9 ms·

Overpopulation Is Not the Problem

46 points by cs702 13y ago

clicks 13y ago
I think they're looking over the social aspect of this. Areas with highest birthrates tend to be the most uneducated ones, and thus you will have a greater amount of people who will more likely make irresponsible decisions for the planet's sustainability. Look at how many people still don't believe in global warming, and how fiercely they're opposed to the government taking initiatives to solve these problems. Look at a list of countries by population growth rate, and look at a list of countries by how much they recycle -- you'll see a compelling correlation.
- bayesianhorse 13y ago
  So, in your view, the most "overpopulated" regions in the world control the biggest part of the global economy?
- lutusp 13y ago
  Anyone who think the problems caused by overpopulation are limited to the uneducated, is himself uneducated. It's a classic case of self-reference.
  - seclorum 13y ago
    Its a projection of Malthusian ethics: "Humans are stupid". Actually the point of this article is: "Evidence suggests that despite what we think: Humans are smart".
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > Actually the point of this article is: "Evidence suggests that despite what we think: Humans are smart". Yes, and ironically enough, the article represents a glaring counterexample of its own thesis.
bayesianhorse 13y ago
Good to hear that I'm not the only one with this opinion. While I'm all for keeping resource-consumption in check and keeping sustainability in mind, I don't like what people say about overpopulatiion. Sometimes I would hear people hoping that population numbers would decrease by natural catastrophies or diseases. Or they caution the expansion of health services in Africa "because it would make the problems worse".
- lutusp 13y ago
  > While I'm all for keeping resource-consumption in check and keeping sustainability in mind, I don't like what people say about overpopulatiion. That's your argument? That you don'e like it? I don't like it either, but mass death is how nature deals with species who exceed the carrying capacity of their environments. > Sometimes I would hear people hoping that population numbers would decrease by natural catastrophies or diseases. People don't hope for that, but they expect it as a natural consequence of biological growth. And they're right. The evidence is clear -- eventually mass birth is balanced by mass death. We're already seeing the first stages. > Good to hear that I'm not the only one with this opinion. Oh, you aren't the only one, not by any means. Most people think there's no reason to think about this. Natural selection efficiently chooses those who don't believe it's worth thinking about, and over time they become the entire surviving population -- people who accept mass death as a practical regulatory mechanism. More here: http://arachnoid.com/evolution http://arachnoid.com/evolution
  - ddorian43 13y ago
    what are the first stages?
  - IsThisObvious 13y ago
    > We're already seeing the first stages. Can you support this? We're not seeing any mass deaths which are sufficient to even slow the population growth rate, and instead, seem to simply be seeing more statistically unlikely events as the population grows larger - which is what we would expect.
lutusp 13y ago
This is the most purblind, misguided editorial opinion I have read in weeks. It repeats an old saw often repeated by people who don't understand the Logistic function and its role is describing biological systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function The Logistic function concisely describes the behavior of biological systems that don't have any control over their numbers, as humans most certainly do not. At the left, the function's curve is nearly flat because there aren't enough living organisms to support a higher birth rate. At the right, the functions's curve is nearly flat because mass starvation and death prevents a higher birth rate. The Logistic function models a growing biological colony in a finite world, and it applies to any biological colony. For such a biological colony, eventually mass birth is balanced by mass death. Does this model have any bearing on the human biological colony? Let me answer by saying as time passes, more and more accounts of mass death are met by less and less surprise or alarm among the world's population. At Sandy Hook, a boy has a fight with his mother, so -- being a healthy young boy, possessed of normal instincts -- he kills her, then goes to a local school and kills as many people as he can possibly manage. The story makes national headlines for a few days, all those innocent children systematically killed by an amateur, acting on a whim. But that story evaporates, pushed out the public's consciousness by another story of mass death, and another. By contrast, when the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped in March 1932, it made national headlines for years -- years -- until the perpetrator was apprehended, tried, and executed in 1936. It's the story of one family, one child, one murder. Today that story wouldn't be able to compete with the latest mass murder account. "Oh, Bashar Assad has killed 1,500 people in a nerve gas attack. Oh, well, they're not anyone I know personally. What else is in the news?" The author of the linked editorial concludes his article by saying, "The only limits to creating a planet that future generations will be proud of are our imaginations and our social systems. In moving toward a better Anthropocene, the environment will be what we make it." Both claims are likely, but with one important difference -- future populations will wonder what we were thinking, as we struggled to avoid considering the consequences of our own actions. As to "the environment will be what we make it", that is certainly true -- we will gradually tolerate more and more mass death, a process that has already begun. At the next Sandy Hook mass killing, people will say, "Hey, what can you do? Boys will be boys. But this can't be allowed to stand in the way of progress."
telephonetemp 13y ago
This strikes me as a rare case in which the article itself contains (the academic equivalent of) middlebrow dismissal.
zobzu 13y ago
yay black & white comparisons. and climate change isn't due to human activity!
hannibal5 13y ago
The main failure of this article is that it assumes that social problems are outside biology and that they are easy to solve. Currently world produces enough food for everyone. Then why do we have 700 - 800 million malnourished people, even more people facing food insecurity, why we are destroying farmland and why are we wasting the primary macronutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K). Overpopulation is real because we as species are not distributing resources equally and we are not rational.
- seclorum 13y ago
  >The main failure of this article is that it assumes that social problems are outside biology and that they are easy to solve. The main point of this article is that the archeological record proves that this is the case. 200,000 years of evidence suggests that, in spite of our superstitions, we humans are capable of managing our resources and replenishing the world from which we derive our sustenance. Are you sure you're not just harboring a fixed superstition on the subject, which has just been challenged?
  - hannibal5 13y ago
    Yes. I'm 100% sure. If you don't believe me go and look at how we are capable of managing our resources in Sahelin region.
    - seclorum 13y ago
      .. okay, fine: then you go and see how we've managed our resources in .. oh, lets just take - The Whole of Europe - and compare. Just because some humans 'are stupid' doesn't mean all humans are. There is a lot of evidence that we, who choose to manage, will outlive those who choose to be stupid. 200,000 years of it, in fact. (Stupidity might be contagious; the point is though: so is intelligence.)
      - hannibal5 13y ago
        Population growth in Europe (whole continent) has stopped and is currently in decline.
aaron695 13y ago
If they have a valid point they are not telling it well or at all. They seem to think current food supplies can via efficiencies be increased magically by a 100% or something. They don't even seem to be looking at non food issues like oil use or the fact the 1st world (And it's mega resource use) is tripling. Let alone technologies that might increase the life span by years which'll cause 9 billion to seem like a small figure.
genofon 13y ago
The way I see is that technology goes with the money. The demographic boom is happening mostly in the third world which company will invest in technology to make resources available to all the people? and these countries that are facing the challenge of an increasing population will exploit the resources that they have too fast? that's what append in Easter Island: the population cut all the trees and they disappeared from the face of the heart.
pyre 13y ago
> Our predecessors in the genus Homo used social hunting strategies [...] to extract more sustenance from landscapes than would otherwise be possible. Social hunting strategies don't disprove the Earth having a "carrying capacity." You're not farming the animals that you hunt; they are part of the natural environment.
cnorgate 13y ago
The problem with this thinking is a failure to realize that we are already taxing the Earth far beyond its carrying capacity. To continue supporting even our current population will force us to devastate our planet to the point that we won't recognize it in 50-100 years. What's the point of supporting more people if we bring them into a miserable world? Certainly we COULD continue developing innovations that harness and shape the natural world to support continued human population growth... but that line of thinking doesn't give room to consider whether we SHOULD do that. Should population growth be a goal? What about raising the standard of living of all those who are already on the planet - helping them move from mere sustenance to abundance, and the opportunity to explore the true wonders life has to offer? Should we live in a world void of natural beauty? I don't think it's a fair trade to have a few more billion people on the planet if everyone then has to read about how beautiful the Earth was before we poisoned the seas, melted the ice caps and drained the soil of its nutrients. We are at a point now where we as a Human race can and should be thinking about our population growth responsibly. To suggest that we COULD adapt to a future world taxed by overpopulation doesn't imply that we SHOULD follow that path.
- pdonis 13y ago
  we are already taxing the Earth far beyond its carrying capacity And your evidence for this is? To continue supporting even our current population will force us to devastate our planet And your evidence for this is? What about raising the standard of living of all those who are already on the planet As the article clearly states, the obstacles to doing this are social and political, not environmental or technological. People are starving or living at bare subsistence level, to put it bluntly, because our social systems suck at empowering people to make a better life. We allow predatory individuals, whether they are tinpot dictators or investment bankers, to siphon off resources they don't need and will squander anyway at the expense of others. That is what we need to fix. Should we live in a world void of natural beauty? No, and we don't. before we poisoned the seas, melted the ice caps and drained the soil of its nutrients. And your evidence that this is happening is? More precisely, your evidence that all these things are worse than they were, say, 1000 years ago, is?
  - 13y ago
grannyg00se 13y ago
"Who knows what will be possible with the technologies of the future? " This entire argument is based on the idea that we should be able to continually expand carrying capacity by our inventiveness. Stating for example increased farming yield with technology. Not only is there a likely limit to our ability to squeeze more and more out of finite resources, but the author completely ignores the subtle long term damage that our technology creates. Our current food production systems are highly toxic to the environment and are a major source of CO2 output. So while we increased food carrying capacity we did so by reducing long term habitability of the planet. Personally, I'd like to see populatin growth reduced by a global increase in quality of live. But not western culture consumption obsessed quality of life. That would need to change. As would the growth based financial system. Those two go hand in hand so this could all gradually happen at the same time. In theory.
- gd1 13y ago
  In what possible way can freeing fossilized carbon back (where it came from) into the carbon cycle "reduce long term habitability of the planet"?. It may make it awkward for some low lying cities in the short term, but long term it guarantees a warmer, moister, more bountiful planet if anything.
  - phillnom 13y ago
    In what way does it guarantee a more "bountiful planet" other than more extreme weather?
    - gd1 13y ago
      Basic biology? Are you seriously asking or just being obtuse? Do you know what the world looked like the last time we had 1000+ ppm CO2? Teeming with plant life. C3 plants were facing extinction if CO2 levels dropped any further than they had, we've done the biosphere a huge favour by digging it up and putting it back in the air where it came from. Maybe we haven't done humans a favour, but that's a different conversation.
fedvasu 13y ago
I think we are seeing evolution and natural selection in action right in front of our eyes here. Nature produces stupid people like this are in influential position and most of our species has this mentality and we will reach a point where it is truly unsustainable and nature has it's way in form mass extinction events, even if we survive that, our species is way more violent and a civil/traditional war will obliterate most of humanity.
tgb 13y ago
What a ridiculous article. Not because it doesn't make some reasonable points, but because it assumes these points are so unique and unknown. Doesn't everyone hear the classic Malthus-versus-technological-advancement argument in highschool? I certainly did multiple times. I mean, it's more-or-less the basis for all Sci-Fi: stories fall under either A) rich-get-richer and pending disaster as the Earth is overburdened, B) technology makes everything wonderful, C) Humans explicity inhibit their population, or D) humans find new land on other planets (usually also coupled with A,B, or C or Earth)). This isn't some debate that hasn't happened. This isn't some revelation that one comes to as an ecologist, this is an often-rehashed discussion. A worthy discussion, certainly, with points on both sides. But not one which the author has just now discovered a barely-known side of. Now if the author had done some serious research and presented actual evidence for his side, I'd be all ears. Too bad there wasn't anything new in the article.
drjesusphd 13y ago
I'm tired of this Buckminster Fuller / Alfred E. Neuman "What, me worry?" argument. Just because humans are clever doesn't mean we're exempt from natural and physics boundaries. To deny that is hubris to the extreme.

46 points by cs702 13y ago

I think they're looking over the social aspect of this. Areas with highest birthrates tend to be the most uneducated ones, and thus you will have a greater amount of people who will more likely make irresponsible decisions for the planet's sustainability. Look at how many people still don't believe in global warming, and how fiercely they're opposed to the government taking initiatives to solve these problems. Look at a list of countries by population growth rate, and look at a list of countries by how much they recycle -- you'll see a compelling correlation.

bayesianhorse 13y ago
So, in your view, the most "overpopulated" regions in the world control the biggest part of the global economy?
lutusp 13y ago
Anyone who think the problems caused by overpopulation are limited to the uneducated, is himself uneducated. It's a classic case of self-reference.
- seclorum 13y ago
  Its a projection of Malthusian ethics: "Humans are stupid". Actually the point of this article is: "Evidence suggests that despite what we think: Humans are smart".
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > Actually the point of this article is: "Evidence suggests that despite what we think: Humans are smart". Yes, and ironically enough, the article represents a glaring counterexample of its own thesis.

bayesianhorse 13y ago

Good to hear that I'm not the only one with this opinion. While I'm all for keeping resource-consumption in check and keeping sustainability in mind, I don't like what people say about overpopulatiion. Sometimes I would hear people hoping that population numbers would decrease by natural catastrophies or diseases. Or they caution the expansion of health services in Africa "because it would make the problems worse".

lutusp 13y ago
> While I'm all for keeping resource-consumption in check and keeping sustainability in mind, I don't like what people say about overpopulatiion. That's your argument? That you don'e like it? I don't like it either, but mass death is how nature deals with species who exceed the carrying capacity of their environments. > Sometimes I would hear people hoping that population numbers would decrease by natural catastrophies or diseases. People don't hope for that, but they expect it as a natural consequence of biological growth. And they're right. The evidence is clear -- eventually mass birth is balanced by mass death. We're already seeing the first stages. > Good to hear that I'm not the only one with this opinion. Oh, you aren't the only one, not by any means. Most people think there's no reason to think about this. Natural selection efficiently chooses those who don't believe it's worth thinking about, and over time they become the entire surviving population -- people who accept mass death as a practical regulatory mechanism. More here: http://arachnoid.com/evolution http://arachnoid.com/evolution
- ddorian43 13y ago
  what are the first stages?
- IsThisObvious 13y ago
  > We're already seeing the first stages. Can you support this? We're not seeing any mass deaths which are sufficient to even slow the population growth rate, and instead, seem to simply be seeing more statistically unlikely events as the population grows larger - which is what we would expect.

lutusp 13y ago

This is the most purblind, misguided editorial opinion I have read in weeks. It repeats an old saw often repeated by people who don't understand the Logistic function and its role is describing biological systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function The Logistic function concisely describes the behavior of biological systems that don't have any control over their numbers, as humans most certainly do not. At the left, the function's curve is nearly flat because there aren't enough living organisms to support a higher birth rate. At the right, the functions's curve is nearly flat because mass starvation and death prevents a higher birth rate. The Logistic function models a growing biological colony in a finite world, and it applies to any biological colony. For such a biological colony, eventually mass birth is balanced by mass death. Does this model have any bearing on the human biological colony? Let me answer by saying as time passes, more and more accounts of mass death are met by less and less surprise or alarm among the world's population. At Sandy Hook, a boy has a fight with his mother, so -- being a healthy young boy, possessed of normal instincts -- he kills her, then goes to a local school and kills as many people as he can possibly manage. The story makes national headlines for a few days, all those innocent children systematically killed by an amateur, acting on a whim. But that story evaporates, pushed out the public's consciousness by another story of mass death, and another. By contrast, when the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped in March 1932, it made national headlines for years -- years -- until the perpetrator was apprehended, tried, and executed in 1936. It's the story of one family, one child, one murder. Today that story wouldn't be able to compete with the latest mass murder account. "Oh, Bashar Assad has killed 1,500 people in a nerve gas attack. Oh, well, they're not anyone I know personally. What else is in the news?" The author of the linked editorial concludes his article by saying, "The only limits to creating a planet that future generations will be proud of are our imaginations and our social systems. In moving toward a better Anthropocene, the environment will be what we make it." Both claims are likely, but with one important difference -- future populations will wonder what we were thinking, as we struggled to avoid considering the consequences of our own actions. As to "the environment will be what we make it", that is certainly true -- we will gradually tolerate more and more mass death, a process that has already begun. At the next Sandy Hook mass killing, people will say, "Hey, what can you do? Boys will be boys. But this can't be allowed to stand in the way of progress."

telephonetemp 13y ago

This strikes me as a rare case in which the article itself contains (the academic equivalent of) middlebrow dismissal.

zobzu 13y ago

yay black & white comparisons. and climate change isn't due to human activity!

hannibal5 13y ago

The main failure of this article is that it assumes that social problems are outside biology and that they are easy to solve. Currently world produces enough food for everyone. Then why do we have 700 - 800 million malnourished people, even more people facing food insecurity, why we are destroying farmland and why are we wasting the primary macronutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K). Overpopulation is real because we as species are not distributing resources equally and we are not rational.

seclorum 13y ago
>The main failure of this article is that it assumes that social problems are outside biology and that they are easy to solve. The main point of this article is that the archeological record proves that this is the case. 200,000 years of evidence suggests that, in spite of our superstitions, we humans are capable of managing our resources and replenishing the world from which we derive our sustenance. Are you sure you're not just harboring a fixed superstition on the subject, which has just been challenged?
- hannibal5 13y ago
  Yes. I'm 100% sure. If you don't believe me go and look at how we are capable of managing our resources in Sahelin region.
  - seclorum 13y ago
    .. okay, fine: then you go and see how we've managed our resources in .. oh, lets just take - The Whole of Europe - and compare. Just because some humans 'are stupid' doesn't mean all humans are. There is a lot of evidence that we, who choose to manage, will outlive those who choose to be stupid. 200,000 years of it, in fact. (Stupidity might be contagious; the point is though: so is intelligence.)
    - hannibal5 13y ago
      Population growth in Europe (whole continent) has stopped and is currently in decline.

aaron695 13y ago

If they have a valid point they are not telling it well or at all. They seem to think current food supplies can via efficiencies be increased magically by a 100% or something. They don't even seem to be looking at non food issues like oil use or the fact the 1st world (And it's mega resource use) is tripling. Let alone technologies that might increase the life span by years which'll cause 9 billion to seem like a small figure.

genofon 13y ago

The way I see is that technology goes with the money. The demographic boom is happening mostly in the third world which company will invest in technology to make resources available to all the people? and these countries that are facing the challenge of an increasing population will exploit the resources that they have too fast? that's what append in Easter Island: the population cut all the trees and they disappeared from the face of the heart.

pyre 13y ago

> Our predecessors in the genus Homo used social hunting strategies [...] to extract more sustenance from landscapes than would otherwise be possible. Social hunting strategies don't disprove the Earth having a "carrying capacity." You're not farming the animals that you hunt; they are part of the natural environment.

cnorgate 13y ago

The problem with this thinking is a failure to realize that we are already taxing the Earth far beyond its carrying capacity. To continue supporting even our current population will force us to devastate our planet to the point that we won't recognize it in 50-100 years. What's the point of supporting more people if we bring them into a miserable world? Certainly we COULD continue developing innovations that harness and shape the natural world to support continued human population growth... but that line of thinking doesn't give room to consider whether we SHOULD do that. Should population growth be a goal? What about raising the standard of living of all those who are already on the planet - helping them move from mere sustenance to abundance, and the opportunity to explore the true wonders life has to offer? Should we live in a world void of natural beauty? I don't think it's a fair trade to have a few more billion people on the planet if everyone then has to read about how beautiful the Earth was before we poisoned the seas, melted the ice caps and drained the soil of its nutrients. We are at a point now where we as a Human race can and should be thinking about our population growth responsibly. To suggest that we COULD adapt to a future world taxed by overpopulation doesn't imply that we SHOULD follow that path.

pdonis 13y ago
we are already taxing the Earth far beyond its carrying capacity And your evidence for this is? To continue supporting even our current population will force us to devastate our planet And your evidence for this is? What about raising the standard of living of all those who are already on the planet As the article clearly states, the obstacles to doing this are social and political, not environmental or technological. People are starving or living at bare subsistence level, to put it bluntly, because our social systems suck at empowering people to make a better life. We allow predatory individuals, whether they are tinpot dictators or investment bankers, to siphon off resources they don't need and will squander anyway at the expense of others. That is what we need to fix. Should we live in a world void of natural beauty? No, and we don't. before we poisoned the seas, melted the ice caps and drained the soil of its nutrients. And your evidence that this is happening is? More precisely, your evidence that all these things are worse than they were, say, 1000 years ago, is?
- 13y ago

grannyg00se 13y ago

"Who knows what will be possible with the technologies of the future? " This entire argument is based on the idea that we should be able to continually expand carrying capacity by our inventiveness. Stating for example increased farming yield with technology. Not only is there a likely limit to our ability to squeeze more and more out of finite resources, but the author completely ignores the subtle long term damage that our technology creates. Our current food production systems are highly toxic to the environment and are a major source of CO2 output. So while we increased food carrying capacity we did so by reducing long term habitability of the planet. Personally, I'd like to see populatin growth reduced by a global increase in quality of live. But not western culture consumption obsessed quality of life. That would need to change. As would the growth based financial system. Those two go hand in hand so this could all gradually happen at the same time. In theory.

gd1 13y ago
In what possible way can freeing fossilized carbon back (where it came from) into the carbon cycle "reduce long term habitability of the planet"?. It may make it awkward for some low lying cities in the short term, but long term it guarantees a warmer, moister, more bountiful planet if anything.
- phillnom 13y ago
  In what way does it guarantee a more "bountiful planet" other than more extreme weather?
  - gd1 13y ago
    Basic biology? Are you seriously asking or just being obtuse? Do you know what the world looked like the last time we had 1000+ ppm CO2? Teeming with plant life. C3 plants were facing extinction if CO2 levels dropped any further than they had, we've done the biosphere a huge favour by digging it up and putting it back in the air where it came from. Maybe we haven't done humans a favour, but that's a different conversation.

fedvasu 13y ago

I think we are seeing evolution and natural selection in action right in front of our eyes here. Nature produces stupid people like this are in influential position and most of our species has this mentality and we will reach a point where it is truly unsustainable and nature has it's way in form mass extinction events, even if we survive that, our species is way more violent and a civil/traditional war will obliterate most of humanity.

tgb 13y ago

What a ridiculous article. Not because it doesn't make some reasonable points, but because it assumes these points are so unique and unknown. Doesn't everyone hear the classic Malthus-versus-technological-advancement argument in highschool? I certainly did multiple times. I mean, it's more-or-less the basis for all Sci-Fi: stories fall under either A) rich-get-richer and pending disaster as the Earth is overburdened, B) technology makes everything wonderful, C) Humans explicity inhibit their population, or D) humans find new land on other planets (usually also coupled with A,B, or C or Earth)). This isn't some debate that hasn't happened. This isn't some revelation that one comes to as an ecologist, this is an often-rehashed discussion. A worthy discussion, certainly, with points on both sides. But not one which the author has just now discovered a barely-known side of. Now if the author had done some serious research and presented actual evidence for his side, I'd be all ears. Too bad there wasn't anything new in the article.

drjesusphd 13y ago

I'm tired of this Buckminster Fuller / Alfred E. Neuman "What, me worry?" argument. Just because humans are clever doesn't mean we're exempt from natural and physics boundaries. To deny that is hubris to the extreme.