That's not a substantive argument. You must now as well as I do that if 15 people occupied each square kilometer then 29% of us would starve and 70% of us would have drowned first.
Did epidemics look like this in the 19th century?
The distinction between crowding and population is not as clear cut as you're treating it. Keeping eight billion people alive requires big cities. 19th-century cities had lower populations, shorter buildings, and more farmland to expand into between them and the next city.
Eight billion people make it hard for refugees to find refuge.
Not really. That's a political problem. Whether or not there's a destination to flee to that is kinder and more welcoming than your origin is independent of world population.
Show your work. You think 19th-century America's willingness to take nearly everybody who wanted to come was independent of the westward-propagating frontier and the perception that the country was mostly empty?
Eight billion people turn rainforests into agricultural land and drive thousands of rare species extinct.
Perhaps. But there's nothing about higher population levels that makes this necessarily true. Urbanisation reduces resource use, and technology reduces the per capita land required for agriculture - so much so that less land is farmed today than in the mid twentieth century, despite massive population increases and significant reductions in famine.
What's your source for that? According to Wikipedia it's gone up about 30% since 1950.
In any event, regardless of what's necessarily true, and regardless of what could be solved with better technology, the rainforest is being destroyed and the wildlife is being killed off, right now, because of eight billion people.
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...area-forest-size-of-uk-each-year-report-finds
Eight billion people discard a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Sure; But one billion release enough to be problematic - unless they stop doing it (eg by swapping coal for nuclear power), at which point it's no longer much of a problem. If CO
2 emissions lead to a catastrophe in a century with 8 billion, then it will also lead to a catastrophe in two centuries with 4 billion,
ceteris paribus.
That's not how it works. First, because an extra century until X ppm CO2 means an extra century for human, animal and plant life to reposition ourselves into patterns that can tolerate higher temperatures. Second, because an extra century until X ppm CO2 means an extra century to persuade the billions of idiots we live among that nuclear power is safer than coal power. And third, because the earth is capable of sequestering excess CO2 at a certain rate, and it's net CO2 increase that matters, not gross CO2.
It's one thing to argue that due to the Pill, the problem is well in hand so we don't need to do anything more about it than we're already doing; but to say it's not a problem is a much stronger claim, and is just nonsense.
It really isn't. All of the problems are amenable to solutions regardless of absolute world population being at the top or bottom of the 1-11 billion range.
And Vulcans are going to land among us and teach us to usher in a golden age. Just because the obstacles to solving a problem are political and economic and technical rather than the Second Law of Thermodynamics doesn't mean we can just dismiss those obstacles. "It's not a problem because we can just build a nuclear reactor." isn't a useful argument
when you can't actually get people to build a nuclear reactor. "Amenable to solutions" and 55 cents gets you a first class stamp.
Eight billion people are still a current problem; eleven billion people will be a bigger problem; therefore population growth is still a current problem.
Sure. But not enough bigger to be worthy of serious concern; Certainly not enough to justify draconian constraints on people's freedom to choose their family sizes. All of the proposed cures are FAR worse than the assumed problem.
How would a little cultural change be far worse than 2.5 ppm CO2 per year? The talking heads who spread memes into the public's minds could stop politely pretending that your third child isn't a bigger contribution to global warming than your car. Is it too much to ask that people be informed of the facts and invited to think globally when acting locally in choosing their family size?
... there are places where there are too many people and too few resources, leading to a lot of misery, so that is hard to ignore.
Too many people and too few resources in a locality isn't the cause of misery; If it was, the worst places in the world would be such hell holes as Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, The Netherlands, and Manhattan.
What kind of argument is that? All those places are jam-packed with resources! What, do you think all the people of Nicaragua could squeeze into Managua without worsening their misery, because Singapore?!?
Singapore works because Singapore has all the trade goods it needs to persuade outsiders to bring six million Singaporeans the myriad things they need to prosper in a city. But what resources do six million Nicaraguans have to trade, that would give the rest of the world a reason to bring that amount of supplies to Managua? Of course too many people and too few resources in a locality is a cause of misery.
Nope. Economic inequality is the cause of the issues.
That's no more an answer than "15 people per sq km". You must know as well as I do that if wealth were redistributed equally then most of us would starve and most of the rest would have been murdered first.
Rich people don't have a problem with crowded or sparse conditions; poor people have problems in both crowded and sparse conditions; therefore the problem is one of wealth, not of population density.
And a region with a billion dollars doesn't have a problem if there are a ten thousand people there and does if there are ten million; therefore the problem is one of population density, not of wealth. And it's the top blade of the scissors that cuts the paper, not the bottom blade. KT didn't say misery comes from too many people; he said it comes from too many people and too few resources. It's the conjunction of the two factors that determines rich or poor.
Wealth is a consequence of technology and innovation, more than of resources (at least since the Industrial Revolution). Economic growth is increasingly independent of resource use; And resource extraction is increasingly more important than agricultural production as a means to wealth.
Our impact on the lithosphere is tiny - mines constitute a negligible fraction of the Earth. Multiplying that by ten leaves a still negligible fraction of mineral resources under extraction.
You say that as though "resources" means mines and farmland. Mines and farmland constitute a negligible fraction of the resources Singapore is jam-packed with, and imported minerals and food aren't much more of it. The chief resource Singapore is jam-packed with -- the resource outsiders bring minerals and food to Singapore to trade for -- is
Singaporeans' skill set. In order for eleven billion people to live as well or better than eight billion do now, with more food per person and fewer refugees and more wildlife and less CO2, what's most needed isn't equality or new technology and innovation. What's most needed is to teach Nicaraguans to think more like Singaporeans.
