We are overloading the planet: Now What?

[Merle]

If we hit a point with an essential resource becoming unavailable it's not 2 billion. We would crash to below a million.

So you are more of a doomster than me? Wheras I suggest population might level off at 2 billion into the indefinite future, you put it below a million.

I don't think it's millions of years out. As we are currently going it's probably decades, perhaps centuries. The difference is that I don't think there's a soft landing. I see your approach as trying to address a bonfire with a glass of water.

So sometime in the next few decades or centuries population will most likely be below a million? Oh, drat! I sorta liked civilization.

1) I place the value in people-years, not in years. If a crash is inevitable, 10 billion for 150 years is superior to 1 billion for 1000 years.

2) The sustainable level is early stone age with a sub-million population. We have already taken all the easy-to-get resources, a low-tech society would already be on their way to a crash. The existing stuff will last for a while but it will wear away eventually.

That's an interesting concept. The planet can support only so many people-years of civilization, so lets just have those people-years now and be done with it?

From the things I am reading in the literature on overshoot, we would not be overshooting the planet if we limited our impact on the planet to about half of the current impact. This includes our impact on climate change, loss of wildlands, species loss, fertilizer runoff, etc. If we only had half the impact, civilization could continue for a long time. I discuss three means of reducing our impact: Better use of current and future technology, affluence reduction, and population reduction. If any combination of those makes for a net detrimental impact on the planet of perhaps half of the current impact, we can sustain civilization for a long time. That is worth striving for.

Regarding resource depletion, yes, none of that deals with the fact that natural resources are depleting. Fossil fuels, for instance are rapidly depleting. So even if we find a way to burn them all without extreme climate change, we would still eventually run out. But if we make good use of non-fossil-fuel energy sources, such as wind, solar and nuclear, we should be able to extend the time before energy runs out. I don't see that lasting nearly as long as Bibly claims, but I do think it can carry us much longer than if we relied solely on fossil fuels.

 

[Merle]

I do mention that Ehrlich first used that formula in that form. I am just giving credit where credit is due.

Or, to put it another way, citing him as the source.

LOL. And everybody is unreliable who ever mentions that Pat Ehrlich said I-PAT? And that person should never be trusted in anything he ever says?

Why is it so horrible to say that Paul Ehrlich introduced the formula I=PAT? (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_=_PAT) Is your Ministry of Truth going to ban anybody who ever mentions this fact!

LOL!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Tokyo has more people than either Delhi or Cairo yet does not have the same problems as those cities. And Delhi and Cairo had problems with planning and resources long before they grew to be really big cities.

I can't address the population numbers but quite some time ago I saw Tokyo, Delhi and Cairo over a period of a few months so I'm comparing each at the same time.

Tokyo was quite a shock (my first time out of the US) but other the navigation nightmare (reading a map that doesn't use your script is hard) and the fact that it was crowded/cramped I found it a perfectly good city despite my introduction to the country was being knocked backwards onto a baggage carousel (this was one of the long ago flat ones) while wearing a heavy backpack and ending up lost in the airport for a few hours. (The standard advice to stay where you got separated clearly didn't apply as the conveyor had hauled me a fair distance before I managed to get off and my parents hadn't seen my fall so they had no idea I had been hauled off. It is not easy to get up from that position! I also didn't have much experience with a backpack at that point.) Delhi didn't really leave much of an impression, the shock point was Calcutta (I believe it's had it's name fixed but I don't recall the new spelling) and Delhi was pretty much the same. The family obviously living on the street across from our hotel. The cow pats neatly arranged over myriad walls drying to be used as fuel for cooking. And that leaves the city of flies. Otherwise, not as bad as Delhi had been but the flies were awful.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There is a strong case that we are in overshoot, that our combined lifestyle is destroying the planet. I link to multiple scientific sources that support that claim.

Of course we are in overshoot. What you are missing is that there is no tech point in human history above early stone age that isn't in overshoot. We either find a stable tech point or we eventually crash hard.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If we hit a point with an essential resource becoming unavailable it's not 2 billion. We would crash to below a million.

So you are more of a doomster than me? Wheras I suggest population might level off at 2 billion into the indefinite future, you put it below a million.

I don't consider doom inevitable. But I do not believe your approach does more than kick the can a bit.

I don't think it's millions of years out. As we are currently going it's probably decades, perhaps centuries. The difference is that I don't think there's a soft landing. I see your approach as trying to address a bonfire with a glass of water.

So sometime in the next few decades or centuries population will most likely be below a million? Oh, drat! I sorta liked civilization.

It won't fall all at once unless someone pushes the red button. But either we figure out a stable point or things start falling apart due to resource starvation.

1) I place the value in people-years, not in years. If a crash is inevitable, 10 billion for 150 years is superior to 1 billion for 1000 years.

2) The sustainable level is early stone age with a sub-million population. We have already taken all the easy-to-get resources, a low-tech society would already be on their way to a crash. The existing stuff will last for a while but it will wear away eventually.

That's an interesting concept. The planet can support only so many people-years of civilization, so lets just have those people-years now and be done with it?

No. I'm saying the optimum is to maximize people-years, not simply years.

From the things I am reading in the literature on overshoot, we would not be overshooting the planet if we limited our impact on the planet to about half of the current impact. This includes our impact on climate change, loss of wildlands, species loss, fertilizer runoff, etc. If we only had half the impact, civilization could continue for a long time. I discuss three means of reducing our impact: Better use of current and future technology, affluence reduction, and population reduction. If any combination of those makes for a net detrimental impact on the planet of perhaps half of the current impact, we can sustain civilization for a long time. That is worth striving for.

And here I disagree. The only question is how much overshoot.

Regarding resource depletion, yes, none of that deals with the fact that natural resources are depleting. Fossil fuels, for instance are rapidly depleting. So even if we find a way to burn them all without extreme climate change, we would still eventually run out. But if we make good use of non-fossil-fuel energy sources, such as wind, solar and nuclear, we should be able to extend the time before energy runs out. I don't see that lasting nearly as long as Bibly claims, but I do think it can carry us much longer than if we relied solely on fossil fuels.

Energy isn't so much what I'm worried about running out of.

 

[Swammerdami]

Bilby relies on a strange mixture of scientific precision and hyperbole. I do not think editors or peer reviewers would be pleased by unfounded claims that another researcher is making "statements of religion."

That humanity is "overloading the planet" is rather obvious (and confirmed by a variety of scientific research). Water is a clear example: Look at the pollution of rivers and depletion of aquifers. Even if -- a big if -- water depletion can be addressed with technology, the need for such technology shows that we are not in a state of ecological balance. (The need for fertilizers is another example of this.)

BTW, bilby, do you acknowledge that you once wrote something similar to "if a population depletes an aquifer in 10 years, half that population would deplete the aquifer in 20 years"? This showed preposterous confusion about the very natures of ecological balance and renewability.

(Also BTW, there are many types of "pollutants" other than CO2; there are many types of ecological degradation other than climate change. More than once in these debates I've seen bilby respond to a comment about pollution with an answer that assumes CO2 is the ONLY pollution of interest, that climate change is the ONLY relevant habitat degradation.)

bilby's own answers reveal that he understands overpopulation is a problem, despite that his conscious doesn't focus on it. For example, the use of hydroelectric dams is a nice source of power, and pumped storage hydropower is a nice way to store energy. Bilby correctly points out that these nice technologies do not meet our needs, but he fails to "connect the dots" and ask WHY these techniques are inadequate. Spoiler: It's because of high human population. Dammable rivers are finite in number and with 8 billion humans we've already dammed them all!

I won't go on and on and on about the problems that overpopulation causes. (Perhaps Merle's website is a good reference but learning of his devotion to Richard Carrier was enough Merle for me.) Where I would focus attention is on ecological balance. For examples

• A large majority of all the world's present-day mammalian biomass is livestock for man's food (cattle, pigs). Almost 90% of the non-livestock mammalian biomass is H. sapiens itself. Dozens of species of mammals have gone extinct recently (including several marsupials in Australia!) and many more are on the verge of extinction.
• Insects are dwindling in numbers. Much life depends on insects and is therefore also threatened. Higher temperatures are one reason for this, but loss of habitat and use of pesticides are other problems.
• Pesticides, hormones and other artificial chemicals -- deployed to maintain the excessive human population -- threaten both human health and further extinctions. DDT is an obvious example; it's been banned (even over-banned! ) but with more and more chemicals being deployed regulators must play whack-a-mole.

One could go on and on, but habitat destruction and ecological imbalance are very real. To reduce these real concerns to whines about Ehrlich or Malthus and their "religion" is unbecoming.

"We are overloading the planet" is a statement of religion.

We know this because it is a claim that gets repeated ad-nauseum, despite the vast mountain of evidence to the contrary.

Present your evidence that Brazil is NOT being deforested. Present your evidence that coral reefs are thriving as well as they did before human overpopulation. Present your evidence that vast amounts of the Earth's land surface is not now dedicated to serving as food for mankind or his livestock. Present you evidence that the planet's life still has the wondrous diversity it had a thousand years ago, and will retain that diversity over the next few centuries.

Or entertain us by continuing to post gibberish.

No. I'm saying the optimum is to maximize people-years, not simply years.

(Claiming that two centuries with 10 billion is "better" than two millennia with half a billion.)

I admit that I am ASTOUNDED by this notion. If I have an aquarium should I fill it with as many individual fish as possible? I can replace any fish that die from the overpopulation.

No, don't bother "refuting" the aquarium analogy: It's a weak analogy just to punctuate my astonishment.

bilby? Others? Do you agree with Loren on this point?

 

[bilby]

Calcutta (I believe it's had it's name fixed but I don't recall the new spelling)

Kolkata.

 

[bilby]

Bilby relies on a strange mixture of scientific precision and hyperbole.

As do we all.

I do not think editors or peer reviewers would be pleased by unfounded claims that another researcher is making "statements of religion."

Then it's a good thing that discussion board posts are not edited or peer reviewed, isn't it.

I do not think I care what non-existent people would be pleased by.

 

[bilby]

bilby's own answers reveal that he understands overpopulation is a problem

Nonsense.

As I have repeatedly said, overpopulation isn't even a thing.

So it can't be a problem.

What it is is a red herring; A fiction used to broad brush (and thereby obscure) a large number of real problems.

"We can't solve anything, because all problems are population problems, and population is unable to be addressed other than by genocide and/or totalitarianism".

But that's bollocks. Because all of our problems can be solved by various means unrelated to population. The ONLY exception was exponential
population growth, which appeared in the mid twentieth century to be THE problem facing humanity - because it was widely accepted that actual family sizes at that time were roughly in line with desired familiy sizes.

But this turns out to be false. And the invention of reliable contraception that women control and that requires no action "in the heat of the moment" has resolved that problem without recource to either genocide or totalitarianism.

The only remaining population problem is that people are VERY bad at grasping that the defining problems of the world during their youth, are not necessarily problems at all in their dotage. So we are surrounded by aging boomers who were (correctly) worried about population in the 1960s and '70s; And who remain worried about population today, despite the problem having been completely and definitively resolved.

And these stick-in-the-muds are standing boldly and foursquare in the way of literally every effort to solve any environmental problem. Any attempt to do anything is met with cries of "it's futile until we slash population!".

I am frequently accused of being an optimist; But I am not. I think it's all going to go to shit, not because there are too many humans, but because too few of them are able to think clearly about anything.

People are well intentioned; But they're idiots. And we all know where the road of good intentions leads.

 

[bilby]

Present your evidence that Brazil is NOT being deforested. Present your evidence that coral reefs are thriving as well as they did before human overpopulation. Present your evidence that vast amounts of the Earth's land surface is not now dedicated to serving as food for mankind or his livestock. Present you evidence that the planet's life still has the wondrous diversity it had a thousand years ago, and will retain that diversity over the next few centuries.

Why do you demand that I present evidence for claims I have never made?

Perhaps this indicates that you are arguing against a strawman.

Where we differ is NOT that you think these things are happening, while I do not; It's that you think the absolute size of the human population is relevant to these things, while I do not.

Humans will find ways to fuck shit up massively, whether there are a billion of us or ten billion.

The question is whether we will also find (and implement) ways to un-fuck it again. Which we might, if we didn't have so many devotees of the appeal to nature fallacy, or so many people spamming any discussion of the problems with chants of "overpopulation, overpopulation!"

 

[Swammerdami]

When I saw three notifications from bilby I clicked prepared to answer point by point.

But bilby makes no points. What's to refute?

"Brazil would be destroying its forest just as fast with only one-tenth its present population." Whatever.
"Loss of habitat would be just as severe with only one-tenth the present human population." Whatever.

 

[Swammerdami]

BTW, bilby, do you acknowledge that you once wrote something similar to "if a population depletes an aquifer in 10 years, half that population would deplete the aquifer in 20 years"? This showed preposterous confusion about the very natures of ecological balance and renewability.

Still no answer to this. Do you retract the claim? Or claim that you never wrote this?

No. I'm saying the optimum is to maximize people-years, not simply years.

bilby? Others? Do you agree with Loren on this point?

Another unanswered question. Instead of posting the same stale ideas over and over and over and over and over and over, why not answer my questions?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I think there is a huge difference between overpopulation and human apathy in dealing with portions of population in need.

 

[steve_bank]

Japan has a largely homogeneous population with a cultural norm of deference to hierarchical power. Te op piste of what we consider cultural diversity with its inherent inability to complicit and inability to compromise.

Historical I thought Japan had a low recidivism rate.

They have their problems.

In recent years, the percentage of recidivists has remained high at approximately 50%. Therefore, the prevention of recidivism is an important challenge for the government. Offenders who have been released after expiration of their sentence have twice or more the recidivism risk of parolees.

 

[bilby]

When I saw three notifications from bilby I clicked prepared to answer point by point.

But bilby makes no points. What's to refute?

"Brazil would be destroying its forest just as fast with only one-tenth its present population." Whatever.
"Loss of habitat would be just as severe with only one-tenth the present human population." Whatever.

Making points you cannot refute isn't "making no points".

The fact is that the vast majority of environmental damage is due to the activity of the wealthiest ten percent of humans - that is, the ones who have control of the vast majority of natural resources.

In a world with ten percent of the current population, there would be roughly the same number of people in control of those resources, and they would be doing roughly similar levels of harm.

The problems we face are largely technological. We now (since the industrial revolution) have the ability to do more damage. That would be true whether we had eight hundred million people or eight billion. The solutions are regulatory and technological; We also now have the ability to do more to mitigate and/or repair damage, and to support a much larger population.

The carrying capacity of the planet has geown faster than the population, even through the exponential growth years of the mid-twentieth century. That's why the doom forecast by environmental activists has remained a forecast for "the near future", and never turned into a reality.

More poor people potentially means more votes for environmental protection. It also implies more pressure for democratic processes, which tend to lead to better regulation.

 

[bilby]

BTW, bilby, do you acknowledge that you once wrote something similar to "if a population depletes an aquifer in 10 years, half that population would deplete the aquifer in 20 years"? This showed preposterous confusion about the very natures of ecological balance and renewability.

Still no answer to this. Do you retract the claim? Or claim that you never wrote this?

Neither. In the context of actual use of aquifers for water supply, it is a good approximation to the truth.

There's an assumption there that current use is far greater than the rate at which the aquifer is replenished; Are you saying that this assumption is untrue for most aquifers currently being depleted by human activity?

No. I'm saying the optimum is to maximize people-years, not simply years.

bilby? Others? Do you agree with Loren on this point?

Another unanswered question. Instead of posting the same stale ideas over and over and over and over and over and over, why not answer my questions?

No, I don't. I agree with you on this point.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

BTW, bilby, do you acknowledge that you once wrote something similar to "if a population depletes an aquifer in 10 years, half that population would deplete the aquifer in 20 years"? This showed preposterous confusion about the very natures of ecological balance and renewability.

Still no answer to this. Do you retract the claim? Or claim that you never wrote this?

Neither. In the context of actual use of aquifers for water supply, it is a good approximation to the truth.

Math feels wrong. The question is indeterminate without knowing the annual recharge/inflow. Two unknowns, 1 equation.

In order for Population X to use up an aquifer in 10 years, they are exceeding the annual inflow into the aquifer by (stored aquifer qty / 10). Annual use is (Stored Qty / 10 + annual inflow). Gone in ten years.

Half of population X would use half of that amount, (Stored Qty / 20 + annual inflow /2). But if that value is less than annual inflow or some value near it, half the population won't use up the aquifer or it will take much longer to use up the aquifer.

 

[bilby]

BTW, bilby, do you acknowledge that you once wrote something similar to "if a population depletes an aquifer in 10 years, half that population would deplete the aquifer in 20 years"? This showed preposterous confusion about the very natures of ecological balance and renewability.

Still no answer to this. Do you retract the claim? Or claim that you never wrote this?

Neither. In the context of actual use of aquifers for water supply, it is a good approximation to the truth.

Math feels wrong. The question is indeterminate without knowing the annual recharge/inflow. Two unknowns, 1 equation.

In order for Population X to use up an aquifer in 10 years, they are exceeding the annual inflow into the aquifer by (stored aquifer qty / 10). Annual use is (Stored Qty / 10 + annual inflow). Gone in ten years.

Half of population X would use half of that amount, (Stored Qty / 20 + annual inflow /2). But if that value is less than annual inflow or some value near it, half the population won't use up the aquifer or it will take much longer to use up the aquifer.

Sure.

As I said:

There's an assumption there that current use is far greater than the rate at which the aquifer is replenished

That's certainly the case for the Grest Artesian Basin; Perhaps American aquifers are being less foolishly squandered.

 

[unapologetic]

Making points you cannot refute isn't "making no points".

Making points you can't back up IS making no points.
Your assertion that the population will drop, is only a prediction, NOT reality.
Reality doesn't give a shit about your claims either.

 

[DBT]

Economists and Governments tend not to support the idea reducing population, their mantra is growth, a growing population and a growing economy. The planet and its ecosystems comes second.