# Climate change and overpopulation. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 17, 2013, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034 "2013-09-17T07:04:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2013, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/41 "2013-09-18T16:20:07Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > If the problem is as serious as Gore says then he has the moral obligation to reduce carbon as much as possible, not just be carbon neutral. The fact that he has not reduced his carbon footprint as much as possible, means that either he does not really believe that global warming is that big a problem, that he is an evil person, or that global warming is such a big issue no one person can hope to have any effect on it however much they give up. > It seems to me that the most likely option is the last. This is the problem with global warming. Even if you cut your emmissions to nothing and move into a tent in the wilderness, eating nothing but berries, the global temperature will not be affected at all. People are being asked to make huge sacrifices without any hope of the the problem getting better. > So if even Al Gore still flies around the country seeking favors from masseuses what chance does the rest of humanity have of changing? Oh my goodness. When right-wing people spend their money on themselves instead of … donating it to the U.S. Treasury :smack: (or whatever) it’s “Why do you hate successful people?” “Taxxes is theft! That’s MY money!” “He should spend HIS money to meet HIS needs … the Magic Free Market will then lead to the best possible universe.” “Blah blah blah.” When a progressive thinker deviates from a purely ascetic life, he’s an immoral hypocrite, a liar, etc. **puddleglum** , have you tackled the question Chronos(?) asks? If you don’t like the “Free Parking gets all the Chance money” rule in Monopoly, but your friends play that rule, is it hypocritical of you to take the money when you land on Free Parking? (I realize Monopoly rules have nothing to do with climate change. But your “logic” is so hopelessly mixed-up, I think we’d better start with basics.) ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2013, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/42 "2013-09-18T20:19:54Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Oh my goodness. When right-wing people spend their money on themselves instead of … donating it to the U.S. Treasury :smack: (or whatever) it’s > “Why do you hate successful people?” > “Taxxes is theft! That’s MY money!” > “He should spend HIS money to meet HIS needs … the Magic Free Market will then lead to the best possible universe.” > “Blah blah blah.” > > When a progressive thinker deviates from a purely ascetic life, he’s an immoral hypocrite, a liar, etc. > > **puddleglum** , have you tackled the question Chronos(?) asks? If you don’t like the “Free Parking gets all the Chance money” rule in Monopoly, but your friends play that rule, is it hypocritical of you to take the money when you land on Free Parking? > > (I realize Monopoly rules have nothing to do with climate change. But your “logic” is so hopelessly mixed-up, I think we’d better start with basics.) It is his money and he can spend it how he likes, but we can make judgements about him and how he chooses to live his life. Al Gore is one of the richest men in the world. He can use that money to reduce carbon as much as possible or he can use it for personal consumption. The fact that he uses it so much for personal consumption seems to indicate either that he is exceedingly weak, or that he does not believe his sacrifice will make a difference. An analogy would be a town that is in danger of being flooded. If you are convinced a flood is coming that will wipe out the town, should you fill as many sandbags as you can or should you find out how many sandbags per capita are needed and just fill that. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2013, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/43 "2013-09-18T20:25:52Z")
But some people don’t believe there is a flood coming. You shouldn’t run around and fill as many sandbags as possible and yell “if everyone doesn’t drop what they are doing NOW and fill bags 24 hours a day until exhausted we will never stop the flood” when what’s really needed is for everyone to fill bags for a couple hours. Then, the people who don’t believe the flood is coming will say “see, he wants us to get exhausted for no reason! I’m not gonna make that much of a sacrifice for something that’s not gonna come anyway!” ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2013, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/44 "2013-09-18T20:26:27Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > . . . Now, can we also agree that in the earth of today and tomorrow, low economic growth and sub-replacement fertility are problems, while overpopulation is not? Nope: because habitat loss, decline in biodiversity, climate change, salinity of farmlands, and old-fashioned pollution, are problems. It’s absolutely fallacious to say that overpopulation is “not a problem.” You can, with logic, say it’s a lesser problem, but not that it “isn’t a problem at all.” That’s insane. > [@](#): > > . . . It could be that in a thousand years, people who believe in low family size will have mostly died out, and all that are left will be high birth rate groups . . . That way lies Moties and madness. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2013, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/45 "2013-09-18T20:32:26Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > I agree that even with buying carbon offsets, living a modest lifestyle is preferable to an extravagant one (and I don’t really know or care how extravagant Gore’s really is, but let’s assume it is for the sake of discussion.) > > But considering his visibility, what he should _not_ do is live out in the woods somewhere, off the grid living only off of solar and berries. Even if it would personally make more of a difference, people would look at him and say “what? He’s expects us all to do THAT? No way!” He is expecting us to do that, he is just not being honest about it. He is pretending that fighting climate change means just not buying an SUV and voting democrat. The problem with this is that it leads people to believe it is too easy. If climate change is to be avoided by limiting carbon, buying a prius and take your own bags to the grocery store is not going to cut it. What people are going to need to do is to have one tiny car per house, no air travel, no heat or air conditioning except for the most extreme days, significantly altered diet, and pay much more for the things they buy. Everyone is going to have to significantly reduce their standard of living. Even then it is not going to make much difference unless developing countries are going to have to put a hold on their hopes of escaping poverty and accept low growth for the foreseeable future. The problem with this is it goes against everything we know about human nature. People just do not accept poverty and hope everyone decides to do the same. It is a collective action problem and is not really solveable. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2013, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/46 "2013-09-18T20:35:23Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > But some people don’t believe there is a flood coming. You shouldn’t run around and fill as many sandbags as possible and yell “if everyone doesn’t drop what they are doing NOW and fill bags 24 hours a day until exhausted we will never stop the flood” when what’s really needed is for everyone to fill bags for a couple hours. Then, the people who don’t believe the flood is coming will say “see, he wants us to get exhausted for no reason! I’m not gonna make that much of a sacrifice for something that’s not gonna come anyway!” If some people don’t believe a flood is coming, that just means more sandbags to fill. It doesn’t matter whether a few people fill a bunch of sandbags, or if a bunch of people fill a few. The best way to find out whether people believe a flood is coming is to see who is filling sandbags. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2013, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/47 "2013-09-18T20:39:38Z")
By that theory, the government can be run on voluntary taxes. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2013, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/48 "2013-09-18T21:38:20Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > He is expecting us to do that, he is just not being honest about it. No, once again you are only ignoring that he proposes that we should be carbon neutral. We could complain that he is not doing more pure things (that in reality are points reduced to absurd fallacious demand levels) but he is not demanding that civilization should stop, **of course that does not fit the narrative of most of the denier media out there** so they twist his claims. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/49 "2013-09-19T00:00:14Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > …but he is not demanding that civilization should stop That is what some of us are saying however. I don’t mean completely stop but, if someone is actually serious about environmental problems overall, all of the feel-good measures in the world aren’t going to fix it especially with a rapidly increasing population in raw numbers (overall numbers and not percentages or cheats like offsets are all that is all that matters for this problem). Overpopulation is already THE core problem and it is only getting worse. It doesn’t matter if you are carbon neutral or not, the worst thing you can do for the environment is to have a child and several are even worse. I don’t mean to sound like some radical environmentalist. I am fairly conservative in general but I would hope that, if the claims about global warming, loss of habitat and decreased biodiversity are even partly true, then it will take much more radical measures than even the popular extremists like to admit. Electric cars and curbside recycling won’t fix it at all. You have to get the population level down drastically to even begin the environmental restoration effort in the long-term. Everything else is just pissing into the wind. I have been looking at this problem just from an apolitical standpoint for a few years now and reading the work of the best scientific minds available. Most of them come down to the same basic conclusion even if they don’t state it directly. You can have sustainable environmental measures at even the current population levels let alone the projected ones. This isn’t a problem you can cheat on and wave away. It will crash hard and it has already started. This is a man-made problem that only concerns the future of humanity, not the earth in general. You can’t hurt the earth at all no matter what you do. It will just shrug us off when the human population becomes too unsustainable. Some species will thrive in the aftermath and the whole process will start again. The reason to fight against that as hard as possible now is so that your kids, grandkids or possibly even you don’t have to go through a worldwide collapse of humanity along with most species. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/50 "2013-09-19T00:25:53Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Al Gore is one of the richest men in the world. He’s worth [US$200 million](http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/07/business/la-fi-mo-al-gore-is-nearly-as-wealthy-as-mitt-romney-story-says-20130507). Given that there are [1,426 people](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire) worth at least five times as much, I doubt he is even one of the top 10,000 richest men in the world. And I certainly doubt he is one the 10,000 richest people in the world. If he lived in one of those apartment houses overlooking Central Park (as I might with that kind of money :D), I doubt he’d even be the richest guy in his building. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > he is not demanding that civilization should stop I’d say the opposite. He’s not declaring that sprawl should stop. Of course that’s his right. But I think more people living in dense cities is better for the environment. More interesting too. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/51 "2013-09-19T00:30:09Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > That is what some of us are saying however. I don’t mean completely stop but, if someone is actually serious about environmental problems overall, all of the feel-good measures in the world aren’t going to fix it especially with a rapidly increasing population in raw numbers (overall numbers and not percentages or cheats like offsets are all that is all that matters for this problem). Overpopulation is already THE core problem and it is only getting worse. It doesn’t matter if you are carbon neutral or not, the worst thing you can do for the environment is to have a child and several are even worse. > > I don’t mean to sound like some radical environmentalist. I am fairly conservative in general but I would hope that, if the claims about global warming, loss of habitat and decreased biodiversity are even partly true, then it will take much more radical measures than even the popular extremists like to admit. Electric cars and curbside recycling won’t fix it at all. You have to get the population level down drastically to even begin the environmental restoration effort in the long-term. Everything else is just pissing into the wind. > > I have been looking at this problem just from an apolitical standpoint for a few years now and reading the work of the best scientific minds available. Most of them come down to the same basic conclusion even if they don’t state it directly. You can have sustainable environmental measures at even the current population levels let alone the projected ones. This isn’t a problem you can cheat on and wave away. It will crash hard and it has already started. > > This is a man-made problem that only concerns the future of humanity, not the earth in general. You can’t hurt the earth at all no matter what you do. It will just shrug us off when the human population becomes too unsustainable. Some species will thrive in the aftermath and the whole process will start again. The reason to fight against that as hard as possible now is so that your kids, grandkids or possibly even you don’t have to go through a worldwide collapse of humanity along with most species. Lets be clear, I do not agree with all the optimistic points (that are still very good against that neo-Malthusian talk) but I also think and realize that the pessimistic view you have is mostly an appeal to emotion fallacy. No one has said it was going to be fast either, so the straw is piling up also. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/52 "2013-09-19T01:21:11Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > . . . You can’t hurt the earth at all no matter what you do. . . . Sounds like a challenge! Calling all Mad Scientists! The horrifying fact is, we could probably make a dust bowl of the world, reducing all life to invertebrates. For instance, if we put all our industrial might into making as much Plutonium as possible… This is the problem with absolute statements: some nitpicker will always pop up to say, “Wait, wait, what if…” ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/53 "2013-09-19T01:24:03Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Lets be clear, I do not agree with all the optimistic points (that are still very good against that neo-Malthusian talk) but I also think and realize that the pessimistic view you have is mostly an appeal to emotion fallacy. No one has said it was going to be fast either, so the straw is piling up also. I am not so sure. The environmental collapse has already started in a big way. It is a proven fact that you can’t have sustainable biodiversity at 5 billion people let alone 10 billion. Modern technology is a double-edged sword in that it can sustain a tremendous number of people in the short-term (by that, I mean 50 - 100 years but that is just the blink of an eye even on a human scale let alone a whole Earth perspective). Most of the resources we are exploiting today will run out in a vanishingly short time-frame to never be recovered. My family and I are natural gas barons on a minor scale. It is lucky we (meaning me and the current nation) have that resource but it took 100 million years to make it. The world will burn through it in 100 - 200 years. Most things today are like that. We burn through species and habitats at an alarming rate as well and those cannot ever be recovered in their original state either. We have to obstruct major waterways just to get enough water to the exploding populations in many parts of the world where humans shouldn’t even exist in large numbers such as Las Vegas, Dubai, and plenty of places in China. I am not saying the sky is falling right this second. What I am saying is that humanity is being set up perfectly for an overpopulation catastrophe in the next few decades and it has to happen eventually because the burn rate of natural resources is way too high even at today’s population levels to sustain itself even for the next 150 years. Every added person only adds to the problem. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/54 "2013-09-19T02:04:21Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > I am not so sure. The environmental collapse has already started in a big way. It is a proven fact that you can’t have sustainable biodiversity at 5 billion people let alone 10 billion. Modern technology is a double-edged sword in that it can sustain a tremendous number of people in the short-term (by that, I mean 50 - 100 years but that is just the blink of an eye even on a human scale let alone a whole Earth perspective). Most of the resources we are exploiting today will run out in a vanishingly short time-frame to never be recovered. > > My family and I are natural gas barons on a minor scale. It is lucky we (meaning me and the current nation) have that resource but it took 100 million years to make it. The world will burn through it in 100 - 200 years. Most things today are like that. We burn through species and habitats at an alarming rate as well and those cannot ever be recovered in their original state either. We have to obstruct major waterways just to get enough water to the exploding populations in many parts of the world where humans shouldn’t even exist in large numbers such as Las Vegas, Dubai, and plenty of places in China. > > I am not saying the sky is falling right this second. What I am saying is that humanity is being set up perfectly for an overpopulation catastrophe in the next few decades and it has to happen eventually because the burn rate of natural resources is way too high even at today’s population levels to sustain itself even for the next 150 years. Every added person only adds to the problem. That is… still not sourced at all, As I pointed before, it is a problem, just not as dire as you propose because in reality it should already had ended humanity a long time ago. What it is clear is that it all depends on what we consume and what we emit. > **[George Monbiot: Population growth is a threat. But it pales against the greed...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jan/29/politics.greenpolitics)** > > George Monbiot: It's easy to blame the poor for growing pressure on the world's resources. But still the wealthy west takes the lion's share > [@](#): > > Even here, however, population growth is not the most immediate issue: another sector is expanding much faster. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation expects that global meat production will double by 2050 - growing, in other words, at two and a half times the rate of human numbers. The supply of meat has already trebled since 1980: farm animals now take up 70% of all agricultural land and eat one third of the world’s grain. In the rich nations we consume three times as much meat and four times as much milk per capita as the people of the poor world. While human population growth is one of the factors that could contribute to a global food deficit, it is not the most urgent. > > None of this means that we should forget about it. Even if there were no environmental pressures caused by population growth, we should still support the measures required to tackle it: universal sex education, universal access to contraceptives, better schooling and opportunities for poor women. Stabilizing or even reducing the human population would ameliorate almost all environmental impacts. But to suggest, as many of my correspondents do, that population growth is largely responsible for the ecological crisis is to blame the poor for the excesses of the rich. In the mean time one has to deal with what even skeptics of the solutions to climate change report on the idea that it is all gloom on the population front. > **[Article 50: down with this legal coup against the masses](https://www.spiked-online.com/2016/11/03/article-50-down-with-this-legal-coup-against-the-masses/)** > > The use of the law to stymie Brexit is a naked, elitist assault on democracy. > [@](#): > > You’ll be pleased to know that Paul Ehrlich did make it to his hotel, through the mob of strange brown people shitting in the streets, and he later wrote in his book that as a result of overpopulation ‘hundreds of millions of people will starve to death’. He said India couldn’t possibly feed all its people and would experience some kind of collapse around 1980. > > Well today, the world population is almost double what it was in 1971 – then it was 3.6billion, today it is 6.7billion – and while there are still social problems of poverty and malnutrition, hundreds of millions of people are not starving to death. As for India, she is doing quite well for herself. When Ehrlich was writing in 1971 there were 550million people in India; today there are 1.1billion. Yes there’s still poverty, but Indians are not starving; in fact India has made some important economic and social leaps forward and both life expectancy and living standards have improved in that vast nation. > > What this potted history of population scaremongering ought to demonstrate is this: Malthusians are always wrong about everything. > [@](#): > > The language used to justify population scaremongering has changed dramatically over the centuries. In the time of Malthus in the eighteenth century the main concern was with the fecundity of poor people. In the early twentieth century there was a racial and eugenic streak to population-reduction arguments. Today they have adopted environmentalist language to justify their demands for population reduction. > > The fact that the presentational arguments can change so fundamentally over time, while the core belief in ‘too many people’ remains the same, really shows that this is a prejudicial outlook in search of a social or scientific justification; it is prejudice looking around for the latest trendy ideas to clothe itself in. And that is why the population scaremongers have been wrong over and over again: because behind the new language they adopt every few decades, they are really driven by narrow-mindedness, by disdain for mankind’s breakthroughs, by wilful ignorance of humanity’s ability to shape its surroundings and its future. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/55 "2013-09-19T02:09:52Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > It is a proven fact that you can’t have sustainable biodiversity at 5 billion people let alone 10 billion. So if we decrease population by thirty percent (that’s what 5 billion people mean), you are still going to blame our environmental problems on overpopulation? Isn’t this an admission that you are going to stick to your paradigm regardless of the facts? Since that 30 percent decline isn’t likely to be reached for a century or more, I realize it’s all theoretical, planet-wide. But if your fact is a fact, you should be able to look at countries with declining population, and show us how the environment there is improving. You can find the list here: > **[Population decline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline#Long_term_population_decline)** > > Population decline, also known as depopulation, is a reduction in a human population size. Throughout history, Earth's total human population has continued to grow; however, current projections suggest that this long-term trend of steady population growth may be coming to an end. > From antiquity until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the global population grew very slowly, at about 0.04% per year. After about 1800, the growth rate accelerated to a peak of 2.1% annually during the 19... If overpopulation is really a problem, its proponents should be proclaiming loud and often about how Bulgaria and Moldova are pointing the way. Can you show us that? ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/56 "2013-09-19T02:28:09Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#): > > If overpopulation is really a problem, its proponents should be proclaiming loud and often about how Bulgaria and Moldova are pointing the way. Can you show us that? Like I said, it is a global problem and not a localized one. Unfortunately, it is probably unsolvable. You can clean up the litter in the U.S. and have all the energy efficient cars that you want but that doesn’t address the core problem in the long-term. The same is true for declining populations in Western Europe. That is an excellent idea from an environmental standpoint but a real problem from a current economic one and that is why it will not be solved. Many Western countries are using immigration to solve their declining population issues but the net effect still results in much more resource use overall. The countries the immigrants leave will be soon filled to excess capacity again. Bulgaria and Moldova are minor countries. It doesn’t matter how well or poorly they do on anything. It is a much more profound problem than that. Someone made the point above that the human population on Earth is not like bacteria in a petri dish. I disagree strongly. I think we are almost exactly like bacteria in a petri dish. All you have to do is zoom in to see them fighting over available resources and zoom out to see us doing the same thing., The different bacterial populations have their adaptive mechanisms so that one strain dominates shortly before the whole dish dies. We are looking at the same thing. Just adjust your lens to the correct focal point to see it. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/57 "2013-09-19T02:38:42Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > Like I said, it is a global problem and not a localized one. Unfortunately, it is probably unsolvable. You can clean up the litter in the U.S. and have all the energy efficient cars that you want but that doesn’t address the core problem in the long-term. The same is true for declining populations in Western Europe. That is an excellent idea from an environmental standpoint but a real problem from a current economic one and that is why it will not be solved. Many Western countries are using immigration to solve their declining population issues but the net effect still results in much more resource use overall. The countries the immigrants leave will be soon filled to excess capacity again. > > Bulgaria and Moldova are minor countries. It doesn’t matter how well or poorly they do on anything. It is a much more profound problem than that. > > Someone made the point above that the human population on Earth is not like bacteria in a petri dish. I disagree strongly. I think we are almost exactly like bacteria in a petri dish. All you have to do is zoom in to see them fighting over available resources and zoom out to see us doing the same thing., The different bacterial populations have their adaptive mechanisms so that one strain dominates shortly before the whole dish dies. We are looking at the same thing. Just adjust your lens to the correct focal point to see it. No, still just resorting to emotion and almost no support. Once again there is Brendan O’Neill: > [@](#): > > The first mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate how society can change to embrace more and more people. They make the schoolboy scientific error of imagining that population is the only variable, the only thing that grows and grows, while everything else – including society, progress and discovery – stays roughly the same. That is why Malthus was wrong: he thought an overpopulated planet would run out of food because he could not foresee how the industrial revolution would massively transform society and have an historic impact on how we produce and transport food and many other things. Population is not the only variable – mankind’s vision, growth, his ability to rethink and tackle problems: they are variables, too. > > The second mistake Malthusians always make is to imagine that resources are fixed, finite things that will inevitably run out. They don’t recognise that what we consider to be a resource changes over time, depending on how advanced society is. That is why the Christian Tertullian was wrong in 200 AD when he said ‘the resources are scarcely adequate for us’. Because back then pretty much the only resources were animals, plants and various metals. Tertullian could not imagine that, in the future, the oceans, oil and uranium would become resources, too. The nature of resources changes as society changes – what we consider to be a resource today might not be one in the future, because other, better, more easily-exploited resources will hopefully be discovered or created. Today’s cult of the finite, the discussion of the planet as a larder of scarce resources that human beings are using up, really speaks to finite thinking, to a lack of future-oriented imagination. > > And the third and main mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate the genius of mankind. Population scaremongering springs from a fundamentally warped view of human beings as simply consumers, simply the users of resources, simply the destroyers of things, as a kind of ‘plague’ on poor Mother Nature, when in fact human beings are first and foremost producers, the discoverers and creators of resources, the makers of things and the makers of history. The point here is that while I do not quite agree with all of what he claims, he has plenty of experience putting down many environmentalists, so in this subject of population and climate change his opinion and investigations have value. As a libertarian he also criticizes to the solutions proposed to deal with climate change, his basic reply to deal with the CO2 emissions? Increase the development and the deployment of new and alternative technologies. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/58 "2013-09-19T05:07:22Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > . . . Someone made the point above that the human population on Earth is not like bacteria in a petri dish. I disagree strongly. I think we are almost exactly like bacteria in a petri dish. All you have to do is zoom in to see them fighting over available resources and zoom out to see us doing the same thing., The different bacterial populations have their adaptive mechanisms so that one strain dominates shortly before the whole dish dies. We are looking at the same thing. Just adjust your lens to the correct focal point to see it. Exactly. We can, of course, argue about how big the dish is. Some people might say, yes, it can support 15 billion people. Others will say otherwise. That is, at least, something valid to hold different beliefs about. But to say “It isn’t like a petri dish at all” is absurd. The world isn’t infinite. The total biomass is relatively stable. We could convert it all to human beings and food-bacteria, and support – who knows? 30 billion? But that would mean the extinction of everything else. Sunlight is the ultimate absolute limit to the food supply. Maybe some brilliant genetics team will find a way to do synthetic photosynthesis. Maybe we can make super-grains, that convert 3% of the sun’s energy into food sugars and proteins and stuff. (I believe it’s about 1% in plants right now.) Okay, that makes the petri dish three times bigger. But not infinite. The metaphor is correct; we just don’t know the exact physical parameters, and they might be subject to change. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/59 "2013-09-19T10:56:40Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Calling all Mad Scientists! Civil Defense Van: Calling all scientists! Calling all scientists! Be advised that there will be a worldwide conference on global warming in Kyoto, Japan. Homeopathic Doctor: I have a degree in homeopathic medicine. Civil Defense Van: You’ve got a degree in baloney! [hits doctor with firehose] One of my all-time favourite bits from that show. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034/60 "2013-09-19T12:28:32Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > No, once again you are only ignoring that he\*\* (Al Gore)\*\* proposes that we should be carbon neutral. > > We could complain that he is not doing more pure things (that in reality are points reduced to absurd fallacious demand levels) but he is not demanding that civilization should stop, **of course that does not fit the narrative of most of the denier media out there** so they twist his claims. I think you have repeatedly missed the way in which I look at Al Gore. For me, he’s not a spokesperson for how to approach AGW. He’s a celebrity, but he’s not a scientist. I don’t care, (nor do I listen) about his AGW proposals. Al Gore is Everyman. He has a general concern for the welfare of mankind, and a more specific concern for living well himself. He is a perfect archetype for almost all of us. Yes, we care about humanity. Details in a moment, but right now I need to buy some new golf clubs for my stay at the Ritz in Dubai. I’ll be traveling there in First Class because I can afford it; however I will buy some carbon offsets to stay Neutral…et cetera, et cetera. We all want the best earth possible, and we all want the best life possible. When they are at odds, we will choose the best life possible and will work secondarily to find ways to minimize damage to the earth. What we will not do is live lesser lives now and wait for better-earth solutions to be put in place and proved effective first before we consume. Aside from the fact that time is awasting for us personally, we are not inclined to believe everyone else will also sacrifice and wait. That’s the tragedy of the commons, and the reason I think Al Gore is such a great Everyman. Living well is fundamentally related to consumption. It’s completely bogus to pretend that bicycles and buses beat limos and private jets. The total real carbon cost of a billionaire living well is staggering, and few of us would elect not to live well were money no object. We are all Al Gore. At least, I am. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climate-change-and-overpopulation/669034.md?page=4)