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Thanks for commenting. HN loves to downvote this opinion: the world IS overpopulated. Imagine there were 8 billion tigers or bears living on this planet - how s

Thanks for commenting. HN loves to downvote this opinion: the world IS overpopulated. Imagine there were 8 billion tigers or bears living on this planet - how sustainable would this be? And bears and tigers dont fly, dont drive cars and dont wear clothes. I remember learning in school that there were 6 billion people in the world. Recently I realised that we are over 8 billion already. And all of us want to have a good life and those who grew up poor want to consume. 100% understanable.

Chris2048 5y ago
Bears and tigers are apex predators that have a high calorie intake. The world can be as populated as society can sustainably support - problem is the path to "development" implies a massive ramp up in energy consumption. I suspect the main barriers are political. There is a lot of suffering in the world that has little to do with lack of resources, yet persists for political reasons.
ben_w 5y ago
Tigers and bears don’t farm, either. Tech makes a big difference: If humans didn’t farm our population would be ~100 million; If we tile the world in greenhouses, and if we’re careful with our resources, we could have ~10 trillion.
- pmlnr 5y ago
  > we could have ~10 trillion. Where? Physically, where? Compressed into tiny apartments all over the planet, like sardine cans?
  - ddnb 5y ago
    Fun fact: the whole human population can fit in the state of Texas if it had the same density as NYC. That answers the where. Compressed into tiny apartments? Yes, but maybe we should double everybody apartments and house them in 2 times Texas?
  - ben_w 5y ago
    That’s about the population density of Paris or Athens. I’d only be happy with that population level if we had a lot of Arcology-style mega-buildings to give each of us enough space and parkland, but that’s rather my point: tech enables the otherwise impossible.
- kwere 5y ago
  no, 20/30 billions with decent lifestyle and maybe 50 billions in a distopia
  - ben_w 5y ago
    There’s a massive difference between what exists now and what can exist if we build it. 63% of protein and 82% of calories come from 23% of agricultural land, which is itself 51% of habitable land, which is itself 71% of land, which is 29% of the surface. That agricultural land mostly isn’t greenhouses, which are far more productive than open ground, but even greenhouses are not the most productive food sources we know how to make. Even without changing the ratio of farmland where greenhouses or better are used (a cunning trick if you can do it, given you’d need something like a greenhouse or aeroponics to turn uninhabitable land into farm land), that takes us up to 7.7-fold increase in carrying capacity for pure land use and 26.6-fold if you add in potential aquaculture. Most of us don’t have a reason to care more about efficient use of farmland. Some places do, which is why greenhouses, hydroponics, and aeroponics exist at all, but most of us don’t. And then, separately from greenhouses (probably before but I don’t know how to account for it), there’s better crop choices, and finally GM crops. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use https://ourworldindata.org/land-use
hermannj314 5y ago
I am in agreement with this position. Fortunately, for humans, it seems a higher quality of life leads to negative population growth (hopefully it happens fast enough). If everyone wants to live and consume like a 21st century American, we need to make sure the world only has around 2 billion people (this is based on a fact I read that we need the resources of 4 Earths to sustain American style consumerism globally). As our quality of life goes up more, the number of humans Earth can support gets smaller. Depending on the target global average lifestyle, we probably already have too many people by a significant amount.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rocknor 5y ago
  All of this doesn't take into account technological advancement.
  - hermannj314 5y ago
    I see your point. If we make technological improvements that reduce consumption, Earth can sustain more people. If those improvements increase consumption we sustain fewer. As I said increasing technology and life comforts genrally reduce population growth, let's hope for other technology miracles as well. This is a reasonable position. I spent the weekend in the Pennsylvania wilderness in an area that in the mid-1800s had been stripped bare by logging and was now a preserved and expansive wilderness. Humanity can and will adapt. Believing so helps me sleep at night.
    - rocknor 5y ago
      I'm hopeful as well. I believe that humanity will definitely suffer from climate change to an extent, at least in this century, but eventually will figure out sustainable energy and thus not go extinct.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
This opinion is downvoted because it comes from ignorance. Yes, its true that if global population was 10 million and all lived in 50-ppl villages you could shit in the streets and still not get the Plague, pollute to your heart's content and still be fine, practice slash-and-burn agriculture and still have forests left. But then you wouldn't have most products of civilisation in the first place. Once you start getting cities, you cant shit in the street, you need suers and restrictions on pollution
rocknor 5y ago
Ignorant and myopic. There is no specific population limit after which you can say that overpopulation occurs. If we had unlimited nuclear energy and amazing battery technology figured out (who says we never will?), we could probably have tens of billions of people sustainably with enough land for everyone. So yeah your opinion deserves to be downvoted.
- 88840-8855 5y ago
  If we could do X and Y, then we could do Z. Yeah, but we are not doing X and Y, hence, your opinion is just some idialistic bs and deserves to be downvoted.
  - rocknor 5y ago
    What's wrong with being idealistic? At least it aspires people to work towards the ideal. The statement I said is scientifically correct, the world is not inherently overpopulated. People like you with anti-science attitudes spread the popular but false narrative that the world is overpopulated and the only solution to climate change is shrinking the human population. This steers people in the wrong direction and slows down actual progress in solving climate change.

Chris2048 5y ago

Bears and tigers are apex predators that have a high calorie intake. The world can be as populated as society can sustainably support - problem is the path to "development" implies a massive ramp up in energy consumption. I suspect the main barriers are political. There is a lot of suffering in the world that has little to do with lack of resources, yet persists for political reasons.

ben_w 5y ago

Tigers and bears don’t farm, either. Tech makes a big difference: If humans didn’t farm our population would be ~100 million; If we tile the world in greenhouses, and if we’re careful with our resources, we could have ~10 trillion.

pmlnr 5y ago
> we could have ~10 trillion. Where? Physically, where? Compressed into tiny apartments all over the planet, like sardine cans?
- ddnb 5y ago
  Fun fact: the whole human population can fit in the state of Texas if it had the same density as NYC. That answers the where. Compressed into tiny apartments? Yes, but maybe we should double everybody apartments and house them in 2 times Texas?
- ben_w 5y ago
  That’s about the population density of Paris or Athens. I’d only be happy with that population level if we had a lot of Arcology-style mega-buildings to give each of us enough space and parkland, but that’s rather my point: tech enables the otherwise impossible.
kwere 5y ago
no, 20/30 billions with decent lifestyle and maybe 50 billions in a distopia
- ben_w 5y ago
  There’s a massive difference between what exists now and what can exist if we build it. 63% of protein and 82% of calories come from 23% of agricultural land, which is itself 51% of habitable land, which is itself 71% of land, which is 29% of the surface. That agricultural land mostly isn’t greenhouses, which are far more productive than open ground, but even greenhouses are not the most productive food sources we know how to make. Even without changing the ratio of farmland where greenhouses or better are used (a cunning trick if you can do it, given you’d need something like a greenhouse or aeroponics to turn uninhabitable land into farm land), that takes us up to 7.7-fold increase in carrying capacity for pure land use and 26.6-fold if you add in potential aquaculture. Most of us don’t have a reason to care more about efficient use of farmland. Some places do, which is why greenhouses, hydroponics, and aeroponics exist at all, but most of us don’t. And then, separately from greenhouses (probably before but I don’t know how to account for it), there’s better crop choices, and finally GM crops. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

hermannj314 5y ago

I am in agreement with this position. Fortunately, for humans, it seems a higher quality of life leads to negative population growth (hopefully it happens fast enough). If everyone wants to live and consume like a 21st century American, we need to make sure the world only has around 2 billion people (this is based on a fact I read that we need the resources of 4 Earths to sustain American style consumerism globally). As our quality of life goes up more, the number of humans Earth can support gets smaller. Depending on the target global average lifestyle, we probably already have too many people by a significant amount.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rocknor 5y ago
All of this doesn't take into account technological advancement.
- hermannj314 5y ago
  I see your point. If we make technological improvements that reduce consumption, Earth can sustain more people. If those improvements increase consumption we sustain fewer. As I said increasing technology and life comforts genrally reduce population growth, let's hope for other technology miracles as well. This is a reasonable position. I spent the weekend in the Pennsylvania wilderness in an area that in the mid-1800s had been stripped bare by logging and was now a preserved and expansive wilderness. Humanity can and will adapt. Believing so helps me sleep at night.
  - rocknor 5y ago
    I'm hopeful as well. I believe that humanity will definitely suffer from climate change to an extent, at least in this century, but eventually will figure out sustainable energy and thus not go extinct.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

This opinion is downvoted because it comes from ignorance. Yes, its true that if global population was 10 million and all lived in 50-ppl villages you could shit in the streets and still not get the Plague, pollute to your heart's content and still be fine, practice slash-and-burn agriculture and still have forests left. But then you wouldn't have most products of civilisation in the first place. Once you start getting cities, you cant shit in the street, you need suers and restrictions on pollution

rocknor 5y ago

Ignorant and myopic. There is no specific population limit after which you can say that overpopulation occurs. If we had unlimited nuclear energy and amazing battery technology figured out (who says we never will?), we could probably have tens of billions of people sustainably with enough land for everyone. So yeah your opinion deserves to be downvoted.

88840-8855 5y ago
If we could do X and Y, then we could do Z. Yeah, but we are not doing X and Y, hence, your opinion is just some idialistic bs and deserves to be downvoted.
- rocknor 5y ago
  What's wrong with being idealistic? At least it aspires people to work towards the ideal. The statement I said is scientifically correct, the world is not inherently overpopulated. People like you with anti-science attitudes spread the popular but false narrative that the world is overpopulated and the only solution to climate change is shrinking the human population. This steers people in the wrong direction and slows down actual progress in solving climate change.