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The world is not overpopulated

Overpopulation is a myth that's been going around since the dawn of eugenics since the entire point of it is to reduce the number of undesirable people and the undesirable people for some reason, are never of European extraction.

There is enough food, power, and materials for everybody. We live in a post-scarcity world. If a warehouse full of food cannot be sold, that food will always be thrown out rather than donated. We sprawl out our cities rather than build them up because there is so much space. Our arable land is used for luxury goods and meat.

We will literally go to another country, train and fund killers to put dictators in charge, the dictators let our corporations buy all the land, and then that land is used to grow luxury goods the locals barely see a dime from and never get to enjoy. Then we complain about them having too many kids.

If the population of the earth was half of it was right now, the amount of hunger in the world would be the same.
MiserableAtBest · 22-25, F
“If the population of the earth was half of it was right now, the amount of hunger in the world would be the same.”

THIS. Greed and opportunism has always been around, just crack open any history book.
BlueVeins · 22-25
It depends on how you define overpopulation. I generally agree that we're not currently at risk of eclipsing the Earth's current capacity to produce goods, given current technology and such. Even with our current wasteful food system, we still produce more than enough food for everyone, and the problem from that perspective is food distribution.

But we do face a credible threat of overpopulation in that the current population size exceeds the Earth's current capacity to regenerate harm done to its environment by us with current production practices. Increased demand for food has caused us to draw more and more water from aquifers, far faster than they replenish themselves. Population growth has lead to a spike in land needed for habitation, which in turn has lead to more and more incursion into wild places by humans. More population also means more cars on the roads and more energy production, which in turn means more carbon emissions and accelerated climate change.
CountScrofula · 41-45, M
@BlueVeins Dude get over being offended and examine your arguments I'm not name-calling I'm actually point out why what you're saying is unbelievably problematic.

You cannot argue for access to birth control, changing religious views, and increasing education as a means for reducing population without including race as a component. This is explicitly and absolutely about applying your political views to post-colonial countries because once again, whitey knows best and their high birth rates are scary to you.

Of course poverty is the cause here. That's what I've been saying this whole time it is foundational to everything I am talking about.

Ludicrous, unsustainable wealth is killing the planet and the more we talk about population, the more we decide to punch down instead of punch up.
BlueVeins · 22-25
@CountScrofula
You cannot argue for access to birth control, changing religious views, and increasing education as a means for reducing population without including race as a component.

Ah yes, the colonialist political view that women are people, everyone should decide when to start a family, and God isn't real. What you're doing is the international equivalent of using state's rights to oppose the nationwide abolition of slavery.

Ludicrous, unsustainable wealth is killing the planet and the more we talk about population, the more we decide to punch down instead of punch up.

Yeah, there would also be less ludicrous, unsustainable wealth if there were fewer people. The upper class derives that wealth from skimming labor value off the rest of the population, and the middle class derives wealth from selling high-end services to all classes of people (though, disproportionately the upper class).

If your point is that overpopulation shouldn't be the main focus, I generally agree, but that's completely different from saying it's not even real.
BlueVeins · 22-25
@CountScrofula Wasn't offended, btw. But if I have position X and you tell me that I actually have position Y, idk how to convince you that I actually have position X. That seems like a rhetorically difficult position on my end.
SW-User
I agree. Overpopulation would mean that there are not enough resources to sustain the population, but that is not true. Resources are just unequally distributed. That said, I think the world can become overpopulated (a lot of people like to say, “well, look at all the empty space!” but a lot of that empty space is dry, non-arable land) and high population creates other problems, but overpopulation discourse is almost always some kind of shaming of poorer countries and that is simply elitism and Western chauvinism. India might have a much higher population than the U.S., but Western counties like the U.S. consume far more per capita.
revenant · F
@SW-User all I am seeing is West shaming not Africa shaming. Nobody goes to Africa or India and says : stop having so many kids you cannot feed BUT people in the West are being shamed for having kids in the name of " save the planet".
SW-User
@revenant Well, yes, we shame our own all the time (and the same demographics are most targeted: the poor, the “welfare queens”, etc.)
revenant · F
@SW-User I would say the West is very arrogant for expecting the rest of the world to accept its standards
Neoerectus · M
read up on the masses of other earthling extinctions ( increasing logarithmically). These exceed background rates in orders of magnitude. All this parallels human population growth... esp since the dawn of industrialization.

Factor in dropping aquifers, desertification, and other climate damage using objectively researched information and your claim is laughably flawed... i.e. outright misinformation.

Major food producers gathered and spoke of the food production precipice we are coming to due to current agricultural production methods. They are resource consumptive. A major fall is highly likely.

Believe or not. It is like gravity. It does not need your belief to exist.
deadgerbil · 26-30
If a warehouse full of food cannot be sold, that food will always be thrown out rather than donated

I work for Kroger and they do this all the time.

Yet they will also sponsor Zero Hunger Zero Waste which is so hypocritical.

Societies across the world typically put profits over people and only care about people when there's some money to be made. So many people go without bc others want all the food, clothes, land etc and are greedy af.

Building cities vertically instead of sprawling them out needs to happen more, esp bc I don't want to see wildlife etc be ruined to accommodate our billions of people. I'm glad that as countries get more developed, populations tend to decrease bc we don't need to keep on growing like that imo.
CountScrofula · 41-45, M
@deadgerbil Big dick gerbil gets it in one. Exactly this.
Graylight · 51-55, F
You don't factor in natural resources and our impact on the climate. It's not a matter of how many bodies are here or who eats at night, it's about an environment that has grown unable to sustain this species. Every creature, herd, colony or tribe is limited by natural resources. Then those are exhausted, the population will decrease to a sustainable size.

Don't think Covid wasn't a trial run.
Graylight · 51-55, F
@CountScrofula Well, between you and literally every scientific discipline and its experts, I’ll take the latter.
CountScrofula · 41-45, M
@Graylight I appreciate you dodging my point entirely and just appealing to authority.
Graylight · 51-55, F
@CountScrofula Your point is flawed.
revenant · F
Cities are overpopulated. Too many humans on top of each other so we are feeling overwhelmed
revenant · F
@pride49 where is the work ?
pride49 · 31-35, M
@revenant heck if I know, pick someplace lol
revenant · F
@pride49 easily said but not so easily done
HannibalAteMeOut · 22-25, F
They think "plebs" are taking up too much space, how about we squat some of their numerous useless villas since they care so much, we can find space and resources just fine.
CountScrofula · 41-45, M
All y'all who want the world to be less populated should explain to me how you intend to achieve this.
revenant · F
@CountScrofula but you have to wonder who is happier in the end..
CountScrofula · 41-45, M
@revenant This is actually what I care more about. I don't want wealth I want happiness.

That said, money doesn't buy happiness but poverty buys nothing.
revenant · F
@CountScrofula My thoughts exactly.
ViciDraco · 36-40, M
The question of overpopulation actually holds a ton of variables.

What quality of life is desired for everyone?
What population density is acceptable for rural vs urban areas?
How much space should be left wild?

I personally think we should try to get back down to under 4 billion until we can go extraplanetary. I do not think this is something where we need to Thanos snap people away, but just a gradual ramp down over a couple hundred years. The wealthiest countries are already naturally doing so.

I believe we can do that for all the reasons you give for why the planet is not overpopulated. We can support everyone right now if we change our economics and productivity incentives. Ideally, future population decline would then pair with better quality of life for all people.

My reasons for wanting a population decline is to reduce human development across the globe. Return land and space to the wilds and try to encourage biodiversity to once again take root. It's not a crisis reaction but a vision of a more balanced future.

If we don't fix our incentives and economics, the planet and most people living in it are screwed. That is true whether we cut our population in half or double it.
JimboSaturn · 51-55, M
@ViciDraco My point exactly . I am not optimistic that we can live in harmony with the rest of the natural world with more people. Do we really want or need more people? Why must we push the envelope to our carrying capacity.
JimboSaturn · 51-55, M
I just don't want more people. I saddens me watch the countryside turn into urban sprawl. To see beautiful nature turn into Walmarts, and strip malls.
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JimboSaturn · 51-55, M
@CountScrofula I have heard that too. Population will level off.
SW-User
@JimboSaturn this my issue. We are connected to nature and need it for our health. Where I live every inch of beach is owned and built on, you can’t enjoy the ocean. It’s sad and there’s no where to go and enjoy being outdoors
With modern farming techniques using a fraction of the land and 90% less water we have a long way to go in terms of population.

I do think we need to get a handle on things now for the planets sake because there is a lot of smart planning needed.
CountScrofula · 41-45, M
@Ozymandiaz Oh absolutely we're headed for the apocalypse. It's just not being driven by population.
Eternity · 26-30, M
The way we live could be adjusted to suit these numbers, but it won't. Either change the world order, or reduce the population.
Eternity · 26-30, M
@CountScrofula thats like saying "the cancerous tumors on the right side of your lung arent as big as the ones on the left so we're just not going to worry about those..."

Less people means less demand for power, farmland, clean water, etc.
CountScrofula · 41-45, M
@Eternity If one person demands 100x more resources than another person then you're really getting the problem wrong.

There's also the basic fact that doing shit like building trains and moving to nuclear energy and turning megayachts into scrap heaps is a hell of a lot more realistic policy wise than eliminating whatever percentage of the human population.

Like if you say we're 50 years from armageddon how many people do you need to remove from the planet to avert that? This is a fool's errand and a con artist's trick to get you to look away from the exploitation waste and towards the people who have committed the horrific crime of existing and having families.
Eternity · 26-30, M
@CountScrofula every birth you prevent gives you a little more time to work on changing the way we do things to where perhaps such methods would no longer be necessary.

Sometimes you need to delay the issue in order to give you enough time to actually solve it.

Like braking before the turn.

It's not easy but that's life. If you refuse to make the hard choices then everyone dies whereas if you do what you must some may not get a chance to live in the short term, but in the long term many magnitudes more are afforded the opportunity to be born.
yes, but no.

the anthropocentric view of the situation ceases to work here.

there are laws of nature. these laws govern supra-species processes. specialists know this, but it is impossible to accurately predict the numbers when a quantitative process turns into a qualitative one.
graphite · 61-69, M
European birth rates are all well below replacement levels. They are the ones disappearing. Same with the entire western world.
JimboSaturn · 51-55, M
We also impact all the other life on the planet and alter our planet's systems. I think this also plays into this. The more humans there are on this planet living the way we do, the more degradation and species exctinction.
JimboSaturn · 51-55, M
@CountScrofula Oh ya , we suck.
CountScrofula · 41-45, M
@JimboSaturn I'm Canadian, and 85% of my country live in a straight line from Windsor to Quebec City.

WHY ISN'T THERE A TRAIN THERE WE'D TAKE SO MANY CARS OFF OF THE ROAD
JimboSaturn · 51-55, M
@CountScrofula I'm a fellow Canadian and like you, I'm disgusted. Our public transportation sucks, we have sprawling wasteful cities. Make big promises to lower CO2 emisions but fail miserably.
Seems like the more people have to waste, the more they do. I know imagine what can be done with better transportation infrastructure between Quebec City to Windsor?
What was her name? Margaret Sanger? She had her sights on who were ““undesirables”. Sad part of history.
Capitalism is killing the ecosystem. It's also telling people to die for it.
One thing we can agree on..
there’s enough room and resources for 100 billion if you remove the greed of the 1%
MrBrownstone · 46-50, M
With deforestation will air be in short supply?
SW-User
Explain cyborgs then
Dshhh · M
There is enough food, power, and materials for everybody. We live in a post-scarcity world. If a warehouse full of food cannot be sold, that food will always be thrown out rather than donated. We sprawl out our cities rather than build them up because there is so much space. Our arable land is used for luxury goods and meat.
it is true we SHOULD be living in a post scarcity world
but greed and the quest for ever more power stands in the way
Northwest · M
The US and Canada may be underpopulated, but that's not true for other parts of the world.
Yes but it is funny to see some of you who would claim otherwise support this motion now
SW-User
I guess this is fine if all you care about is humans
JimboSaturn · 51-55, M
@SW-User Exactly
What’s 8 billion?? Right??
8 billion people?

Look at what they have done to the planet
CountScrofula · 41-45, M
@InOtterWords That's industry not population. Embracing cleaner ways to live is possible, just not profitable.
JimboSaturn · 51-55, M
@InOtterWords It was 4 billion when I was a kid.
SatanBurger · 36-40, FVIP
SW-User
American Imperialism.

Accept it or face the consequences.
caesar7 · 61-69, M
I don't believe it. 8 Billion people!!!!!!!!!! That is crazy!!!!!!!! The more we expand, the more the earth suffers.
CountScrofula · 41-45, M
@caesar7 The more yachts we build the more the earth suffers.
caesar7 · 61-69, M
@CountScrofula ...and land mass....we are cancer on this planet. We just take and expand. We are selfish and uncaring about the planet. All we care is the mighty God-called money. We will die for it and by it. The more people we populate, the more money CEO's and the corporate world lick their lips. They don't care......my opinion will never change. We are on our way to self-destruction.
MethDozer · M
I'm in the middle on this. From a resource perspective, you're right. On the other side I think we are in an overpopulated state in terms of room for us and the rest of the Earth's inhabitants along with increased diseases and other negative aspects that come from crowding.

That said I don't think there's a need for a human solution. Nature and human nature specifically will kinda work it out. The trend of lower birth rates in many populated parts of the globe being a sign of that
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