We are producing enough food (and clothes, and appliances, etc., etc.) for 10 billion people, and the planet is burning. It is not sustainable long term. And, by “long term”, I don’t mean “the next 20 years”, I mean “the next 100-200 years”.
And the “manufactured crisis” of population decline hits really hard if you’re 12 and have no clue how the retirement system works.
They arrive at the right conclusion (capitalism is currently the cause of all suffering), but through completely stupid reasoning.
fuck these climate change deniers
The reason for the decline in birth rates amongst the “developed” nations is because there is no more growth potential for profits for the wealthy past a certain point. So they have to turn inward and eat away at the other classes to get that unsustainable growth they demand. Opportunities have dried up for becoming even just well off so when situations are insecure like that you see a sudden drop in birth rates. They can’t afford children.
I don’t know about your country, but here in Poland (and well, whole Europe), most historical statisticians point to two facts, that remained unchanged at least since medieval times and were proven times and times again:
- people in the cities have fewer children that people in the villages
- people in villages have fewer children the less they need hands to do the work
So yeah, everything you wrote is true, up to and including “people can’t afford children because of the new vampires”, but it’s not THE reason why they don’t have children.
(IIRC its best explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition)
Live in the USA, it’s not the only reason, but it’s something to consider as well. Thank you for the additional info.
Our rapidly depleting aquifers being used to produce those resources would suggest there are too many people.
World population in 2024 was 8.1 billion.
Doesn’t really matter but people please make sure your numbers are right before you use them. easily avoidable way to lose your credibility.
Edit: Oh wait it’s a double quote without date attribution. Assuming that original source did some basic numbers checking, that puts it at around 2018.
This post is an embarrassment to critical thinking.
yikes dude, your critical thinking skills seems to be lacking more…
either that or you somehow took the entirety of packing ppl on 5% of the globe as a centralized single point lol.
right? i sounds great until you realize oh shit… logistics exist… all those perishable goods don’t just magically appear on people’s plates… 2.3billion people’s worth of food waste for 7.7bn people is honestly bloody miraculous tbh… can we do more to reduce food waste in our rich nations? sure… would that help feed people in areas of famine? unlikely
did you know that when there’s an overproduction of food, rather than selling it, it just gets thrown away?
for example, if dairy farmers make more than their quotas allow, they are expected to simply throw their milk down the drain. thousands of liters of perfectly fine milk, completely wasted. and this sort of waste is not exclusive to dairy farms either
under capitalism, so much of food waste is entirely preventable, if not deliberately caused! just by ending this practice, ending the intercontinental shipping of perishable food (which means that, yes, you in europe, north america or australia would have to give up bananas, so sad) and turning supermarkets into food banks rather than stores (so no pretty displays of food outside fridges), i bet that we could save tons of food from getting wasted
But think of the prices! Imagine if supply weren’t artificially detached from demand, thus driving down commodities prices and CRASHING THE ECONOMY!?!?! And by economy I obviously mean my own profit margin.
I agree, it’s really hard to remember how to use things like cans and preservatives when it comes to shipping food to areas of famine.
Hard /s
A clear example was shown when USAID goods to help starving kids in the Middle East were burn. Or the supermarkets destroying food that is “not marketable”.
Haven’t you read the top comments on this thread? It’s impossible to feed people our excess and continue paying for things like USAID because of overpopulation… Apparently.
The “let them starve” eugenics propaganda is strong in the pseudo-science community.
Okay but what if and hear me out on this we change nothing and just use this as justification to keep doing that and victimizing the most vulnerable
That’s what the top comments on this thread say, seems to be the most agreed upon take unforunately.
This is a much less cool post when you realize that the Earth can only sustainably support 10 billion people if we never fly, give up a lot of our modern tech, and have rice make up 50% of our diet. Basically any meat is completely off the table, as with personal cars, and probably standalone houses. If I’m given the choice between not having kids and not flying to see my family for holidays, I’ll take the no-kids option.
So let’s build lots of highspeed rail? We went to the moon on less compute than your cell phone and modern tech could be way more sustainable if we properly optimized. Rice is fantastic and works for a significant chunk of the current population just fine. Meat? Just gotta grow that protein in other more sustainable/efficient ways. Cars are useless in a dense urban environments and make everything worse. Fuck cars. Standalone houses are a giant waste of space and when you design your neighborhoods around this idea, everything is too spread out to actually have proper density and utility.
This is a very cool post that does point out that all of these things are in such excess. You should give StrongTowns and NotJustBikes a watch on youtube for much more on the topic of urban design.
So basically it’s perfectly fine? But for some reason you made it sound horrible?
“I don’t see what’s the problem with everyone living like a desperate Indian untouchable!”
These takes are why socialism is a dirty word, all because you can’t just admit there needs to be some form of democratically agreed on population control and it doesn’t have to be fascist by design.
Aviation is about 2.5% of global emissions.
In the long run then yes, we need carbon neutral fuels, but it should be possible for people to fly a little and not destroy the planet.
The reason why aviation emissions are so bad is not so much the amount but where exactly they are emitted.
https://ourworldindata.org/global-aviation-emissions
4% of global warming to date. Flying will still be possible (and not uncommon) in a net zero world. Maybe americans will have to take the train to see their relatives, but they could just DACCS if they love TSA controls so much.
Like I said, it counts almost double. Aviation makes up 4% of the impact when 90% of the global population isn’t even flying in a year. Traveler numbers are tiny compared to other modes yet it causes a 4% chunk.
Aviation is outright terrible in its impact compared to rail, on corridors where both are an option. Of course, for many travels, only aviation is in option. That is a reality but doesn’t make aviation any better.
Agreed on all points.
Which gives me huge misgivings about the current space push.
Or you could just take a train
Overpopulation is not a myth. 36% of the earth’s mammalian biomass is Humans, only 5% is wild mammals. 71% of avian life is livestock. https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass
Half of all “habitable land” (which includes everything except deserts, tundra, salt flats, beaches, or exposed rock) is used for agriculture. Half of all land, for agriculture. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2019/12/agriculture-habitable-land/
Industrial farming is not sustainable at the current rate and relies on either mined or petrochemical derived ammonia which supplies the nitrogen necessary for protein. Synthetic Ammonia alone feeds half the world population and requires an additional 2% of the world’s power to produce.
The global ecoystem is in rapid decline.
I gave up finding appropriate sources halfway when I realized this post will just get removed eventually.
Humans today are like 300% more biomass than every mammal on earth 100,000 years ago.
It’s not the growth of ethanol (maize) and animal feed (soybeans) producing crops on the last 30 years, highly fucking inefficient and produced in the worst way possible, not even that pasture uses A LOT more land than agriculture while being a lot less energy dense, both using a lot more water than producing direct food, it’s the poors.
Edit: And also, beef is the major cause for deforestation too:
Also: animal ag uses 80% of all arable land with most of it destined for grazing land (which a lot of (rain-)-forest had to be razed for) while only producing 17% of global calories and 38% of global proteins. The rest comes from human edible plants. A global switch to a plant based diet would reduce land usage from 4 to 1 billion. It’s still possible to re-wild grazing lands.
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It doesn’t have to be one or the other, we can tackle multiple solutions simultaneously.
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Developing nations have proven to increase their carbon footprints over time, e.g. China, so the fact that they’re the fastest growing populations on earth is a serious issue we can address with solutions such as: empower women’s rights and advancing access to education and upward mobility in society. That was the same exact solution that the UN came to in their meeting in Cairo, Egypt in 1994.
EDIT: 3. less people consume less beef also
Producing beef is the most inefficient way to produce food, in both use of space and water, and energy. We don’t need to impose things on people if humanity reduces its beef consumption.
If we cut beef consumption by half, literally oligarchs would not have an economic reason to deforest the Amazon, because of the price drops. But no one wants to do that.
Developing nations have proven to increase their carbon footprints over time, e.g. China, so the fact that they’re the fastest growing populations on earth is a serious issue
You’re conflating a lot of words, gives an example for China, while Chinas population is not growing even (or will start to diminish on some years), associating different things into the same sentence is hard to pick what exactly you’re talking about, China or Africa (the last place where population growth is happening at large beyond the 2.1 fertility rate).
Beef is heavily subsidised either by giving money directly to the producers, or letting them get away with pollution (or deforestation in places like Brazil) and using terrible food and/or drugs for their product.
Without subsidies I’m pretty sure beef wouldn’t be affordable even in rich countries.
This mix of “things that are possible/reasonable” and “things that are wildly speculative” is interesting.
Producing beef is the most inefficient way to produce food, in both use of space and water, and energy.
Reasonable/possible
We don’t need to impose things on people if humanity reduces its beef consumption.
Wild speculation / nonsensical.
This is not at all how large societies have worked, in any time period, ever.
While it might be technically true, it’s missing a whole bunch of steps in the middle for it to be a practicality.
If we cut beef consumption by half, literally oligarchs would not have an economic reason to deforest the Amazon, because of the price drops. But no one wants to do that.
- Palm Oil
- Real Estate
- Mineral Speculation
- Wood
And that was just off of the top of my head.
Oligarchs gonna oligarch, removing one revenue source isn’t going to suddenly kill interest in the amazon, with it’s abundant resources and space.
While it might be technically true, it’s missing a whole bunch of steps in the middle for it to be a practicality.
As I said in my comment:
But no one wants to do that.
And about this:
And that was just off of the top of my head.
Beef is the major factor in the amazon, by a large margin, as in my original comment. Palm Oil is not a significant part in Brazil, nor real state. Mineral is mainly in Roraima, but not as big as beef, because it’s based on small operations, there are a lot of sources on this for gold mining and the local Yanomami indigenous population that fights agains this (as this is done on their land).
If you’re going to cherry pick at least cherry pick from the text being mentioned.
Your whole comment was :
If we cut beef consumption by half, literally oligarchs would not have an economic reason to deforest the Amazon, because of the price drops. But no one wants to do that.
and wasn’t the comment to which i was responding.
Beef is the major factor in the amazon, by a large margin, as in my original comment. Palm Oil is not a significant part in Brazil, nor real state. Mineral is mainly in Roraima, but not as big as beef, because it’s based on small operations, there are a lot of sources on this for gold mining and the local Yanomami indigenous population that fights agains this (as this is done on their land).
Cool story, still irrelevant to my point which was:
Oligarchs gonna oligarch
Create a revenue vacuum (like removing the biggest value stream in a region) and oligarchs gonna oligarch right in and expand another value stream to make up the difference.
I’m not advocating for this to happen, I’m saying that expecting beef reduction to remove oligarchs from the amazon is unrealistic.
They also sell the rainforest lumber, but lifestyle changes aside we should always pursue a lower total population via lower birthrates until we can restore natural order.
China was a developing nation a long time ago, and since 1700 their population has grown 11x over, and now they produce more emissions and utilize more landmass than any other nation on earth.
Total emissions or per capita?
less capita = less emissions
Chinese leadership are trying to promote population growth, again.
Wrong place, my bad
NP we good.
edit: dammit, real-time updates kicking my ass
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What is the ideal amount of biomass for humans? Same question for agricultural land. What’s the ideal amount? I’m torn between thinking this is just how things go or maybe I’m just terribly ignorant. At some point the majority of biomass was dinosaurs or something, so what? That’s the ebb and flow of life. It wasn’t the biomass of dinosaurs that caused their extinction. How do these biomass stats indicate overpopulation?
I can’t disagree with the industrial farming and overall ecosystem points you raise but the biomass bits seem awfully arbitrary.
I’d also say feeding 50% of the world’s population for 2% of the world’s energy seems pretty damn efficient.
The whole human biomass question is difficult to me. Half of humanity doesn’t have access to proper toilets. I have cheap products produced by contemporary slaves in asia. Fewer people with better conditions sounds good to me.
There was an article released this year that found 2-2.5 billion humans to be the carrying capacity of the earth. I’ve only read the abstract though.
https://researchnow.flinders.edu.au/en/publications/global-human-population-has-surpassed-earths-sustainable-carrying/
Open access:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ae51aaBerries in swedish forests go ungathered because the work pays so badly swedes refuse it and our new anti abuse laws stops the thai workers who did it for pennies earlier from coming here.
Good riddance, I say, people can gather their own blueberries and make their own jam - if the alternative is working conditions no one should have to suffer.If the aim is to have no one live in squalor and have everyone live a luxurious, but preferably more eco friendly, western lifestyle then how many humans can the planet support without degrading over time?
How can we make 4-6 hours of daily paid work enough to live on, globally?
How can we change society to stop chasing growth and find a system that allows future generation a planet with wildlife, clean air and water and a temperature that humans can enjoy not just survive?That was a weird ass study, they calculated the number based solely on historical population numbers and not any actual metrics regarding planetary capability. I have my doubts how useful a calculation that actually is.
They do use some more data than that, see my quote.
2.5. Indices of global change
We compared global human population size in the three main phases of facilitation, transition, and the negative r∼ N phase (see Results) to the global temperature anomaly obtained from the HadCRUT.5.0.2.0 ensemble prediction anomaly [56] relative to the 1960–1991 baseline (data available from 1850 to the present).
We hypothesize that the strongest positive relationship between human population size and climate change occurred during the negative phase because of consumption externalities such as increasing natural resource exploitation and loss of biodiversity. This can result from societies in the period of declining r and resources subsequently driving environmental degradation. In contrast, societies in the facilitation phase might have adequate resources to fuel increasing population growth rates.
We also used two additional indices of global change in the analyses to corroborate the results using global temperature anomaly: global ecological footprint measured as the number of Earths required to meet consumption rates [29], and total annual CO2-e emissions (ourworldindata.org).But that’s still based on random points in history. Their argument is basically ‘climate change started at this point, so that’s where the max sustainable population is’. Which makes absolutely no sense. Technologies were different, cultural attitudes were different, yadda yadda. It’s Malthusian arguments in a new (and less logical) wrapper.
If the benefits of a trade is on the back of the worker then it’s not a trade. They should rise the price so they can pay enough.
0%
The equivalent of dinosaurs are mammals, not humans. But the biomass of humans isn’t really the issue, resource consumption and pollution are. Even if we transition to 100% renewable energies, which we have to sooner or later, unless civilization collapses before fossile fuel runs out, we rely on countless finite resources. The more people the more of a problem that becomes.
Agriculture is part of this issue, a lot of it is currently running on depleting soil snd much of the yield multiplier is coming from oil (fertilizer and fuel). Just because in recent time agriculture performance could keep up with population explosion, doesn’t mean this will be the case forever, especiall as car centric utban planning eats up fertile land at an excelerating rate and usable land for agriculture is already pretty much maxed out.
Providing everyone with a good live just gets harder with every billion more in the planet as resources are finite and exponential progress can’g go on forever.
Personally I’d say 10% each humans and livestock, or some similar ratio such that wildlife remain 80%.
Another option is to return as far as the proven stable number of 2 million humans total, though that would take many many many generations to do and isn’t even guaranteed to be better for the environment since sometimes forest management and natural disaster response can actually be helpful.
Definitely lower than 2 billion. It’s going to take a lot of figuring out since we clearly have no idea what number will bring global ecostability.
The 36℅ you cited is for Mammalians, that doesn’t mean the rest of Biomass can be compared to it.
Animal Biomass is around 0.5℅, so that puts it into relation.
Also the earth consisist of 70% Water, this means Land mass is 30℅ and from that 30℅, around 46% is used by Humans.
Also Land use has been steadily falling with modern agriculture. There was a time when Europa barely had any forests left, because of the extensive agricultural need for Farmland.
I know “numbers scary”, but I think a bit of contextualisation can’t hurt.
NB: Ecofascism is still Fascism.
You’re gonna sit there and tell me it’s fine if only 5% of mammals are neither human nor livestock? That’s a horrifying thought alone, it means we’ve consumed or destroyed all of nature that we had the capability of doing such to. We should not be the 95% under any circumstance. We should not be 50%. We need there to be nature, we need there to be a natural order.
For the record, the larger groups are fish and arthropods. That’s it. Sauropsida or Reptiles and amphibians are such a small amount of biomass that they’re completely negligible.
BTW, it’s super cringe when you call the advocacy of women’s rights and education as “Fascism”. You know who else fights against the idea of allowing or promoting population decline? Christofascists and Technofascists like Elon Musk, they’re pushing for population growth instead.
“(…) we need there to be natural order.”
The natural order of things, does it involve a concept of degeneracy and normalcy?
Always funny how quick the mask slips.
Also humans are animals and therefore nature. There is no concept of nature versus humans, unless you enforce these boundaries to construct an ideology that needs it.
This idea of nature just means everything “that is good” is nature, which does not make sense. In that view a whale is nature, but the rabies virus is not.
Also to respond to your last sentence with an equal out of place diction.
Why can’t you accept that Hubble’s constant is universally equal. That is anti science.
does it involve a concept of degeneracy and normalcy?
It involves a natural slow decline in human population via methods like empowering women’s rights and widely available education and upwards mobility in society. The solution that the UN came to in Cairo, Egypt, in 1995.
The fuck are you talking about with masks and normalcy?
You mean the “natural decline” that is already happening.
Also what “upwards mobility” - Capitalism is hell bent in killing us all - the upwards mobility is not the solution here.
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Those numbers mean nothing to refute the overpopulation as a myth. The core premise of overpopulation is that humans can no longer produce enough food to sustain its people. So mammalian biomass doesn’t matter, total amount of farmable land doesn’t matter, and percent of avian life does not matter.
It’s never been a question of our impact on the environment. it’s a question of our impact on ourselves and how much past our means we are.
How much of our farmable land is currently being used to produce non-edible crops such as maize used for fuel additive or soy used for cosmetics? How much farmable land are we sabotaging with pollution which could be cleaned up? These are more pertinent questions for this, because if we could be making more food instead of maize or soy, we could still feed our people.
The core premise of overpopulation is that humans can no longer produce enough food to sustain its people.
No, it absolutely isn’t that, idk where you even got that from. The core premise is that it is unsustainable for any reason.
Producing food is one reason for evidence of current overpopulation, as I mention 50% of the world’s food production is with synthetic ammonia sourced from mining and petrochem which are finite nonrenewable resources.
Another reason is that the world ecosystem sustains all life including humanity, and when it collapses the human population will collapse with it.
Literally from Malthus himself. He argued that due to overpopulation we’d cause mass famines, leading to war and societal collapse. And he solidly pointed blame on developing countries overbreeding and called for population control and oven culling in those nations. All arguments directly derive from his original argument.
Because that is the only solution to overpopulation, is population control and population culling. Population too big, either start killing people or forcing couples to not have children. That’s what you’re arguing for every time you agree with an overpopulation argument.
The new twists of ecological destruction are also highly misplaced. You’d have to pin the blame on the places which are reproducing the most, which is not the case. The damage we do with deep sea fishing, fish farms, and meat farms is not the fault of the poor nations overbreeding - the only groups we could blame for overpopulation right now.
In reality, we’d not be causing nearly as much damage to our environment if we weren’t using fossil fuels, weren’t transporting a massive portion of our goods from overseas, weren’t getting most of our meat from cows and other methane producers, weren’t fishing in such a way that destroys the seafloor, etc. There’s literally hundreds of ways I could list that we’re doing which if we switched to an alternative would solve large portion of our ecological damage.
We all are carrying out these unsustainable practices, regardless of population. Those practices are the problem, not overpopulation. We could still be producing enough food with sustainable methods that don’t destroy the world ecology.
Well I can compare your anti-population-reduction stance to Elon Musk. Do you feel good knowing that Christofascist and Technofascist oligarchs hold the same view as you?
As for your absolutely bonkers claim that sustainability isn’t directly proportional to population size, I feel need to argue such a blatantly false statement.
I’m not the same person btw.
Genuine question, wouldn’t a directly proportional link require that sustainability efforts go up in a direct mirror to population?
edit: a downvote isn’t particularly helpful here, is that a downvote of “yes, but i don’t want to admit it” or “no, because reasons” ?
Ask better questions, ig. Do I look like I’m running for governor? Idk what you think should or should not be happening, but the answer has absolutely no impact on what is happening now and what we know will happen as a result: human overpopulation is real, it is the driving force behind ongoing global ecosystem collapse, we know of many safe and friendly methods to reduce birthrates.
I’m…not sure how much better i can phrase that question ?
It was concise, contained all the information needed for an answer, it could even be a single yes or no.
If you have an example of how that could have been asked in a better way, I’d be interested in seeing it.
There was no reference to my thoughts on the overall theme, the question is only loosely related to that theme.
If it helps, i don’t care at all about the overpopulation classification or anything to do with it.
Is it easier if i remove all references to the theme? Let’s try this :
Doesn’t directly proportional mean both metrics being compared need to track each other?
Replace “sustainable,” and the bit about profit and capitalism, with “efficient” and “corruption and un-free markets,” then this is a common right-wing talking point (back when the right wing tried to engage intellectually, at least).
In my unscientific opinion, the current population is unsustainable, and there’s no known ways to make it sustainable enough to support the population in the long term (I hope there will be, of course). The most sustainable framing practices are less intensive and result in less output per acre. That’s just about survival, ignoring quality of life. I’ve heard it claimed we’d need 5 Earths for everyone on Earth to live a first-world-like lifestyle. Granted, we should drastically change our lifestyles.
Climate change will also likely lower the human population the Earth can support, and I think we will likely adopt even less sustainable practices to make up for the loss, accelerating our own demise; kicking and scratching and bringing all the ecosystems of the Earth down with us.
First world lifestyles are indeed unsustainable, but not due to food scarcity. We have a global overproduction of food, due in part to logistical inefficiencies but in a larger part due to free market economics with artificial scarcity to drive up prices.
Organic farm practices currently yield about 20-30% less than less sustainable ones. Current US food wastage is 40 % of produced goods. So at least the US could switch over it’s food supply to organic farming and still feed everyone on the same acreage.
There’s plenty other resource usage that first-worlders need to cut back on, mostly petrochemicals and plastics in everything from travel (make walkable cities) to novelty consumption (buy it for life).
In my unscientific opinion
Well you got at least that bit right, so congrats!
Also, death to fascists, including ecofascists.
Overpopulation is a social issue.
30 billion humble, kind, wise people are barely scratching tbe surface.
Even 100 million assholes is too much.
This isn’t a fucking meme.
It’s just blatant disinformation.
What is a meme?
A miserable little pile of in-jokes
But enough commenting! Have at you!!
Much better, thank you
Somebody who covers their drink when you’re around.
A meme is a self replicating idea. I think this is a meme.
Malthusianism definitely a meme ideology
There are memes, and then there are memes. Two different words. What you’re describing is not the commonly thought of word when someone goes on the internet looking for memes.
I could say, “Suck my dick, motherfucker”, and that’d be a meme.
how do I know if you mean memes or memes tho
Cue “The Stains of Time”.
Context. A lot of word have more than one meaning.
What the fuck. Double all the problems, fuck you
You can disclaim responsibility from the 21st century by being less of a shit and then you’ll dissolve in a different colored acid
If you switch to vertical farming then the only limitation on population is based solely on the heat output generated by humans and our technology.
