Bullshit. Overpopulation is a neocolonialist myth about why developed countries get to keep doing the same thing and mid&low-income countries have to cut emissions while somehow also fulfilling their debt obligations to the high income countries by being their slaves.
The overconsumption of high income countries is mainly driven by their own wealth inequality & the sheer greed of every industry not population either.
You don't understand ecosystem carrying capacity overshoot. For a gentle introduction, pick up Catton's book. You can download it from the usual sites.
Resource consumption is not a linear function of population you malthusian pseudointellectual garbage. I know more than you
The industrial agriculture that supports our current population is entirely dependent on fossil fuels.
At some point humanity is going to have to face life without fossil fuels, whether that be by a far too late attempt at curbing climate change, or due to climate change/water shortage related reductions in population that reduce production, or just due to dwindling EROI as we have to drill in more difficult places to keep the oil pumping.
A study in the research journal Nature Geosciences concluded that fertilizer made from synthetic nitrogen and ammonia was responsible for feeding more than 50 percent of the global population in 2008 (Kinder Morgan, 2020).
Here’s that study: https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/wps/cato/0028024/f_0028024_22818.pdf
Seems pretty clear that if the use of a finite resource is the only way we can sustain the population - we’re overpopulated. Not to mention that said finite resource is also actively killing us and making agriculture more difficult due to extreme weather.
You have a reasonable argument, but then the solution should be to stop all fossil fuel consumption except for the production of life-sustaining products, like food.
According to this link, food production accounts for only 26% of total carbon output. There we go, problem solved. We can cut total carbon output by 74% and still produce the same amount of food.
I didn’t say there was a solution. Stopping fossil fuels, along with plummeting quality of life, means less global dimming, which would accelerate our impending BOE, and the loss of albedo from that would further accelerate warming. We’re way past any possibility of a solution.
I wasn't even aware of those details, even though I share the feeling that we're past any possibility of a solution. I want to believe that there is a chance and not be a doomer and give up, but it's hard. I hope we're wrong. :(
Hahahahaha oh man you are just mentally imprisoning yourself for no reason
Resource consumption is not a linear function of population you complete dunderhead 🤣
Resource consumption is not a linear function of population you complete dunderhead 🤣
Your argument that overconsumption is the culprit but not population doesn't make sense when the equation is (Population X Consumption)= Environmental impact.
There is no consumption without the population.
And virtually all the published everything about overpopulation is fully onboard that first world consumption needs to come down and 3rd world needs to go up to be fair.
Why does everyone think talking about overpopulation means you are hitler looking for lebensraum?
Why does everyone think talking about overpopulation means you are hitler looking for lebensraum?
Because that's exactly what it sounds like the path that people are alluding to when they mention overpopulation before or especially without overconsumption. I used to think that overpopulation was the problem too, but I have come to my senses.
yeah but there is no consumption without population. Pop*consumption= environmental impact.
Talking about population doesn't imply ignoring consumption as the best target for mitigating the problem. But the market will do that as prices rise and kick more population out of the "consumption is viable" cohort. unfortunately the market starts with the poorest and least consuming
I completely agree.
For those disagreeing, let's use CO2 emissions as a proxy for resource consumption. CO2 emissions per capita per year is 38.2 metric tons in Qatar, while it's 0.1 metric tons in Uganda (as of 2018 - source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita). That means one person in Qatar (pop: 2.8 million) consumes as many resources as 382 people in Uganda (pop: 48 million). By the way, for the US, that figure on the same list is 16.1 metric tons, so one person in the US consumes as much as 161 people in Uganda (pop: 333 million).
How could anyone with a straight face say that "overpopulation" is the problem? That's a straight up genocidal way to think about the issue of resource overshoot.
They don't care about real numbers. They want the numbers they made up
Do Malthusians ever get tired of being proven wrong?
The only reason these ideas are still around is because they appeal to bourgeois class interests. From a scientific standpoint, they have never been grounded in any sort of evidence or reason and their predictions consistently fail to manifest - while in the process, great amounts of harm have been carried out by it's believers. In the many, many years since these ideas first arose, there have been many excellent refutations of them, but so long as the material conditions that caused them to arise in the first place persist, so too will the ideas, no matter how much evidence is mounted against them, no matter how irrational they are shown to be, and no matter how much harm they cause.
Of course the natural conclusion to draw if it were taken seriously would be to start by "reducing the population" of those who consume the most, i.e. the richest people in society - at which point we might consider whether simply reducing consumption would be a better approach than whatever nonsense the Malthusians suggest - but it is well understood by everyone that this is the exact opposite of what the Malthusians want, which is to come after the poorest and most vulnerable in society. Because that is the whole point of this belief in "overpopulation:" to shift the blame for social problems away from the rich people who are actually causing them. Same as it ever was.
And just like all the eugenicists of old, the author treats everything that is in service to capital as fixed and immutable, while treating all other aspects of human experience as flexible and waiting to be transformed towards that goal. For example, the author brings up the meat industry, and uses its environmental impact as evidence for why human populations must be reduced. Yet at no point (as far as I read) does he consider the possibility of altering the meat industry or human levels of meat consumption to be more environmentally compatible. Why not? Because not everyone would be on board with it? But of course, not everyone is going to be on board with whatever solution the author has in mind either. But the meat industry is fully subservient to capitalist profits in a way that human reproduction is not. To alter or abolish the meat industry would mean to disrupt the profits of certain capitalists, which would mean confronting power. But to exert control over reproductive rights would mean an expansion of power against the poor and vulnerable. Malthusians/eugenicists will always choose the solution that serves capitalism regardless of how much the idea infringes on the rights and dignity of the poor.
These are not new ideas and carry all the same fallacies and BS that they always have.
I read the first part of this when it was posted, didn't get around to reading the rest of it until now. I had made some little mental notes about places where it seemed to me like it over-simplified things or otherwise made small mistakes. I wondered if people would use those to dismiss the whole thing as nonsense. As it turns out, the only top-level responses here ignored any and all merits and flaws of the paper itself and instead choose to argue against a straw man they've named Malthus. Can't say I'm too surprised really, but still it's a little disappointing.
MDPI isn't a great journal by any means and unfortunately I don't have a lot of time and energy these days to hunt for more and better ones. Quality of discussion in the community is also lacking. Not sure this can be fixed since overall engagement levels are dropping.
It seems like engagement levels are dropping all over the world. Let us hope that a sufficient fraction of the people dropping out of all visible kinds of civic and social engagement are turning on and tuning in to something else.
I think it represents people being fed up with both institutions in the real world and the decline of the quality of the internet since the last couple of decades. As for them tuning in to something else, I have seen much more interest in DIY, hard skills, personal projects and such of late, but nothing societal beyond that which would really bring people together. I think that's the best we can hope for at this time -- at least people learning useful skills or not sacrificing their whole lives to corporate ambition is a plus.
