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> Contributing to every environmental issue, including this one, is overpopulation. Citation needed. Why is 7.7 billion people a problem? IMHO earth as it is t

> Contributing to every environmental issue, including this one, is overpopulation. Citation needed. Why is 7.7 billion people a problem? IMHO earth as it is today can accommodate 9 or 10 billion people without problems. (And like you, I have no citation as well.)

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Define "without problems". We currently utilise 50% -- the best, most fertile, productive 50% -- of the earth's landmass. What remains is marginal land, scrub, forests, permafrost, mountains, savannah, deserts etc, or is simply too hot or too cold for us to live comfortably. We're mistreating land with over fertilisation and suffering steady soil loss everywhere that's adopted post-war industrial agriculture. Many of those bits of rubbish land, forests and wildlife preserves we're not using are chopped up by pipelines, roads, rail affecting viability of the species broken up and interfering with natural migration and regrowth. Wildlife and wilderness has no chance. We're clear cutting forest to make monoculture grazing land, or to plant thousands of acres of uninterrupted soya, palm oil and other major crops. As environmental awareness grows we're doing that at accelerated rate. Europe was clearcut in liveable areas in the Middle Ages, yet we've shown little to no sign of most noticing our colossal destructive impact. We just started importing big trees and colonising. Borneo has gone from essentially untouched in the 1980s to 50% cleared now. Earth overshoot day puts us as needing 1.7 earths to sustain the current rate of regrowable use (it only considers replaceable resources, not mining and minerals). 10bn would push that up to over 2. A sustainable population would probably be 1 or 2bn, if we want to allow a little room for the unforeseen.
xkcd-sucks 7y ago
Most of these billions of people have a much lower material quality of life than you or I, which is demonstrably unsustainable re: global warming etc. Nobody wants their quality of life to decline-- Austerity is always proposed as a solution for Other People. And technological solutions are a matter of faith at this point. So it seems reasonable to consider overpopulation a problem.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Define "without problems". We currently utilise 50% -- the best, most fertile, productive 50% -- of the earth's landmass. What remains is marginal land, scrub, forests, permafrost, mountains, savannah, deserts etc, or is simply too hot or too cold for us to live comfortably. We're mistreating land with over fertilisation and suffering steady soil loss everywhere that's adopted post-war industrial agriculture. Many of those bits of rubbish land, forests and wildlife preserves we're not using are chopped up by pipelines, roads, rail affecting viability of the species broken up and interfering with natural migration and regrowth. Wildlife and wilderness has no chance. We're clear cutting forest to make monoculture grazing land, or to plant thousands of acres of uninterrupted soya, palm oil and other major crops. As environmental awareness grows we're doing that at accelerated rate. Europe was clearcut in liveable areas in the Middle Ages, yet we've shown little to no sign of most noticing our colossal destructive impact. We just started importing big trees and colonising. Borneo has gone from essentially untouched in the 1980s to 50% cleared now. Earth overshoot day puts us as needing 1.7 earths to sustain the current rate of regrowable use (it only considers replaceable resources, not mining and minerals). 10bn would push that up to over 2. A sustainable population would probably be 1 or 2bn, if we want to allow a little room for the unforeseen.

xkcd-sucks 7y ago

Most of these billions of people have a much lower material quality of life than you or I, which is demonstrably unsustainable re: global warming etc. Nobody wants their quality of life to decline-- Austerity is always proposed as a solution for Other People. And technological solutions are a matter of faith at this point. So it seems reasonable to consider overpopulation a problem.