How much of a problem is overpopulation for the planet?

Great Debates
121

Chief Pedant, you say:

I don’t know who you are referring to here, but it is not me. I said nothing about causation, neither post hoc nor propter hoc. I said nothing about the end of all problems. I said nothing about exploding populations causing times of plenty. I guess my writing really must not be clear.

What I said was that

  1. The population doubled 1960-2000, and

  2. Despite that, things got better for the people and for the environment from 1960-2000, and

  3. Therefore, there is no linear relationship between population and misery.

If you are as old as I, perhaps you remember in the US when the freakin’ river caught on fire because it was so badly polluted. Doubling the population did not double the number of flaming rivers in America.

I’ve spent a good chunk of my life working in the villages and towns of a variety of developing countries on exactly these problems. I worked extensively as an international consultant for USAID and the US Peace Corps. I’ve seen more of the ugliness of crushing poverty and lack of resources and rampaging pollution and recurrent fevers and hungry kids and grinding scarcity and shortage and persistent famine in a score of developing countries around the planet than I would recommend to anyone. It’s not pretty. I live in the developing world. There’s no need to point out to me that there are problems. I have seen them, I know them of old.

So yes. Environmental problems remain. Societal problems remain. But things are getting better. Twenty-five years ago, when I started working overseas, half the developing world lived on less than the World Bank poverty level ($1.25 in 2005 prices). Now, it’s down to a quarter of the developing world below that level. This to me is an commendable achievement.

The same is true in the ecological arena. In 1960, the concept of widespread pollution didn’t mean anything. The idea we call “environmentalism” didn’t exist. There were no “ecologists”. I lived down the road from a factory that cut up and rendered whales into whale oil, and we never thought anything of it except that it smelled bad … and this was not in Norway, it was on San Francisco Bay. No Environmental Impact Statement was required of any project, they weren’t invented. “Silent Spring” hadn’t been written. Around the world, the symbol of the good life and prosperity was a factory chimney blasting out black smoke.

Today, pollution and environmentalism are issues that are ongoing and vigorously discussed around the planet. Whales and pelicans and other species have made a comeback. There are more national parks in more countries than there have ever been in history. Salmon swim up the Thames. People recognize the problem. A host of laws and restrictions in a wide range of countries protect wetlands, mangroves, and other critical areas. Environmentalism is taught in schools around the planet. There are environmental activists in every country, and we have had some significant successes.

Yes, many problems remain, it is true. However, it is also true that we have come a long, long ways. By and large, the environment worldwide is in much better shape now than it was when we had half the population.

Therefore, there is no linear relationship between population and the environment.

Please don’t twist this around to say I’m claiming we should have more kids, or that increasing population causes prosperity, or that there are no problems. I’ve spent a good part of my life working on those problems, and I know how many remain. I have actually worked on reducing family size in the developing world, worked to reduce the future population. Not talking. Doing. The most successful project involved funding (not out of my own pocket, I assure you) and advising a reproductive health campaign centered in the bars and nightclubs. We recruited attractive young people, both men and women, to take boxes of condoms around, and sit at the bar, hand out condoms, and talk to strangers about safe sex, health, and reproduction. So yes, I’ve been on the front lines of the reproduction wars. In that and other programs, I’ve had a hand in the distribution of enough condoms to depopulate a small country …

Condoms are stopgap stuff, though. The one thing that equates with reducing family size is the empowerment of women. Often, they have to use contraceptives secretly, and risk beatings if discovered. But in the developing world, women do the work, and more kids means more work. And all over the world, women take the risk. It is rare for a man to die in childbirth. In the developing world, it is depressingly common. So when women have a say in the deal, family size goes down.

Now, this change is slowly happening, and has been since about 1970. It’s helped along by television and the web showing images of women presidents and scientists and astronauts and forest rangers and the like. Young girls around the world see those seditious images and some of them will think “I can do that.” And slowly slowly, over time, through the media and a thousand other ways the situation is changing. So if you want to get the most bang for your buck in family size reduction, put the money into empowering women in the legal, marital, commercial, intellectual, educational, medical and all other spheres of action.

Sure, I’d prefer it if we could freeze the population at the current level. Yes, I think that we need to continue working to reduce the population growth to zero.

What I don’t think is that population is directly related to misery. We’ve proven we can double the population without increasing the misery. Yes, it took work, I know that personally. And we did it, and we continue to do it. We still need to clean up our act more. We still need to do more on a host of fronts.

Or, like you say, it may all blow up in ten years or so.

But until it does, I will continue to work on the issues, the problems, and the challenges that face us today. I will continue to believe that the “population bomb” won’t explode and kill us all in five years or five weeks or five decades.

And if you want to worry about the fact that over the last two centuries, CO2 went from 0.03% (three hundredths of a percent) to 0.04% (four hundredths of a percent) of the atmosphere … well, I’ll leave that worrying to you. I am concerned with larger challenges. I prefer to work on issues that affect people today, not issues that may possibly affect them in 50 years. As they say … a condom in the hand is worth two in the dispenser …

122

Leaving aside the exhalations and flatulence of a Billion people you are saying that the co2 emissions of third world countries are negligible,such as for example India?

Your arguments seem to consist entirely of "because its never happened yet then obviously it cant happen"that and putting up strawmen.

On that basis nuclear weapons are fantasy because prior to 1945 they had never existed in history ever,so obviously they couldn’t exist post 1945 and so dont exist now.

We have NEVER EVER had a global population of the size we have now(and still rising)so making historical comparisons is completely,totally and utterly fallacious.
You cant even begin to compare past events with the situation we have NOW let alone predict future developments on that basis because this situation has never existed in our previous history.
You might just as well predict the future of space exploration using the experience of Whist players in the nineteenth century.

And you still haven’t given us any solutions to the problems of increased population requiring increased agricultural land,water,power and other vital resources other then
“Things are going to be alright,we always muddled through in the past so we dont have to worry about the future,lets just carry on the way we have been and it will all sort its self out in the end”
I honestly cant understand anyone other then those representing the Catholic Churchs policies(Which policies are suspect to say the least) putting their heads in the sand and either pretending to themselves that there isn’t a serious problem here,serious enough to finish off Humankind in fact,or worse being intellectually incapable of understanding that there is a problem in the first place.

You cant even begin to solve a problem if you refuse to bite the bullet and admit to yourself that there is one and this scares the hell out of me.

Suicide by complacency.

123

Nice “random” example.
Yes, I think that the world’s second most-populous country, and the one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, has negligable CO2 emissions :rolleyes:

Or perhaps I meant what I said, which was that the increase of population in the world is mostly among the developing world and therefore you can’t do a linear relationship between people and CO2.
Sure, fossil fuel use will increase, all things being equal, but we already know all things can’t be equal because we’re screwed if the world can’t shift away from fossil fuels anyway. That’s why population growth is a red herring for this discussion.

No. Let me remind you what my point was about.

You made the claim that increasing mechanisation / computerisation would lead to massive unemployment. You also pointed out that many jobs have already been mechanised.

I simply pointed out to you that this puts you in a bizarre position, because by just about every measure employment is higher than at any time in the past (obviously the credit crunch is having an effect, but the long term trend is good), and working conditions better.

You’ve got to explain why technology which has always been good for the economy and ultimately led to more jobs, should suddenly have the reverse effect from this day forward.

Sorry – what is the thing we’re being complacent about?
I’m acknowledging that world population is set to increase (for the time being). I acknowledge this puts more pressure on resources. What I’m saying is that you aren’t going to solve the world’s problems by reducing population growth. The core of the problems is not population.
You’d have to be utterly naive to think that CO2 emissions are proportional to population, for instance.

btw I disagree with the Catholic church’s policies.

124

Brazil?
Mexico?

125

I’d rather you responded to the content of my post than name countries.

I did a :rolleyes: to the idea that India’s CO2 emissions are negligable because it was one of the most blatant and lazy straw man arguments I’ve ever seen.

That doesn’t mean I’m admitting to saying any country’s emissions are negligable: see my previous post for my actual point instead of making stuff up.

126

Actually, this is harsher wording than I intended. I actually meant: stop putting words in my mouth.

127

Lust4Life, inter alia you say:

Ummm … as far as I know, your statement “We have NEVER EVER had a global population of the size we have now (and still rising)” has been true at every instant since there have been humans. It has been true at each moment in history. In 1600 there were more people than ever before. In the year 500 there were more people than ever before. And so on. At every instant, in 500 and 1500 and right now, we NEVER EVER had a population of this size (and still rising). All that means is that the population is constantly growing, just like it always has.

I fail to see why something which has always been true (there’s more people now than ever before, and growing) should bar us from learning from history. You can toss out history on that basis if you want. I prefer to learn from history. I try not to make the same mistake twice. Some of the things that we do to reduce family size have worked better than others. I want to know which ones work and which don’t. This will guide the remainder of the work as we come into the home stretch. Why do I say the home stretch? Because I estimate global population stabilization at about nine million, and my calculations put that at around 2050. These results are similar to the UN midrange projections, which is encouraging. Still work to do.

So no, historical comparisons are not rendered fallacious at all by the fact that the population is constantly growing. Why should they be?

128

Although population has always had growth, as you stated, it’s never been to the extent that it is at now. And by that I mean that the GROWTH rate of population has gotten significantly higher then it ever has before.

I pointed it out here: http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y264/stacey_ac/poprecent.gif

On another note, talking about the value of life (for humans) now compared to the past is somewhat insignificant to the debate at hand. Afterall, the question to debate is “How much of a problem is overpopulation for the planet?”

From the evidence I have seen I would find it fair to answer that overpopulation is definetly a problem for the planet. The more people you have, the more resources you use. The more resources you use, the less resources there are for other animals, plants, and overall nature as a whole.

Even if there wasn’t the severe overpopulation we have, the resources we enjoy would still be dwindling, although it would much more slowly and it would give nature a better oppurtunity to advance itself in a world that’s inhabitants make good use of survival of the fittest.

The human population is being greedy and using resources fast for our own pleasure and comfort without giving the earth time to catch up with us. We would rather deny that we are the cause of the problem because it’s easier and makes us feel better. But the fact is that the earth can only supply so much and the oncoming masses of population, who have been rid of disease and sickness and will live an extra 40 years, are going to end up with nothing but a world full or garbage, death to everything but themselves, and some fierce heat rays from an atmosphere overfilled with CO2.

129

peppermintlush, thanks for the post. You say inter alia:

Well … no. The growth rate of the modern population peaked at around 1970, and has been dropping ever since. That’s why growth is slowing down, and is predicted to level off around 2050 … because the growth rate of population is and has been steadily dropping.

130

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpop.html

and just for a nice visual: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BbkQiQyaYc

Information that I find seems to point towards a (still) current growth in population.

However, I did find on this on wikipedia:
“World births have levelled off at about 137-million-per-year, since their peak at 163-million in the late 1990’s, and are expected to remain constant. However, deaths are only around 56 million per year, and are expected to increase to 90 million by the year 2050. Since births outnumber deaths, the world’s population is expected to reach about 9 billion by the year 2040.”

So although it is true that the birth rate seems to have leveled off, it is still a contributing factor to a growth in population rather then it slowing down.

If you can provide statistics from a good source that shows evidence of what you claiming, I know I would be quite interested in it.

131

Correct.

Incorrect. The world population was about 20 million around the year 4000 BC, and a rough estimate of people currently living in conditions with not enough food to sustain a healthy life is over 850 million.

Even if the entire world population was considered starving back then, that argument only starts working at about 200-250 years ago, not 6000.

132

My impression is that overpopulation is a major problem. Not enough jobs, food etc.

133

peppermintlush , sorry for my lack of clarity. Yes, population is still growing. However, that is different from the rate at which it is growing. This is called the “population growth rate”, and is generally calculated as the percentage increase per year (year / prev.yr. - 1).

This growth rate peaked in about 1970 at over 2% growth per year, and has been slowly decreasing since then. At present it is about 1.1% per year. As someone who doesn’t trust anyone’s calculations, I calculate it myself from the information from the FAO.

134

ok, I will agree with you that population growth rate has decreased as shown in this graph from the US Census Bureau (here)

But that doesn’t make the general population worldwide go down. There is still an increase in population whether or not the population growth rate is decreasing from it’s spike in the mid 1900’s.

It seems as though you might be looking at the growth rate changes and thinking that when it went from the highest it was (2.2 % change in 1962 and 1963) to 2008 (1.17% change in rate), that the 1.03% change difference was a negative one that had subtracted an overall 1.03% of the population during the years between 1963 and 2008. But really it’s still adding.

Heres an example (although this example is only to show growth through birth rate, and doesn’t include mortality rate, which is also in decline):

[as a rule, for every two people, one child will be produced per year.]
in 1961 you start with 100 people.

in 1962 you have a 0% population growth rate change, which means there are now 150 people.

in 1963 you have a 2.2% population growth rate change, which means there are now 430 people.

in 1964 you have a 1.17% population growth rate change, which means there are now 653 people.

So unless the population growth rate is a negative percent change, the population is still growing. After all, even though 2008 only has a 1.17% population growth rate, it is still 101.17% of the previous years population which means that the population is more then the previous year.

135

I forgot to say that I also can understand how the population growth could be slowing down and level off in 2050, but by then the population could be around 9,500,000,000 people compared to our current amount of 6,700,000,000 people.

And going back to an arguement made (although it isn’t exactly necessary to bring up), despite how life looks better because of our new completely industrialized lifestyle, our future life (or our childrens future lives) are being made harder. Industry is the easy way to make a lot of people happy without having to put in as much effort. It sounds great, but when you look at how much is wasted because its all being made and shipped, made and shipped, all without inherent need. I’m not going to argue further on this because it’s only partially connected to this topic. And that connection is that with more people, you need to use more resources. Resources that are on thier way to drying up. I’m not saying these resources would be completely gone either, but it took thousands to millions of years to get some of them, and it’ll take that long to have them again.

Sorry for getting off topic with that…

136

peppermintlush, thanks for the reply. I am very aware that a change in the population growth rate is not the same as a change in the population.

Historically, estimates of the eventual population of the earth have been chronically overstated. When I was a kid, the estimates were that it would level off at about 12 billion. Then it dropped to 11 billion, then 10, then 9 billion. It may drop further, but that’s a reasonable estimate.

However, as I have pointed out several times, lack of food and environmental damage are not necessarily related related to population. We doubled the worlds’ population in my lifetime. Despite that, people worldwide, rich and poor alike, have more food and better education and better health and longer lifespans than when I was a kid. And the environment is in much better shape than when I was a kid.

It is true that with more people we will use more resources. But the flip side of the equation is that more people create more resources. How do you think we fed and clothed the latest population increase? Food or clothing, for example, are not “resources” with a finite amount. They are created by the work of humans. The same is true of education, and health. They are resources, but not things that we dig up out of the ground. Your vision of humans as all consumption and no production is one-sided.

In addition, when some natural “in-the-ground” resource runs short, the value of it increases. This makes alternatives practical. When whale oil got expensive, it was replaced with fuel oil.

Technology creates many of these alternatives. Who would have guessed that you can replace expensive copper with cheap glass? But that’s how we move information around nowadays, on glass … go figure.

Next, often the shortage is not of the resource itself, but of energy. There’s lots of fresh water in the sea, for example, but it takes energy to get it out. So are we short of water, or simply short of energy? In fact, abundant cheap energy would make many of our “resource shortages” disappear. You can make nitrogenous fertilizers with nothing but energy and air …

Finally, humans recycle. Something like 90% of all steel is made up of recycled materials. This, of course, has radically decreased the use of the underlying resource.

You say “Resources are on their way to drying up” … a citation would be very useful here. Which resources are you talking about? Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren (our current and clueless US Science Advisor) both famously lost a bet with Julian Simon on this very question … and they were betting on your side of the aisle. Are you claiming something has changed since then?

137

The presenter and naturalist Sir David Attenborough became patron of the Optimum Population Trust in the last couple of days, firmly coming down on one side of the debate (link).

This isn’t an ‘appeal to authority’: I just thought I’d mention in this forum that the issue has come up in the news here again.

I don’t actually agree with his opinion entirely on this. I’m sure from the point of view of a naturalist, humans are bad news. But statements like the following are far too broad:

138

Whos estimates?
How about a cite or two or is this just a strawman?

So what ARE lack of food and environmental damage necessarily related to?

And all these people, rich and poor alike, who have more food and better education,would they by any chance be in the First World where populations are slowly reducing or are all those starving,uneducated people in the Third World (where coincidentally the populations are rising) merely some sort of fabricated Urban Legend?

No I’m sorry but that flag cant fly,agriculture which supplies our food and clothing requires not just land, but land that is either fit for,or able to be made fit for farming,it also requires water and the right climate.

Man made Global Warming is affecting the climate which apart from raising sea levels in the future reducing the amount of available land both for living on and farming,will also increase the amount of desertification on top of that which is being caused by population pressures already(Tree felling,over grazing,poor farming practices etc.)

Also fossil water supplies(which wont be replaced) are being used up.

Oh I see all it takes is abundant cheap energy,all of those scientists sitting there twiddling their thumbs when all they had to do was magic up a way of creating abundant cheap energy,the solution is so simple its a wonder no one has thought of it before !

Perhaps they could invent a cheap anti gravity machine while they’re about it and maybe a perpetual motion engine ?

So all the steel used in the world is something like ninety percent recycled,amazing!
“Something like” sounds a bit vague to me,perhaps you could give me a reputable cite for this "fact"aswell?

Well no,obviously the more non renewable resources that we spend so much time,money and effort getting out of the ground the more theres going to be…obviously.

And lets not worry about a drying up of say, iron,because everyone knows that the Earths core is made up of billions of tons of molten iron so no problem there then.
All we have to do is use some of this cheap abundant energy(Once we’ve quickly worked out how to obtain it of course) to find a way of accessing the centre of the Earth and getting it all out.
When of course we’re not using this abundant,cheap available energy to extract drinking water from the oceans and manufacture incredible amounts of nitrogenous fertiliser(Might be just a little bit of a problem with the pollution run off from all of this fertiliser but with abundant,cheap,available energy we’ll soon sort that out as well)
So taking your theory to its logical conclusion the size of the Human Race can carry on growing for ever because more people means that they will come up with more solutions.

The fact that the worlds population has doubled within a few very short years and that we are still here makes it obvious that doubling and redoubling the numbers of hungry mouths wil not cause a crisis of any kind.

Well not for the Catholic church anyway.

139

My own take on this is it’s not so much the population growth, it’s the massively increased population of the developing world trying to live an industrialized lifestyle. The U.S. and Europe destroyed their natural ecologies back when killing millions of buffalo a year was seen as progress, so that today we can live our lives in an environment we’ve shaped to fit our needs. Fortunately for the environment, but unfortunately for the people in the developing world who want to live like us, they still have a lot of their natural environment intact.

So when people in Sumatra want to chop down their forests to build date palm plantations, or when Kenyan villagers kill the lions eating their cows, or when the Chinese muck up a river and kill all the dolphins in it, we get all upset. But meanwhile all the wolves are gone from most of North America, there is hardly any tall grass prarie left in the midwest, and all the right whales that filled Massachussetts Bay when the Pilgrims came here are gone. That leaves us without much of a moral footing when we demand they manage their enviroment in a way we never held ourselves to.

140

Just a nitpick, but I’m not sure you’re right on this. I’m thinking in particular of the Black Death which killed a very large percentage of the population. Presumably there have been other similar, unrecorded, plagues (e.g. following the European discovery of the Americas).