The problem is that it implies that there is such a thing as ‘too much’ population. I’d say that the argument isn’t that some countries are overpopulated but that they are insufficiently provided for. The idea of overpopulation assumes that they CANNOT be provided for. Basically when people say the world is overpopulated they mean that there are too many OTHER people. I hear of lots of people who think the world’s population needs to be reduced. I haven’t heard of any of them killing themselves in order to take a proactive approach.
The problem is that, for now, the two are tied.
Not really, given the proper infrastructure the human populace could easily be supported. It’s a cultural problem not a numerical one.
Could be. I didn’t say it couldn’t be. But as of now, humans overconsume and it’s likely to get worse before it gets better (if it ever gets better.)
More economic, technological and political than cultural.
Human culture can be seen as an umbrella that fits over the first three things on your list, BrainGlutton. The culture of bigger, faster, stronger, rah-rah-rah-humans rule the world is the vast majority, with only a few modern exceptions. Not sure if that’s what mswas was referring to, though.
If the entire population of the world had a density similar to NYC you could put all the people of the world into an area of 246,409 square miles. Texas has a land area of 261,797.
So if the population of the world had a density similar to NYC you could fit them all into an area the size of Texas with 15,000 square miles to spare.
If the world had a density similar to Los Angeles you could put the entire population of the world into an area of 817,165 square miles.
The states of TX, OK, NM, AZ, UT, CO and KA have 825,411 So if the world had a population density the same as Los Angeles you could put them all into those states with room to spare.
Add into the fact in many underdeveloped countries food, water and resources are used as a weapon against their own people, you see the world isn’t overcrowded but rather the distribution is bad and the will to co-operate isn’t ther
Kind of a strawman since overpopulation isn’t about running out of places for people to stand. And those people need to get food, water, and shelter from somewhere, and presumably want freedom of movement.
Again a bit of a sidetrack in my opinion because while the latter problem is extant, the former is only going to make it worse, so pretending it’s not a problem is a mistake.
Certainly, overpopulation makes many other problems worse, even if it isn’t a problem in itself. But I don’t think it’s much to worry about, either. Given the way population growth slows down with industrialization and modernization, the best way to address overpopulation is to help the third world develop and industrialize. And that’d be a worthy goal anyway, even without the threat of overpopulation to motivate it.
It isn’t cultural, it is an almost unavoidable aspect of life that it uses up all the resources at its disposal. Given the proper infrastructure, the human populace grows to stretch it to its breaking point. The average human has always been, and perhaps always will be, on the brink of starvation, living in miserable conditions, leading to all manner of suffering and struggle.
The solution, however, is cultural; look at the US and Europe. We’ve managed to lower our birthrate and enjoy the fruits of technology. You are also right that the problem is not numerical, per se. It is about the balance between resources and population. Simple population density numbers won’t illuminate the issue. The fact that resources are distributed unevenly is why the problems associated with overpopulation are always regional. That is, until nations worldwide are drawn into local conflicts and disasters. Yeah, the problem is regional, one of distribution; but it doesn’t change the fact that we are a global community. The entire world is affected by issues of overpopulation elsewhere.
I wish I could confidently agree with you. What you’re saying is possible, yet the other side of the coin is possible too. The US is ~5% of the population but we use how many percent of the world’s resources? Thirty, forty? Some huge number; it’s different every time I hear it. What’s going to happen when half the world’s population is at our level? I think solutions can be found, but not on the road we’re currently travelling down. We as a species need to mature intellectually and socially faster than we mature industrially and economically from here on out, and the chances of that happening don’t look good to me. It’s possible, though. Anything’s possible.
This is a greatly misunderstood statistic. The US consumes about 30% of the world’s “resources”, measured as a percentage of global GDP. This number makes people think that all of the world’s wealth being appropriated or stolen by the US. Doesn’t work that way.
It doesn’t work that way because the US also produces about 30% of the global GDP …
In fact, the US imports are about 14% of US GDP, and the US exports are about 11% of GDP.
So the US is in fact a net importer. But only about 3% of US consumption comes from overseas. This is about 1% of world consumption. The US is not stealing those resources, however. It is paying for them.
And by and large, the US is little different from most of the industrialized world.
The industrialized countries are not richer than the developing countries because they have more resources.
It is because they are industrialized. They produce more wealth, and (of course) they consume more wealth. The illusion is that the world’s resources are fixed, that there is a certain amount. But technology and industrialization have allowed us to create fertilizer from the air and magnesium from the ocean. The resources are only limited by our imagination.
Many people think we need resources like say iron ore and the like. We don’t. For example, when’s the last time you needed some iron ore?
The resources we need are the things made of iron ore, like say chairs and tables and houses. We can make chairs and tables and houses out of steel. Or we can use wood for chairs and tables. Or plastic. Or glass. Or rattan. What we need are chairs and tables, not iron ore.
So given all of that, what percentage of the world’s “proven resources” of tables and chairs are we currently using?
That is how we have fed and clothed and sheltered the hungry masses to date … and it is how we will do it in the future. The reason that say the Sudan is poor is not lack of resources. Sudan has enough rain-fed farmland to feed all of Africa. The resources are there to feed and clothe and house the planet, at six billion or nine billion. What interferes are war and tribalism and greed and inefficiency and xenophobia and red tape and lack of education and envy and stupidity and violence and corruption and jealousy and all of the ills that the human condition is heir to.
The problem is not overpopulation. As Caesar would have it, “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves” …
And if if and buts were candy and nuts we’d all have a merry Christmas. What information we DO have based on the entire sweep of world history is that the connection between population density and misery is pretty slim.
If planetary overpopulation is a problem, you have to be able to explain why X number of people is okay but X+1 is not. Is the current population too much? Most projections say it will stop growing around 9-11 billion; is that too much? If so, why, and why would reducing it to some arbitrarily lower number be okay? IF humans are so impossibly consumptive then why would a lower number be any good? We’ll last a little longer before consuming it all, but the end result would be the same.
Or perhaps more accurately to improve the standard of living and the education level, especially that of women, both of which correlate with lowered birth rates. In the past that has meant industrialization but it need not mean that. The MENA region can serve as a case study.
I’d be careful with using industrialization as the means to accomplish the goal. (Refer back to the thread that spawned this one.)
That doesn’t make sense. When was the last time you needed a barrel of crude? But your car won’t move without it. You’re just pushing the need back one step, not eliminating it.
You’re right . . . well, you’re half right. The thing is, more people make all those problems that lie within people worse. If we could solve them, we could grow to 20 billion, but right now we’re a lot closer to growing to 20 billion than we are to solving them.
economics, technology and politics are subsets of culture.
Umm huh what? New York is far more densely populated than Los Angeles.
Real demographic data shows this to be false. As we gain technology we reduce our breeding, as your state in your next paragraph. There is no reason to believe that we will always be on the brink of starvation, that’s a pessimistic fantasy.
If the solution is cultural then the problem is cultural.
Again you’d have to give evidence of overpopulation elsewhere. Overpopulation can occur contextually, people can be overpopulated in the sense that their level of cultural advancement is insufficient for their population in their environment. Like goat herders on the edge of the Sahara that allow their goats to eat up all the scrub brush and contribute to the expanding desertification, but that doesn’t mean that with even a tiny bit more education those problems couldn’t be solved. So the problem remains cultural.
We’ll have to develop a true recycling culture. At the same time the US consumes the most but it also props up the economy of the entire world. With the way technology is going consumption will largely be intellectual property rather than individual items. If materials were made to be recycled then it would be more efficient to recycle.
Well it’s not a problem for the survival of human beings if the only consideration is whether or not the earth can sustain 9B people. With decent technology, it probably can.
And it’s not an overwhelming problem for human beings if the parts of the world without advanced economies–i.e. the undeveloped and developing world–never catch up to the level of consumption of the currently advanced economies.
Those are oversimplifications, but I’m willing to more or less concede them to get to my point:
Overpopulation is the single most destructive influence for the earth’s ecology, far exceeding AGW.
To feed, clothe, house and entertain the current population at a level of the developed economies would put a burden on earth’s ecology that is completely unsustainable. Increase that by 50% again and the ecologic cost is a disaster. It is such a farce to pretend that the solution to overpopulation is to develop (because that diminishes population growth) when the ecologic cost of that development far exceeds any savings brought about by leveling the population.
Consider the following: What if we were able to freeze the current population at 6 Billion, but brought everyone up to US standards of living? Consider that in round numbers, we in the US produce 20 tons of CO2 pp; a Tanzanian, several hundred pounds. AGW considerations aside, CO2 is a reasonable proxy for consumption–for resources sucked out of the earth. We are currently consuming our arable land at a frightening rate–sucking aquifers dry; damming rivers; artificially fertilizing–on and on. We are farming the oceans as if they were limitless. We are already living with no margin for global catastrophe. If we bring the rest of the world up to US standards–and they are desperately to get there–the earth is hosed. I should point out that countries such as India and China have rapidly increasing CO2 productions per capita that actually should be assigned to the US, since it’s the US consuming so many of the goods made in China.
Now it is frequently argued that in some magical way, technology is going to come along and make everything green while another 3 billion consumers join the current billions busy upgrading their consumption and living standards to those of the West. Mmmmm hmmmmm…sure it will. And those Tatas just being put into production in India are a fabulous example of how we are gonna make sure everything is green, going forward. Yep. Yep. Newsflash: people are people. They are gonna get their own development asap. Right now, if possible.
There is no chance the current energy infrastructure can be swapped out for green sources in time. There is no chance the ecology of the land and the oceans will be protected at the cost of humans going hungry.
We don’t have to starve to death en masse (though we may yet get our comeupance for mocking Bob Malthus) to reap the consequences of overpopulation. Living in a filthy, crowded, paved, exploited earth, bereft of its natural ecology and many of its former species will be evidence enough that we trashed the place very nicely even if AGW never happens to any significant detriment.