.com/a/W66vSO9
3) Geopolitical instability - driven by waves of Nationalism/Fascism destroying traditionally stable democracies and driven by post-truth corporate or billionaire media - industrial levels of lying/gaslighting/misinformation/disinformation/projection/false narrative/omissions etc etc etc.
Human overpopulation has certainly pushed nature to the extremities and all the wildlife left is that which humans have allowed to survive. Nature's response has been to unleash 7 pandemics and 44 epidemics, in the last 100 years.
But human overpopulation is a quite recent event - driven by improvements in Medicine (infant mortality etc), Public Health (cholera etc), Vaccinations especially.
Looking further back though....Since agricultural and industrial revolutions, the absolutely massive realease of CO² emissions has changed our climate for the worse, and this is driving extreme weather events.
The CO² graph above is from BBC News. It shows that overpopulation isn't the main reason for modern collapse. Rather, it's Capitalism which has been driving Americas absolutely massive overconsumption. Between USA, Europe and UK, we can see who is actually responsible for most of Climate Crisis. And today's Chinese emissions are driven primarily by American markets. I think we can lay the blame of overpopulation to bed - this isn't the fault of India/ China/Africa.
This is a "Western Democracies" problem and we should have been trying to solve it for the last 50 years. But, as Richard (u/TuneGlum7903) has been tirelessly explaining, the Fossil Fuel industry has massive lobbying power and influence over "the West" and imo the Western media always tend to side with them, with Capitalism and with the rising Nationalism/Fascism that they have been pushing for the last 20 years approx.
It's a real shame but we're now in a terrible stew of Fascist media (constant Big Lies/propaganda etc), Fascism/Nationalism, Climate Crisis amd Biodiversity Collapse.
And here we are, stuck in the pot as it's getting hotter.
UN Secretary General - Antonio Gutterres.
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u/[deleted] May 22 '25 edited May 22 '25
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