Too many people?

[Elixir]

That does not answer my question. Again the question was, "If you had to choose between the following two options, which would you choose? 10 billion people that overwhelm the Earth and send humanity into the stone age this century, or a population of 5 billion people that live sustainably on the planet for millions of years?"

And if I choose the 5b sustainable, how sustainable? A thousand years? Until the sun turns red giant?

Understood, sustainable can have many different definitions, and can deal with different durations.

However, for purposes of the question--"If you had to choose between the following two options, which would you choose? 10 billion people that overwhelm the Earth and send humanity into the stone age this century, or a population of 5 billion people that live sustainably on the planet for millions of years?"-- unsustainable is defined as loss of civilization as we know it in a century. If you knew that civilization as we knew it would collapse completely, with most people dying in the next century, would you be in favor of seeking fair, moral, and effective means of significantly reducing population if that had a good chance of preventing the crash?

I'd do what I do now in either scenario; experience and enjoy what I can of what's left of the biosphere that ultimately lends me life. One thing I would not do is sleepwalk through it all, exhausted from staying awake analyzing my theoretical options for furthering either scenario as if my decision makes a predictable difference. Even if it was adopted tomorrow by 100% of everybody, my best advice for everybody is going to screw somebody, maybe most people. I live at a level of comfort that I think 2-3 billion could sustain with sufficient technology and no wars. What I'd prefer for the masses of humanity in the future is... not the kind of hubris with which I am comfortable. "
Seeking fair, moral, and effective means of significantly reducing populations is not something I see as a noble pursuit, but rather a reaction of alarm at what looks likely to happen next absent one's own intervention. I don't trust ANYONE to make that call.

I'd like everybody to be happy, whatever that takes. And have a puppy.
And if I was Total Ruler of The World I'd mandate that it be so, under pain of death. So at the end of the day, whether there were 2 or 5 or 10 billion people left would depend on how many had to be put down for not being happy enough.

A possibly more attainable goal would be to educate some more people ... that always seems to help.

It does occur to me that most of the "damage" is being done by the richest and the poorest among us. If the richest made the decision to make the poorest richer and themselves poorer, that would probably help too.

 

[Elixir]

Loren, what are the symptoms of heat stroke?

If you're standing in line at the local farmer's market to pay $5 for a small bunch of radishes, you might have heat stroke. Especially when you're two blocks from air conditioned Safeway, where they're like $1.99 - from South America.

 

[bilby]

Even if population levels off at 8 billion (the current population), we find that the Earth is not close to being able to support this population sustainably at current practices.

You find it.

I am completely unconvinced; I believe that this "finding" is based on a lot of highly questionable assumptions.

Most questionable of all being the assumption of "current practices". Change is the only certainty.

 

[bilby]

In 1972, when Limits to Growth was first printed, there were 4 billion people on the planet. Had we stabilized population then, we might now be very close to long-term sustainability.

But had you asked the authors back then, they would have told you that 4 billion was way beyond what was sustainable, and that immediate and drastic action was necessary to avoid a disaster before the end of the century.

(That disaster is now at least twenty three years overdue)

It would seem that they made some poor assumptions, and/or incorrect calculations.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I've wondered time and again for many years, why can't humans talk about changing themselves? We don't see drastic reductions in human populations without horrific plagues and holocausts. But we've seen many paradigm shifts through history. So people are able to live different sorts of lives and change their beliefs about what's valuable.

Stop wondering. Our species certainly has the tools, but so do and so have other species. In the end, however, we're just a pinball that bounces through the game, we don't direct our path and never will. But it's enjoyable to fantasize.

 

[Merle]

But had you asked the authors back then, they would have told you that 4 billion was way beyond what was sustainable, and that immediate and drastic action was necessary to avoid a disaster before the end of the century.

(That disaster is now at least twenty three years overdue)

It would seem that they made some poor assumptions, and/or incorrect calculations.

Uh, no the authors of The Limits to Growth didn't claim we had exceeded the limit until 1992 when they wrote a followup saying we were beyond the limit. I don't think they said anything about reducing below 4 billion people. Their suggested policies were always about limiting further growth.

And no, their graphs were not given as predictions of what would happen when. The graphs were based on computer runs of a simulated world with simulated policies. They never claimed the world model was an exact model that would exactly predict what would happen. Rather they show the general results of how overshoot leads to disaster and how various policies affect this.

Although not designed as a prediction, in general, their models were far closer to what actually happened in the next 30 years compared to some of the wild predictions of the optimists. See
https://www.countercurrents.org/murphy120911.htm

 

[Merle]

The key words there are "at current practices". We can't lessen the numbers of humans, we can only lessen the impact of our lives by living more biophilic lifestyles in a more biophilic civilization with biophilic designs in our cities, technology, et al.

Understood. That's why I have emphasized the three levers of dealing with overshoot, by looking at population, affluence, and technology/policies. And yes, of course, we would like to have better technologies that allow us to just keep on squeezing more and more people unto this planet with no issues. But it has not been working well. Despite gains in technology, global warming, ocean acidification, species loss, and other factors just keep getting worse. Technology is not keeping up.

As I said earlier in the thread, I expect future gains in technology to lower our impact on the Earth per unit of affluence, but I suspect this will be offset by rising affluence, especially in third world countries. So if we keep needing more per person, then, even though we may have less impact per unit of affluence, we can have the same impact per person.

 

[Merle]

It does occur to me that most of the "damage" is being done by the richest and the poorest among us. If the richest made the decision to make the poorest richer and themselves poorer, that would probably help too.

What are the odds that the richest among us will make the decision to make themselves poorer to an extant that it significantly reduces the total impact on the planet?

An interesting solution to overshoot is to ask all nations over median income to drop to an average income midway between their current level and the global median. That would do a lot to reduce human impact on the globe. But no, it ain't gonna happen.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If we're allowing hypotheticals, I'll take 20 trillion people living sustainably for millions of years please, Alex.
IRL, from my experience it looks like life on earth would be more sustainable with around 2 billion humans. Technology might be able to get the planet to support around one trillion people sustainably, but it wouldn't look or feel much like the planet I know and love. Then again, it doesn't look a whole lot now like the planet I knew and loved when it had 3-4 billion. But if you weren't born then, you don't miss it.

That does not answer my question. Again the question was, "If you had to choose between the following two options, which would you choose? 10 billion people that overwhelm the Earth and send humanity into the stone age this century, or a population of 5 billion people that live sustainably on the planet for millions of years?"

The problem is that your second option does not work. Your 5 billion will probably last about twice as long as your 10 billion.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In 1972, when Limits to Growth was first printed, there were 4 billion people on the planet. Had we stabilized population then, we might now be very close to long-term sustainability.

Had we focused more on physical education in school we very well might be close to eliminating airplanes because people would just flap their arms and fly.

(About as realistic as your position.)

 

[Merle]

[

If you had to choose between the following two options, which would you choose? 10 billion people that overwhelm the Earth and send humanity into the stone age this century, or a population of 5 billion people that live sustainably on the planet for millions of years?"

The problem is that your second option does not work. Your 5 billion will probably last about twice as long as your 10 billion.

No, that is not true. If we are at sustainable levels, then the Earth absorbs our impact and repairs itself as things go along. As such, things could continue until something else changes, such as the Sun burning out.

In ecological overshoot, the Earth is not able to handle the impact. It then can experience things like global warming, ocean acidification, loss of species, etc. If these conditions continue, they reduce Earth's ability to respond, and the situation keeps getting worse. That is the whole idea behind ecological overshoot.

My point is that it is better to stress the Earth at sustainable levels, with thousands of generations then enjoying this planet.

I want to see many trillions of people on Earth. I just don't think they all need to be here at the same time.

So that is the point of the question you evaded. If you had to choose between "10 billion people that overwhelm the Earth and send humanity into the stone age this century, or a population of 5 billion people that live sustainably on the planet for millions of years," which would you choose?

 

[Elixir]

No, that is not true. If we are at sustainable levels...

I don't think you have any reason to think that 5 billion is any more sustainable than twenty billion, if you're talking long term.

 

[bilby]

No, that is not true. If we are at sustainable levels...

I don't think you have any reason to think that 5 billion is any more sustainable than twenty billion, if you're talking long term.

Or vice-versa.

There are some specific things that we can clearly identify as unsustainable - carbon dioxide emissions, for example.

And there are a metric shit-ton of specific things that are regularly and routinely cited as unsustainable, but which are just a failure of understanding - pretty much every material for which the argument depends on "only X years of known reserves remain!".

But there's no front runner; No one resource or environmental change that is the obvious major concern, against which all others fade into insignificance.

That tells me that the basis for identifying where the crunch will come is lacking.

There's no point worrying that we will run out of phosphorus for fertilisers in a century (example numbers made up on the spot for illustrative purposes only), if we will all be dead (or reduced to a palaeolithic standard of living) in a decade because we have no more copper.

So what's the thing that's going to kill our society first? What's the big, unsolvable, overshoot problem?

What should we be prioritising? The closest thing I can find to a consensus as the most pressing concern is carbon dioxide emissions.

"Population" isn't in the class of things we should be thinking about here.

As an analogy, if you are the captain of a ship that is steaming fast towards the rocks, there are a number of things you need to worry about. But only a tiny handful of your concerns are both urgent and important: Which way to steer, what directions to give the engine room, instructions to the crew on securing watertight compartments - these are all issues you must urgently resolve. But if you are calling meetings to discuss the possibility that the ship might run out of food, or fuel, or fresh water before it reaches its next port of call, then I am skeptical that you're genuinely concerned about running onto the rocks. And if your meetings end with the conclusion that the problem isn't the lack of any of these things as such, but rather that there are too many passengers, then you are unfit for command.

It's your job to look after all of the passengers, not to just complain about their existence (while insisting that you are absolutely not agreeing with the officers who were advocating for throwing a load of passengers overboard).

Regardless of what number of passengers you have, and regardless of whether or not you're able to save them all, the optimum solution will entail solving the most urgent problem first. So what is that problem?

"We are overpopulated" or "we are in overshoot" isn't a problem statement. A problem statement looks like "We need to cut worldwide net carbon dioxide emissions below X billion tonnes per annum".

A valid problem statement includes its own victory condition - if we achieve this target, then the problem is solved.

That doesn't imply that victory is possible, but it does allow us to identify what actions are best suited to attempting to address it.

If your problem statement is "The Earth cannot sustain more than two billion humans", then the only actions that could address it are genocidal (whether you like it or not). But that's only a partial problem statement - under what terms?

"There's only enough fresh water on board for six weeks" isn't a complete problem statement for the ship's captain; It's missing the information about how that fresh water is currently being used. The solution might be to cut the steerage passengers' drinking water ration by half. Or it might be to tell the first class passengers that they're no longer allowed to take a two hour shower every day.

 

[Elixir]

the basis for identifying where the crunch will come is lacking.

That is really why we are floundering.
I sure don’t know where the next sucker punch to human population growth will come, or how severe the impact might be. But I’m pretty sure that in the hierarchy of possible self inflicted disasters, loss of biodiversity is near the top of the list of looming causes. Right now it’s just a lamentable result of human activity, but there are myriad ways that it can become a challenge to human survival down the road.

 

[Merle]

I don't think you have any reason to think that 5 billion is any more sustainable than twenty billion, if you're talking long term.

I have shown multiple links showing we are in ecological overshoot. One of the most well known calculations for this is the one published by the Global Footprint Network, that we now need 1.75 planets to sustainably maintain the current population. I have provided multiple links showing their reasoning in determining this. (e.g. https://iidb.org/threads/too-many-people.27312/page-23#post-1103803)

I am not saying the limit is actually 5 billion people. Others calculate it differently.

The question I was trying to ask is, if hypothetically we had to choose between 10 billion people that overwhelm the Earth and send humanity into the stone age this century, or a population of 5 billion people that live sustainably on the planet for millions of years, which would you choose?

I find it interesting that so far only one other person has answered that question besides me: Rhea and I have both said that, if hypothetically that is our choice, then we would prefer the 5 billion. And surely there are other people here that must agree. But instead of agreeing, I find people evading the question.

We know we will never agree on everything, but can we at least find one thing we have in common? Can we agree that, if the hypothetical choice was between 5 billion population indefinitely on Earth, or 20 billion quickly driving the Earth to collapse, we would prefer the 5 billion if we found a fair, moral, effective way of reaching that point? Or is there really someone here that votes for collapse in that hypothetical choice?

My personal opinion is that 5 billion may actually be a good limit up until non-renewable fuels become too hard to get and too expensive for most people. Then we may well need to limit to 2 billion.

 

[Elixir]

My personal opinion is that 5 billion may actually be a good limit up until non-renewable fuels become too hard to get and too expensive for most people. Then we may well need to limit to 2 billion.

Hey I’ll take the 5 over the 10, and I’ll take the 2 over the 5. As if my preference makes a difference.
I don’t think fuels will be the limiting factor, if there is one.

 

[Merle]

And there are a metric shit-ton of specific things that are regularly and routinely cited as unsustainable, but which are just a failure of understanding - pretty much every material for which the argument depends on "only X years of known reserves remain!".

No, that is not the issue.

I have listed the issues several times here: climate change, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution of rivers, freshwater depletion, loss of natural land, loss of biodiversity, atmospheric aerosols, chemical pollution, and depletion of fossil fuels. And I have quoted my source for most of that list several times: https://na.unep.net/geas/archive/pdfs/geas_jun_12_carrying_capacity.pdf

The only one that I personally added to that list is depletion of fossil fuels.

But there's no front runner; No one resource or environmental change that is the obvious major concern, against which all others fade into insignificance.

That tells me that the basis for identifying where the crunch will come is lacking.

Per the link I keep giving, the worst problem is diversity loss, the second one is nitrogen contamination of rivers, and the third is global warming.

There's no point worrying that we will run out of phosphorus for fertilisers in a century (example numbers made up on the spot for illustrative purposes only), if we will all be dead (or reduced to a palaeolithic standard of living) in a decade because we have no more copper.

Again, the problem is not that we run out. The problem is that we mine the best resources first. Eventually we come to the point that we are mining poor resources at great expense, and even technology increases will not make that mining worthwhile. See, for instance, https://peakprosperity.com/lessons/crash-course-chapter-23-the-environment-depleting-resources/

So what's the thing that's going to kill our society first? What's the big, unsolvable, overshoot problem?

What should we be prioritising? The closest thing I can find to a consensus as the most pressing concern is carbon dioxide emissions.

"Population" isn't in the class of things we should be thinking about here.

As I said multiple times, the impact on the Earth is given by the population times the affluence times a factor for the amount of impact per unit of affluence. For many issues, this formula applies. So population effects many things.

If your problem statement is "The Earth cannot sustain more than two billion humans", then the only actions that could address it are genocidal (whether you like it or not). But that's only a partial problem statement - under what terms?

As you know, I am strongly against genocide. So why do you try an underhanded attempt to poison the well? Why do you not address what I actually say, rather than make things up?

As I have said many times, we should address these things in a way that is fair, moral and effective. If we cannot do it in a way that is fair, moral and effective, than we should not do it.

 

[Merle]

My personal opinion is that 5 billion may actually be a good limit up until non-renewable fuels become too hard to get and too expensive for most people. Then we may well need to limit to 2 billion.

Hey I’ll take the 5 over the 10, and I’ll take the 2 over the 5.

Great! So the vote so far, if dealing with the hypothetical situation in which we had two choices, a) a population of 10 billion in ecological overshoot and inevitable collapse of society, or b) a population of 5 billion that is sustainable for millions of years is:

a) I would prefer 10 billion population and inevitable collapse of society: 0 votes
b) I would prefer 5 billion in a sustainable society for millions of years: 3 votes

 

[Politesse]

I don't think you have any reason to think that 5 billion is any more sustainable than twenty billion, if you're talking long term.

I have shown multiple links showing we are in ecological overshoot. One of the most well known calculations for this is the one published by the Global Footprint Network, that we now need 1.75 planets to sustainably maintain the current population. I have provided multiple links showing their reasoning in determining this. (e.g. https://iidb.org/threads/too-many-people.27312/page-23#post-1103803)

I am not saying the limit is actually 5 billion people. Others calculate it differently.

The question I was trying to ask is, if hypothetically we had to choose between 10 billion people that overwhelm the Earth and send humanity into the stone age this century, or a population of 5 billion people that live sustainably on the planet for millions of years, which would you choose?

I find it interesting that so far only one other person has answered that question besides me: Rhea and I have both said that, if hypothetically that is our choice, then we would prefer the 5 billion. And surely there are other people here that must agree. But instead of agreeing, I find people evading the question.

We know we will never agree on everything, but can we at least find one thing we have in common? Can we agree that, if the hypothetical choice was between 5 billion population indefinitely on Earth, or 20 billion quickly driving the Earth to collapse, we would prefer the 5 billion if we found a fair, moral, effective way of reaching that point? Or is there really someone here that votes for collapse in that hypothetical choice?

My personal opinion is that 5 billion may actually be a good limit up until non-renewable fuels become too hard to get and too expensive for most people. Then we may well need to limit to 2 billion.

As a hypothetical, I certainly favor a sustainable relationship with the earth, whether there are 5 or 10 billion humans on it.

But we aren't talking about a hypothetical situation. We're talking about the inaccurate claims made by overpopulation pseudoscience, which are meant to describe the real world. I don't agree that the world's population needs to be "reduced" (ethically, whatever that means?) in order to be sustained, nor that reducing the world's population would somehow magically improve sustainability. Population is a red herring that is being used to mask the real culprits of environmental devastation, unreasonably attacking the poorest of the planet's citizens for crimes actually committed by the wealthiest of us. The worst acts of ecological devastation this planet has ever seen occurred when the planet had far less than 5 billion people.

Where I live, there were once sprawling redwood forests, interspersed with oak and ironwood and pepperwood. Then a new group of people arrived. Their numbers were not many at first, but their impact was vast. A new nation-state was declared, and within fifty years, an industry composed of only a few thousand people felled almost every last redwood within walking distance, leaving only a handful of small stands hiding in inaccessible valleys. The ironwood and pepperwood went extinct locally, saved as a species only by having larger stands hundreds of miles away. Where the local deciduous forests used to stand, there are now groves of invasive Eucalyptus trees. And the killers didn't do it because there were "too many of them" and they had to. They did what they did because it made them rich as hell. The buyers of those products weren't numerous either, nor did they need that lumber particularly. They just liked exotic hardwoods and had cash to burn. And the eucalypts? Those weren't about population at all. They were the essentially the result of a get rich scheme by one man, a scheme that went awry with the aid of a gullible public.

Today, things are better. Nearly all of the surviving old growth is under protection and active management. For more than seventy years now, the region has led the entire world in developing new, more sustainable products, technologies, and policies. And there are nearly a million people living on this slope of the Bay alone, more than a hundred times its population during the years when the ecological crisis hit its low point. What changed for the better wasn't the number of people, but their commitment to a survivable and surviving landscape.

We do not need to live with less neighbors- we need to live smarter with the neighbors we have.

 

[Elixir]

So the vote so far, if dealing with the hypothetical situation in which we had two choices, a) a population of 10 billion in ecological overshoot and inevitable collapse of society, or b) a population of 5 billion that is sustainable for millions of years is:

a) I would prefer 10 billion population and inevitable collapse of society: 0 votes
b) I would prefer 5 billion population living sustainably millions of years: 3 votes

And only ONE preferring a planet of 2b.
O woe is me.

Seriously - SO WHAT?