We are overloading the planet: Now What?

[Swammerdami]

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.

With many people retiring in their 60s and living into their 80s, a dwindling number of workers must support an increasing number of retirees. As birth rates fall, this problem is exacerbated for the next generation.

A remedy for a given country is to encourage immigration of working-age people, though this can provoke xenophobia.

 

[Elixir]

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.

Ah, but population WILL drop. Only a matter of when and how much. As a prediction, it rates right up there with “the sun will rise”.

 

[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.

With many people retiring in their 60s and living into their 80s, a dwindling number of workers must support an increasing number of retirees. As birth rates fall, this problem is exacerbated for the next generation.

A remedy for a given country is to encourage immigration of working-age people, though this can provoke xenophobia.

It's just a peak to be managed. An equilibrium is achieved as the older generations die off. Adding more people through immigration just kicks the issue down the road, a Ponzi scheme solution.

 

[Bomb#20]

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

Perhaps this indicates that you are arguing against a strawman.

Bilby complaining about a strawman. Oh for the love of god.

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".

Stop misrepresenting the arguments of the people who disagree with you. Now. We know you're capable of being better than that.

But that's bollocks.

And that's why nobody but you said it.

 

[Merle]

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.

That is not what we mean by ecological overshoot. Ecological overshoot means we are using renewable resource faster than they are being made or are damaging the planet faster than it can repair itself. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_overshoot

We are fishing the oceans faster than fish can be replaced. We are cutting down trees faster than new trees can replace them. We are adding CO2 faster than the Earth can absorb it, etc. We are in ecological overshoot.

In my paper I deal with the population level that would be needed to no longer be in overshoot, and also the population level needed for population to sustain itself within the limited non-renewable resources that will be available years in the future. Those are two different things.

 

[Elixir]

In my paper I deal with the population level that would be needed to no longer be in overshoot

I do agree with bilby that “overshoot” and “population level” are not necessarily directly correlated. That they tend to coincide is evidence of our collective stupidity, not some law of nature.

 

[Merle]

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.

And it appears that you think the policy that will maximize the total number of people-years is to have a population above current levels until supplies run out, then it all comes crashing down and there are less than one million people left.

And you appear to say that could happen in decades or a few centuries.

It seems to me that this policy causes immense unnecessary human suffering. If we had time to react by each averaging one less child then we are currently planning on, then we could begin reducing that population before we get there. If we reduce to two billion people over the next 150 years, I would think we could still live at a better standard than we would live at with 10 billion people. But even if the standard of living went down, it would greatly extend the time until the crash occurs, and make the crash much more tolerable when it happens. We might have time to even do a controlled descent to 1 million if we needed do I think we owe this to our descendants.

If we are recklessly driving into the wall at full speed, knowing that it is our descendants, not us, who will be in the car when it crashes, that does not seem like a humanitarian thing to do.

 

[steve_bank]

In the wild it is predator and prey.

A prey population grows and a predator population grows with it. As predator numbers grows prey reaches a point where predator population declines. Back and forth in a cycle. In the long run other things being equal population remains stable.

It applies to predators like wolves, Orcas, and the praying mantis. Us humans moved out of a natural cycle with start of organized agriculture and domestication of plants and animals.

Before antibiotics and vaccinations as a local population became dense disease kept a check on population.

Russian and Chinese communism tried a regulated system where compensation. prices, and production were centrally controlled inclusive of agriculture. Both failed catastrophically.

The idea that we can have a controlled population and economy that stays withing sustainable bounds by a consensus does not seem likely given human history. It would require authoritarian control and forced compliance.

At this point my view is there is nothing practical that can be done, as always throughout history nature will run its course.

Reviewable energy and EVs do not solve the underlying issues.

 

[Merle]

At this point my view is there is nothing practical that can be done, as always throughout history nature will run its course.

That's the doomster view. I find a lot of people going to that view.

 

[Merle]

In my paper I deal with the population level that would be needed to no longer be in overshoot

I do agree with bilby that “overshoot” and “population level” are not necessarily directly correlated. That they tend to coincide is evidence of our collective stupidity, not some law of nature.

If we are overtaxing the planet, why would that not be caused by too many people having too much negative impact on the planet?

 

[Elixir]

If we are overtaxing the planet, why would that not be caused by too many people having too much negative impact on the planet?

It can be caused by people having too much negative impact. That could be 100 million or 10 billion, depending on how they collectively behave. A person is not a unit of damage.

 

[DBT]

My question is, what is the minimum number people, living the typical affluent western consumer lifestyle, needed to reach overshoot? One billion? Two? Five billion or more?

 

[Swammerdami]

(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.)

Is the reddened sentence a fair charge?

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.

I've cited that Philippines (along with other poor SE Asia countries) is the worst polluter of plastics in the world. Air and water quality is worse in Africa than anywhere else IIRC. The rich do NOT drink ten times as much water as the poor, nor do they eat ten times as much cereal.

The Ganges River is sometimes mentioned as the most polluted river in the world. Guess what? The Ganges is located in a poor country with a high population. Several other high-population low-income Asian countries have polluted rivers.

the Citarum River in Indonesia is so polluted that before you see it, you will smell it. This odor is described as "dense" and "rubbish rotting in hot sun mixed in with an acrid tone of chemical waste." For the approximate 9 million people who live close by, they always have to be concerned about their health.

In parts of the Citarum River you cannot see the water!



Kenya's Nairobi River is very polluted -- was this caused by billionaires jetting to Switzerland?

And so on.
- - - - - - - - - - - -


Another problem of overpopulation is epidemics and pandemics, which spread due to high population densities. SARS-CoV-2 is a new pathogen which might have disappeared with lower population (never attained criticality) but instead has become endemic. Yes, some will applaud epidemics as "Nature's Way" of limiting populations, but nobody here is advocating deliberate suffering.

 

[bilby]

A person is not a unit of damage.

QFT

 

[bilby]

My question is, what is the minimum number people, living the typical affluent western consumer lifestyle, needed to reach overshoot? One billion? Two? Five billion or more?

That depends entirely on how much those people are allowed to damage the environment in order to save (or make) money.

 

[bilby]

Is the reddened sentence a fair charge?

No.

 

[bilby]

Another problem of overpopulation is epidemics and pandemics, which spread due to high population densities.

Sure. A pandemic couldn't have occurred in (for example) the fourteenth century, when world population was just 440 million.

Oh, wait.

Shit.

 

[Swammerdami]

Another problem of overpopulation is epidemics and pandemics, which spread due to high population densities.

Sure. A pandemic couldn't have occurred in (for example) the fourteenth century, when world population was just 440 million.

Oh, wait.

Shit.

"X is more likely with high populations" is equivalent to "X never happens with lower populations."

Got it. Is this novel conclusion submitted to a math journal or a logic journal? Can I have a pre-print please?

 

[bilby]

Another problem of overpopulation is epidemics and pandemics, which spread due to high population densities.

Sure. A pandemic couldn't have occurred in (for example) the fourteenth century, when world population was just 440 million.

Oh, wait.

Shit.

"X is more likely with high populations" is equivalent to "X never happens with lower populations."

Got it. Is this novel conclusion submitted to a math journal or a logic journal? Can I have a pre-print please?

"problem of overpopulation" is equivalent to "is more likely with high populations".

Got it.

The real problem with your claim:

Another problem of overpopulation is epidemics and pandemics, which spread due to high population densities.

Is that it assumes that high population densities are due to "overpopulation".

But we know from history that not only are high population densities something that humans tend to create even at low absolute global population numbers; But also that high population densities are effective at minimising human impacts on our environment.

Yet again, you identify a real problem, with a set of real technological solutions, and you ascribe this problem (incorrectly) to "overpopulation" (which you have yet to demonstrate is a real thing at all).

If "overpopulation" just means "high population density", then calls to end this state of affairs are functionally equivalent to the end of cities, and a reduction in lifestyle to that last seen before the Bronze Age.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

(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.)

CO2 is the one pollutant that we aren't making any real effort to deal with. Most other pollutant levels are dropping.

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!

Hydro is not enough to be a big source of human power even with a lower population. And note that dams are bad for river ecosystems.

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?

The problem here is that you are falling for the hidden flaw of the "Green" approach--pretending they have an answer while hiding the collapse off the end of the chart.

What has value?

I see no value in "years of civilization". That's a meaningless metric unless you're competing in some galactic record competition. The value is in people's experience of that civilization. And I see 2 trillion people-years as better than 1 trillion.