I can't get past the paywall to read the original Population Explosion paper that Gott uses, but the dumpster fire premise seems to comes from the assumption of

I can't get past the paywall to read the original Population Explosion paper that Gott uses, but the dumpster fire premise seems to comes from the assumption of tragedy-of-the-commons-style environmental degradation. The Wikipedia on Ehrlich offers the following comment: > When is an area overpopulated? When its population can't be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources (or converting renewable resources into nonrenewable ones) and without degrading the capacity of the environment to support the population. In short, if the long-term carrying capacity of an area is clearly being degraded by its current human occupants, that area is overpopulated. I agree with you that it is questionable set of assumptions, though I think when considering some of issues humanity is facing in the realm of climate change and water shortages, it's not an entirely untenable hypothesis.