Will human population and economic activity exceed the Planets carrying capacity?

[Jokodo]

As bilby has explained, I'm not squabbling over the definiteness of the prediction, nor over the word "surge". I italicized the word "growth" and explicitly said that you may have had a point, had you said "the population is going to surge". The problem isn't in "going to" versus "expected to", the problem isn't in in "surge" vs. "significant increase", the problem is that, while population is increasing, population growth is declining, as your own graph shows.

Population growth rate may be declining, marginally - ''Growth Rate. Population in the world is currently (2018) growing at a rate of around 1.09% per year (down from 1.12% in 2017 and 1.14% in 2016)'' - but the issue is long term sustainability given rising living standards with the related increasing demands on natural resources, in relation to predicted climate change and more challenging conditions. Our current climatic conditions cannot be assumed to continue indefinably.

Plus 1.09% growth rate increases world population by an estimated 83 million people per year'' - which is not a small number of people.

None of which is pertinent to the fact that "population growth is (going to/expected to, what-have-you) surge" is a demonstrably false claim.

And those 83 million, big number or not, are almost 10 million less than we were adding in 1998.

 

[ruby sparks]

As bilby has explained, I'm not squabbling over the definiteness of the prediction, nor over the word "surge". I italicized the word "growth" and explicitly said that you may have had a point, had you said "the population is going to surge". The problem isn't in "going to" versus "expected to", the problem isn't in in "surge" vs. "significant increase", the problem is that, while population is increasing, population growth is declining, as your own graph shows.

Population growth rate may be declining, marginally - ''Growth Rate. Population in the world is currently (2018) growing at a rate of around 1.09% per year (down from 1.12% in 2017 and 1.14% in 2016)'' - but the issue is long term sustainability given rising living standards with the related increasing demands on natural resources, in relation to predicted climate change and more challenging conditions. Our current climatic conditions cannot be assumed to continue indefinably.

Plus 1.09% growth rate increases world population by an estimated 83 million people per year'' - which is not a small number of people.

None of which is pertinent to the fact that "population growth is (going to/expected to, what-have-you) surge" is a demonstrably false claim.

And those 83 million, big number or not, are almost 10 million less than we were adding in 1998.

What is your wider point? DBT has now accepted that population growth is not increasing, it is decreasing. I doubt very much that he was under the false impression that numbers were accelerating, and he never suggested he understood it that way, so it is or was likely a mistake in understanding the correct term, not a bias.

I think at one point you suggested that incorrect use of that term meant that DBT was not fit to discuss the issues accurately. I think you would have to find more flaws in more of his points in order to justify that. Making a mistake in using a term in one case is not sufficient grounds, imo.

We have spent an inordinate amount of time in this thread squabbling about words, be it 'factor', 'problem' 'consideration' or whatever. Yes, the correct words are important, but there are also wider general points.

 

[Jokodo]

Maybe, but I don't see anyone in here thinking like that

I don't see anyone deliberately hiding their self-acknowledged racism behind this talk about overpopulation, and I never claimed to.

I do however see an awful amount of post-colonial paternalism: They aren't going to make it unless we do something about it.

I do see exceptionalism (and/or utter ignorance of history): Just because every other culture, in every part of the world, from Europe and North America, to Latin America and the Carribean, to South, East, and Southeast Asia, to the Middle East and North Africa, showed very much the same response to a similar set of conditions doesn't mean anything like that is going to happen in Africa, because somehow, they're Africans and Africans have African Cultural Norms (tm) that'll prevent it (unless we intervene, of course). As if the rest of the world didn't have a varied bunch of pre-existing cultural norms.

I do see victim blaming.

In short, I see people touting ideas that, while not explicitly racist themselves, fall apart once you disect them unless you have unstated racist premises.

I prefer to believe that those people, for the most part, just haven't given their ideas enough thought to see it, that they're still curable.

Jokodo, I've responded to this concern many times, including in my last post to you. The ideas do not fall apart without racist premises. I and others (including experts cited) would recommend not having children to westerners, and even go so far as to say (and have said) that it is the single biggest contribution a westerner could make, and the wealthier the westerner the bigger the contribution (because wealthier people generally have bigger carbon footprints). Did you not see the article I posted entitled, "The greatest contribution you can make to fight climate change is the one the government is not telling you about?" It referred to not having children. That's to a relatively affluent mainly white British readership (The Independent Newspaper). Nothing racist, exceptionalist or post-colonial about it.

Furthermore, many undeveloped and developing countries have successfully initiated non-coercive Family Planning measures themselves, independently of the west and without being asked. Again, nothing post-colonial or exceptionalist about that, and in general it could be patronising as well as inaccurate to think that the 'west' is necessarily the instigator. I cited several countries in SE Asia for starters. Many other countries want them and many people (and experts on climate change) in those countries, mainly women, want them too. There is an identified unmet need for family planning in many countries and doing something about it would improve people's lives in many ways and contribute to slowing population increase. It's a potential win-win for most humans, everywhere, including in undeveloped countries, not least because they often bear the brunt of climate change, which is something that has largely been the fault of the developed 'west' and is widely acknowledged as such.

As I have said, I agree there is a risk in terms of underlying intentions in the ways you describe, but it is not true that the problem has to involve these, and often it doesn't and hasn't. You will find explicit and implicit ill intent in most endeavours, perhaps especially in political issues (less so in science) and I am not saying there isn't any in this case. But it is not imo a good enough reason to eschew legitimate and reasonable methods which do not have ill intent and which have the potential to benefit everyone, including in undeveloped countries. How many ideas can we say are win-win? It is great that it's generally a potential win-win. We all live on one planet, as will everyone as yet unborn.

Good intentions are no gold insurance against bad outcomes.

 

[ruby sparks]

Good intentions are no gold insurance against bad outcomes.

I agree with that.

It's true of many things in general. Indeed it could also apply to some other climate change countermeasures such as for example nuclear power, with which there are associated risks.

I think most would agree that the problems are urgent and that we arguably should try all reasonable measures that offer potential assistance, on the basis and with the proviso that we should seek to minimise or eliminate harm while doing so. Yes, it's true that things could go awry.

 

[ruby sparks]

Suggestion:

I'll continue to respond to anyone posting to me about population and I may respond to posts about population, but how about we (temporarily if necessary) also move away from just population as the topic and move back to the OP question. Carrying capacity.

My view is that we don't know whether the planet's carrying capacity will be exceeded. The term is difficult to apply to a sentient species that adapts readily and creatively to new circumstances.

As to whether it is already being exceeded, I think that itself is very complicated. I would not like to say it is or it isn't and as far as I am aware, experts disagree also.

 

[Politesse]

I think the problem is thinking of carrying capacity as some sort of absolute number. It's actually a highly relative one, especially where humans are concerned. Even in the rest of the natural world, it can depend on a lot of unknown factors. Will the general ecological balance remain stable, or will it change? If one food or habitat resource is exhausted, is the organism flexible enough to switch to another? We often have no idea exactly how many organisms a given environmental niche could support; let alone the planet. No biologist could tell you at what point we would reach "peak jaguars" for the planet, for instance, though they might be able to hazard a guess for a particular valley. Humans are more complicated, in that the majority of ecosystems are heavily anthropogenic, and our decision-making can seriously affect things. Someone living in the Bronze Age might be rightly concerned about reaching "peak tin" and they would have been entirely correct; the exhaustion of tin sources was indeed a contributing factor to the fall of several nations. But these days we could run out of tin entirely and it would at worst cause a few years of chaos in the metals market as everyone readjusted. To know what a FUTURE carrying capacity will be requires you to put on a pointy wizard hat and opine about any number of factors - technology, social organizations, natural ecological cycles we know little about, what populations in particular areas are likely to do and what their political and economic situation will be when they "decide"...

I do see it as somewhat unconnected to the overpopulation question, at least in terms of the near future, since our most serious resource problems in the present are problems of distribution, not quantity. If our resource consumption is unsustainable - and it probably is for certain specific resources at least - this is still a distribution problem, not a supply problem.

 

[bilby]

That makes no sense whatsoever.

First, a problem without a viable solution is still a problem. Second even if the optimum solution can be achieved while doing nothing about it on one front, it is harder to achieve that optimum solution if you don't do anything about it on that front, because more people add to the problem (this is the relevant consideration) while you're trying to fix it by other means. So fewer people would help, even while other measures are being attempted and emphasised. To say otherwise is to use a false dichotomy.



Yes, but only because you personally left it out of the equation. No one is denying there are other reasons and other benefits as well.

Why would you bother to mention 'population' in the context of Family Planning? Unless you want to encourage the anti-humanists who will say "If a woman being allowed to choose fewer children is good, then us forcing all women to have fewer children is even better!"

You would bother to mention it because non-coercive Family Planning has a proven track record and the potential to continue, and brings many benefits, including reduced population growth.

You need to think more, and write less.

Every one of your "rebuttals" here stems from your not taking the time to think seriously about what I said, or why I might have said it.

If you are so convinced that I must be wrong that you dismiss my arguments before even thinking hard about what they say, then you are wasting my time and yours.

Pretend, for a moment, that I am not a mindless drooling idiot, and that what I write actually DOES make sense from some perspective - can you find any such perspectives? If not, perhaps you should try looking for one before responding.

If I leave population out of consideration, do you think that this is because it didn't even cross my mind - in a discussion that is about population?

Or is it possible that I am demonstrating that it's unnecessary?

 

[ruby sparks]

Or is it possible that I am demonstrating that it's unnecessary?

Whether you've considered it or not is beside the point. You appear to have considered it and discounted it. And no, you are not demonstrating that it is unnecessary, you are just repeating that over and over.

And I am sure your argument does make sense from some perspective (yours, presumably) but then so does any argument ever forwarded by anyone, ever.

In short, you have not yet provided an argument (except for one involving a false dichotomy) or evidence from the real world to show how you are correct, and I am still waiting for both.

 

[ruby sparks]

I think the problem is thinking of carrying capacity as some sort of absolute number. It's actually a highly relative one, especially where humans are concerned. Even in the rest of the natural world, it can depend on a lot of unknown factors. Will the general ecological balance remain stable, or will it change? If one food or habitat resource is exhausted, is the organism flexible enough to switch to another? We often have no idea exactly how many organisms a given environmental niche could support; let alone the planet. No biologist could tell you at what point we would reach "peak jaguars" for the planet, for instance, though they might be able to hazard a guess for a particular valley. Humans are more complicated, in that the majority of ecosystems are heavily anthropogenic, and our decision-making can seriously affect things. Someone living in the Bronze Age might be rightly concerned about reaching "peak tin" and they would have been entirely correct; the exhaustion of tin sources was indeed a contributing factor to the fall of several nations. But these days we could run out of tin entirely and it would at worst cause a few years of chaos in the metals market as everyone readjusted. To know what a FUTURE carrying capacity will be requires you to put on a pointy wizard hat and opine about any number of factors - technology, social organizations, natural ecological cycles we know little about, what populations in particular areas are likely to do and what their political and economic situation will be when they "decide"...

I do see it as somewhat unconnected to the overpopulation question, at least in terms of the near future, since our most serious resource problems in the present are problems of distribution, not quantity. If our resource consumption is unsustainable - and it probably is for certain specific resources at least - this is still a distribution problem, not a supply problem.

Yes, I think that's correct. And I agree with what you say about distribution. That is an important factor, especially for resources (perhaps not so much for climate change, I'm guessing) and therefore relevant to carrying capacity.

Small caveat: I can see why you used the word 'overpopulation question' but the OP asks about 'population' (combined with activity) which is a slightly different emphasis. For myself, since I do not claim to know if the earth's carrying capacity has been reached or exceeded, I cannot say that I think it is overpopulated.

 

[bilby]

Or is it possible that I am demonstrating that it's unnecessary?

Whether you've considered it or not is beside the point. You appear to have considered it and discounted it. And no, you are not demonstrating that it is unnecessary, you are just repeating that over and over.

And I am sure your argument does make sense from some perspective, but it seems very likely to be an inaccurate one.

In short, you have not yet provided an argument (except for one involving a false dichotomy) or evidence from the real world to show how you are correct, and I am still waiting.

OK, then could you tell me of ANY population control measure that could potentially be taken that is not EITHER a worthwhile thing to do regardless of its impact on population; OR morally unacceptable?

Just one would do.

I shalln't be holding my breath.

 

[ruby sparks]

OK, then could you tell me of ANY population control measure that could potentially be taken that is not EITHER a worthwhile thing to do regardless of its impact on population; OR morally unacceptable?

Sorry I don't understand the question. Could you rephrase or elaborate?

In the meantime I'll try to guess, though you can tell me if I understood you wrong.

If you are alluding back to what you said earlier about population control measures, when they are morally acceptable (assuming that includes non-harmful, non-coercive or voluntary measures) having as you put it 'sufficient' reasons or benefits other than related to population......then I think you are raising another false dichotomy, because as I have said there is nothing wrong with both 'population reduction' and 'other benefits' combined. In fact both together represent a potential win-win, and you are merely leaving one of the wins out of the equation.

 

[bilby]

OK, then could you tell me of ANY population control measure that could potentially be taken that is not EITHER a worthwhile thing to do regardless of its impact on population; OR morally unacceptable?

Sorry I don't understand the question. Could you rephrase or elaborate?

In the meantime I'll try to guess, though you can tell me if I understood you wrong.

If you are alluding back to what you said earlier about population control measures, when they are morally acceptable (assuming that includes non-harmful, non-coercive or voluntary measures) having as you put it 'sufficient' reasons or benefits other than related to population......then I think you are raising another false dichotomy, because as I have said there is nothing wrong with both 'population reduction' and 'other benefits' combined. In fact both together represent a potential win-win, and you are merely leaving one of the wins out of the equation.

Oh for fucks sake.

Describing population as a 'problem' is harmful. It leads to ugly and cruel behaviours.

So we should avoid it.

Avoiding it is not going to prevent us from doing anything that we should be doing, because anything we should be doing we can and do justify without mentioning population.

Mentioning population therefore does more harm than good. It doesn't add to your argument in a way that is morally neutral, as you seem to imagine. Perhaps if people were pure intelligences devoid of emotion it would; But they aren't, so it doesn't.

So we shouldn't do it.

I am not addressing your arguments; I am at the level above your position, arguing that no arguments on either side of the debate should be made at all. So I cannot be presenting a false dichotomy. I am not questioning your reasoning or your premises; I am questioning the moral value of the topic you want to discuss.

I am not saying that your reasoning is wrong; I an saying that whether it is right or wrong is irrelevant, because it's a question that should not be debated at all - just like what the solution is to the Jewish Problem.

 

[ruby sparks]

Mentioning population therefore does more harm than good.

Very questionable indeed, just like a lot of what you say.

The rest I have already addressed.

 

[bilby]

Mentioning population therefore does more harm than good.

Very questionable indeed, just like a lot of what you say.

But true nonetheless. (Also like a lot of what I say).

 

[ruby sparks]

Only inside your head.

 

[ruby sparks]

A long way back in the thread, a wise person popped in with only one short post. I say wise because he knew better than to get into a quagmire.

He said that it is a fallacy to suggest that reasonable population growth measures cannot be taken and make a difference while at the same time protecting people's human rights. And that's what it is, a fallacy.

 

[bilby]

A long way back in the thread, a wise person popped in with only one short post. I say wise because he knew better than to get into a quagmire.

He said that it is a fallacy to suggest that reasonable population growth measures cannot be taken and make a difference while at the same time protecting people's human rights. And that's what it is, a fallacy.

It may or may not be a true claim. But it's most assuredly not a fallacy.

 

[bilby]

OK, then could you tell me of ANY population control measure that could potentially be taken that is not EITHER a worthwhile thing to do regardless of its impact on population; OR morally unacceptable?

Sorry I don't understand the question. Could you rephrase or elaborate?

In the meantime I'll try to guess, though you can tell me if I understood you wrong.

If you are alluding back to what you said earlier about population control measures, when they are morally acceptable (assuming that includes non-harmful, non-coercive or voluntary measures) having as you put it 'sufficient' reasons or benefits other than related to population......then I think you are raising another false dichotomy, because as I have said there is nothing wrong with both 'population reduction' and 'other benefits' combined. In fact both together represent a potential win-win, and you are merely leaving one of the wins out of the equation.

You have made no attempt to address my question.

What part of it do you not understand?

It's a very simple question - let me rephrase it for you:

What measures could we take to reduce population, which are neither immoral, nor worthwhile things to do regardless of their impact on population?

Are there any such measures?

 

[steve_bank]

There are possibilities.

The 19th century potatoes failure in Ireland was in part due to a potato monoculture of sorts. In South America the source of potatoes there are a number of vanities adapted to varying climates and altitudes.Today the corporate ag business is highly monoculture and could be susceptible to disease and pest in the future. There is a seed repository I believe in northern Norway for such an eventuality.

The Mao farm collectivization plush ideology led to failure and massive deaths, a largely untold 20th century tragedy.

Around 1920 the Soviet Union farm collectivization failed leading to mass starvation. Western aide may have saved the Russian Revolution from collapse. Collectivization plus an inneffeinct polical ideology and system.

Adding a few moew equivalent of China or India can lead to more instability. South America despite its resources has never benn stable and effectively served its people.

We are seeing how marginally stable the we tern alliance is. IMO China has a higher probability of serving in the long term because they are authoterian. Only limited dissent is allowed. The ruling class can make needed decisions without requient the consensus of a billion people. China would not be manageable with our kind of democracy. It would be bogged down in worse factionalism.

What is the police system for a doubling of population? Even in relatively small UK and Germany factionalism is an issue apparently getting worse in Europe.

We have science but we are pretty much the same emotional humans over thousands of years. Both China and Russia want to differentiate themselves from the USA and be taken as peers. The same pre WWII geopolitics. Putin has his eyes on the Baltic states and is destabilizing Ukraine. China arbitrarily redrew international maritime boundaries and claims control of what is considered international air space and waters.

The historical reduction in population is war, disease, and famine. Not today or tomorrow, if things get bad enough sooner or later somebody will use nuclear weapons.

In the 20th century we have seen it all. We are living in a delusional bubble gritting used to being well fed without worries and without establishing solid foundations.

And entering the mix is genetics with possibility of a class of advanced humans.

 

[DBT]

As bilby has explained, I'm not squabbling over the definiteness of the prediction, nor over the word "surge". I italicized the word "growth" and explicitly said that you may have had a point, had you said "the population is going to surge". The problem isn't in "going to" versus "expected to", the problem isn't in in "surge" vs. "significant increase", the problem is that, while population is increasing, population growth is declining, as your own graph shows.

Population growth rate may be declining, marginally - ''Growth Rate. Population in the world is currently (2018) growing at a rate of around 1.09% per year (down from 1.12% in 2017 and 1.14% in 2016)'' - but the issue is long term sustainability given rising living standards with the related increasing demands on natural resources, in relation to predicted climate change and more challenging conditions. Our current climatic conditions cannot be assumed to continue indefinably.

Plus 1.09% growth rate increases world population by an estimated 83 million people per year'' - which is not a small number of people.

None of which is pertinent to the fact that "population growth is (going to/expected to, what-have-you) surge" is a demonstrably false claim.

That is a false claim. I pointed out that my 'surge' comment was in fact specific to sub Saharan Africa, as stated in the very sentence you quoted....and I pointed to to the upwardly inclining purple line representing population growth in SSA on the graph that I posted.

The graph shows a surge. That is the specific surge I referred to and clearly stated.

Please stop misrepresenting my remarks. It is becoming annoying.

And those 83 million, big number or not, are almost 10 million less than we were adding in 1998.

But still multiply times the total population of Australia, so it is not a trivial figure.