5 ms·

Overpopulation is a myth

sykh 8y ago
It seems to me that overpopulation is presently a reality. As far as I can tell there are way too many humans given our level of consumption. At the rate we kill off other species, destroy ecosystems, pollute, and generally make large portions of the planet toxic I think it's clear there are too many people.
- ericschmidt 8y ago
  Incorrect, we have a huge surplus of resources by any measure. We're simply not very good at distributing and allocating those resources, which gives people the illusion of overpopulation. The world is not overpopulated — resources are just under-distributed. As for your environmentalist remarks, you're just being pessimistic. Al Gore in "inconvenient truth" predicted the ice caps would be melted by 2017. Didn't happen. Tech will save us from whatever Doomsday scenarios you're imagining, bro: it's already saved us a million times before— and history rhymes and repeats. The "Modern Religion of Environmentalism" (as Peter Theil refers to it in Zero to One) is really just pessimism in disguise. I'm an optimist so I'm more of a member of the Technology Religion. ️
- bryanlarsen 8y ago
  There are several definitions of overpopulation, making you both right. The first definition refers to a population so large that resources get depleted so much that the population crashes. The canonical example is lemmings. Another definition refers to a population so large that it causes widespread harm to the ecosystem. So it's a myth by the first definition and a reality by the second.
- brobdingnagians 8y ago
  This is generally what people in major cities and heavily urban areas like California, east coast of China, northern Europe think when they look around them, but then when you actually go look around the world, you suddenly discover that the earth is mostly vast, unpopulated tracts of land. Just traveling around can give a vastly different view of things. Do humans put out toxins and eliminate species? Sure they do, but in terms of consumption, the carrying capacity of the earth has grown dramatically over the last 200 years because of innovation and research driven by population growth, and there is still plenty of room *(https://www.quora.com/If-the-entire-world-had-the-population-density-of-New-York-how-much-would-the-global-population-be https://www.quora.com/If-the-entire-world-had-the-population...). The more people you have, the more minds and resources you can throw at a problem. There's also the interesting fact that my parents raised 7 children on the same amount of resources that most people raised 2; we were _way_ more efficient per capita than most households. Oddly enough, we were raised to be more resource efficient than most people. We knew resources were scarce, so we tried to be more efficient. Maybe the solution is to have more children, not less, then teach them to find solutions to any problems encountered. Heck, mine the moon if you need more resources, invest in hydroponics for food if you run out of space, don't start getting rid of the poor people. Then you'd just end up with a bunch of rich folk sitting in panda refuges. EDIT: I only bring up the last sentence because the question always encountered when someone says "There are too many people." is "Who do you think we should get rid of, how and when?" EDIT 2: I do agree that we should do better with taking care of the environment and avoid catastrophic issues from bad decisions, and I agree with the post below about both being able to be right. :D
  - sykh 8y ago
    Yes there is lots of room. There is plenty of food. But what kind of place will the planet be in 100 years on our current trajectory? Pollution is being done on a grand scale. Deforestation too. What good is it to have all that land when it's polluted? As the world gets richer and people consume more it seems clear to me that the present path is not sustainable. In my short lifetime I've seen drastic changes. I've been to many countries and to many national parks. I've seen the degradation and I know it constitutes anecdotal evidence. In the 70s things were not so bad. Now, it's terrible. Trash a much more common sight in the ocean and in reefs. Micro plastics everywhere. Deforestation. We have room, we have food but soon we won't have a decent place to live in. It'll be too polluted I'm not smart enough and don't have enough moral insight to be able to determine who should be gotten rid of as you put it. That's too great a power for me to responsibly wield. I don't think anyone should be gotten rid of. I think people should breed less. But even though I haven't enough insight to say how to get to the desired outcome, less people, I know that it's the outcome we need.
larkeith 8y ago
Citation? I'm unfamiliar with the views on this, but considering the amount of starvation in the world, this seems suspect, especially considering an increasing population.
- sykh 8y ago
  There is plenty of food being produced to feed everyone at present. The problem of starvation is one of distribution and not one of production.
- mjn 8y ago
  One way of quantifying it really roughly is to estimate the total caloric value of worldwide food production and divide by the population, to get a global estimate of calories-per-person. According to one estimate, anyway, that's been steadily rising and is now around 2900 kcal/person/day [1]. There still is hunger in some parts of the world, which suggests that the problem is distribution not happening correctly, whether due to logistical or economic or political issues. This seems to be true even if you do the averaging per-continent: the continent with the lowest per-capita production, Africa, still produces 2600 kcal/person/day, which should be plenty to avoid starvation. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-supply-by-region-in-kilocalories-per-person-per-day-1961-2013 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-supply-by-region-in-...
- beat 8y ago
  Population increase is a response to increased resource availability, not a cause of shortage (at least, until you reach chaotic breakdown states). If the primary resource limitation is food (as in many poor countries), when the food supply grows, population grows. In wealthy countries, where the primary resource problem is money, population stays flat or even shrinks - children are expensive! Food supplies have grown tremendously post-WWII, thanks to Green Revolution agriculture. Earth's population has doubled in the past 50 years, but food is actually cheaper than it was 50 years ago.
- dbingham 8y ago
  Yeah, population isn't the issue. As others have pointed out, we grow more than enough food to feed the world. And to address the other side of the equation - the growth side - it seems to be the case that when a country reaches a certain state of development, reproduction naturally levels out or starts falling. The rate of baby production in most developed countries is near or below the replacement rate. The growth rate of these countries is almost entirely from migration. It seems to be the case that when you educate people (in particular, women), give them access to birth control, and opportunities to live interesting and fulfilling lives, enough people will choose to forgo children to make up for all the people who want children. So population isn't the problem: equitable distribution of the resources we have is. To put it most succinctly, if only we could just get out of our scarcity mindset and achieve a reasonably fair distribution of our resources -- then those resources are more than enough to sustain everyone, and population growth isn't an issue.
booleandilemma 8y ago
Try getting a seat at a Starbucks in Manhattan on a Saturday.
- webkike 8y ago
  Try finding a person in Wyoming

sykh 8y ago

It seems to me that overpopulation is presently a reality. As far as I can tell there are way too many humans given our level of consumption. At the rate we kill off other species, destroy ecosystems, pollute, and generally make large portions of the planet toxic I think it's clear there are too many people.

ericschmidt 8y ago
Incorrect, we have a huge surplus of resources by any measure. We're simply not very good at distributing and allocating those resources, which gives people the illusion of overpopulation. The world is not overpopulated — resources are just under-distributed. As for your environmentalist remarks, you're just being pessimistic. Al Gore in "inconvenient truth" predicted the ice caps would be melted by 2017. Didn't happen. Tech will save us from whatever Doomsday scenarios you're imagining, bro: it's already saved us a million times before— and history rhymes and repeats. The "Modern Religion of Environmentalism" (as Peter Theil refers to it in Zero to One) is really just pessimism in disguise. I'm an optimist so I'm more of a member of the Technology Religion. ️
bryanlarsen 8y ago
There are several definitions of overpopulation, making you both right. The first definition refers to a population so large that resources get depleted so much that the population crashes. The canonical example is lemmings. Another definition refers to a population so large that it causes widespread harm to the ecosystem. So it's a myth by the first definition and a reality by the second.
brobdingnagians 8y ago
This is generally what people in major cities and heavily urban areas like California, east coast of China, northern Europe think when they look around them, but then when you actually go look around the world, you suddenly discover that the earth is mostly vast, unpopulated tracts of land. Just traveling around can give a vastly different view of things. Do humans put out toxins and eliminate species? Sure they do, but in terms of consumption, the carrying capacity of the earth has grown dramatically over the last 200 years because of innovation and research driven by population growth, and there is still plenty of room *(https://www.quora.com/If-the-entire-world-had-the-population-density-of-New-York-how-much-would-the-global-population-be https://www.quora.com/If-the-entire-world-had-the-population...). The more people you have, the more minds and resources you can throw at a problem. There's also the interesting fact that my parents raised 7 children on the same amount of resources that most people raised 2; we were _way_ more efficient per capita than most households. Oddly enough, we were raised to be more resource efficient than most people. We knew resources were scarce, so we tried to be more efficient. Maybe the solution is to have more children, not less, then teach them to find solutions to any problems encountered. Heck, mine the moon if you need more resources, invest in hydroponics for food if you run out of space, don't start getting rid of the poor people. Then you'd just end up with a bunch of rich folk sitting in panda refuges. EDIT: I only bring up the last sentence because the question always encountered when someone says "There are too many people." is "Who do you think we should get rid of, how and when?" EDIT 2: I do agree that we should do better with taking care of the environment and avoid catastrophic issues from bad decisions, and I agree with the post below about both being able to be right. :D
- sykh 8y ago
  Yes there is lots of room. There is plenty of food. But what kind of place will the planet be in 100 years on our current trajectory? Pollution is being done on a grand scale. Deforestation too. What good is it to have all that land when it's polluted? As the world gets richer and people consume more it seems clear to me that the present path is not sustainable. In my short lifetime I've seen drastic changes. I've been to many countries and to many national parks. I've seen the degradation and I know it constitutes anecdotal evidence. In the 70s things were not so bad. Now, it's terrible. Trash a much more common sight in the ocean and in reefs. Micro plastics everywhere. Deforestation. We have room, we have food but soon we won't have a decent place to live in. It'll be too polluted I'm not smart enough and don't have enough moral insight to be able to determine who should be gotten rid of as you put it. That's too great a power for me to responsibly wield. I don't think anyone should be gotten rid of. I think people should breed less. But even though I haven't enough insight to say how to get to the desired outcome, less people, I know that it's the outcome we need.

larkeith 8y ago

Citation? I'm unfamiliar with the views on this, but considering the amount of starvation in the world, this seems suspect, especially considering an increasing population.

sykh 8y ago
There is plenty of food being produced to feed everyone at present. The problem of starvation is one of distribution and not one of production.
mjn 8y ago
One way of quantifying it really roughly is to estimate the total caloric value of worldwide food production and divide by the population, to get a global estimate of calories-per-person. According to one estimate, anyway, that's been steadily rising and is now around 2900 kcal/person/day [1]. There still is hunger in some parts of the world, which suggests that the problem is distribution not happening correctly, whether due to logistical or economic or political issues. This seems to be true even if you do the averaging per-continent: the continent with the lowest per-capita production, Africa, still produces 2600 kcal/person/day, which should be plenty to avoid starvation. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-supply-by-region-in-kilocalories-per-person-per-day-1961-2013 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-supply-by-region-in-...
beat 8y ago
Population increase is a response to increased resource availability, not a cause of shortage (at least, until you reach chaotic breakdown states). If the primary resource limitation is food (as in many poor countries), when the food supply grows, population grows. In wealthy countries, where the primary resource problem is money, population stays flat or even shrinks - children are expensive! Food supplies have grown tremendously post-WWII, thanks to Green Revolution agriculture. Earth's population has doubled in the past 50 years, but food is actually cheaper than it was 50 years ago.
dbingham 8y ago
Yeah, population isn't the issue. As others have pointed out, we grow more than enough food to feed the world. And to address the other side of the equation - the growth side - it seems to be the case that when a country reaches a certain state of development, reproduction naturally levels out or starts falling. The rate of baby production in most developed countries is near or below the replacement rate. The growth rate of these countries is almost entirely from migration. It seems to be the case that when you educate people (in particular, women), give them access to birth control, and opportunities to live interesting and fulfilling lives, enough people will choose to forgo children to make up for all the people who want children. So population isn't the problem: equitable distribution of the resources we have is. To put it most succinctly, if only we could just get out of our scarcity mindset and achieve a reasonably fair distribution of our resources -- then those resources are more than enough to sustain everyone, and population growth isn't an issue.

booleandilemma 8y ago

Try getting a seat at a Starbucks in Manhattan on a Saturday.

webkike 8y ago
Try finding a person in Wyoming