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

[Jokodo]

The selections reduce to:

1. Not worried at all.
2. Maybe worried a little but I'll go with current status quo. Maybe we should do some things. Don't think about it too much it is all in the future.
3. I am getting a bit worried. We should be doing more.
4. I am very worried about the future. We need immediate decisive action.

The choices are clear and unambiguous.

And he's skeaking overpopulation in. As in telling us, if we're, this is what we need to worry about. That's plain cheating.

 

[DBT]

Considering that carrying capacity depends on many factors, population size, rate of consumption, climate conditions, habitat loss, pollution, etc, do you believe that the course we are on is sustainable in the long term, let's say over the next hundred years?

I would not like to say what might happen in a period as relatively short as 100 years, but yes, I think that whatever the future, we are currently, for a variety of reasons (mostly the ones you list) already exceeding the planet's carrying capacity. The planet is creaking under the load. Economic models that pursue continual growth also add to the burden. Also worth noting, as mentioned by others, that our current period of exceeding carrying capacity will have legacy effects that will continue even if we were to get to a new situation where we are not exceeding carrying capacity. Also, the longer the carrying capacity is exceeded the lower it becomes and the greater the legacy effects.

Yes, indeed. That there are so many who do not, or cannot, see this doesn't bode well for a softer landing when the environmental crisis hits, as surely it must, given our current way of life and 'doing business'

 

[DBT]

How about something along the lines of "our current economic activity, being as it is based largely on fossil fuel, is clearly unsustainable, but the population has shit all to with it. The things we're doing wouldn't be sustainable at 100 million, and there's no reason we couldn't build a sustainable economy for 20 billion".

Population has a lot to do with it. If the World's population had peaked at 2 billion and remain steady ever since, we would not have had the rates of consumption, pollution or anything else. We most likely would not be having this discussion. We would have proven to be a smarter species than we currently appear to be. Consuming less, far smaller ecological footprint and more considerate of our environment.

Sadly, that is not the case.

- - - Updated - - -

The selections reduce to:

1. Not worried at all.
2. Maybe worried a little but I'll go with current status quo. Maybe we should do some things. Don't think about it too much it is all in the future.
3. I am getting a bit worried. We should be doing more.
4. I am very worried about the future. We need immediate decisive action.

The choices are clear and unambiguous.

That's it exactly. Well put.

 

[DBT]

From Psychology Today:


Can evolutionary psychology provide insights to aid in our survival?

''Can humans be "smarter than yeast?" Can we be the only species that can successfully anticipate and avoid ecological overshoot and collapse? Issues of sustainability are psychological problems. Are we sufficiently psychologically sophisticated to manage our own collective behavior to achieve sustainability on a finite planet?

One sobering answer provided by evolutionary psychology is that we, like all other species, have no evolved psychological adaptations designed specifically to perceive, anticipate and avoid ecological overshoot. In fact, we have just the opposite.

One problem is that inclusive fitness, the "designer" of psychological adaptations, is always relative to others; it is not absolute. That is, nature doesn't "say," "Have two kids (or help 4 full sibs), and then you can stop. Good job! You did your genetic duty, you avoided contributing to ecological overshoot, and you may pass along now..." Instead, nature "says" (relative inclusive fitness): "Out-reproduce your competitors. Your competitors are all of the genes in your species' gene pool that you do not share. If the average inclusive fitness score is four, then you go for five... "In other words, our psychological adaptations are designed to not just "keep up with the Joneses" but to "do better than the Joneses." This is in whatever means that may have generally helped to increase inclusive fitness, such as status, conspicuous consumption, and resource acquisition and control.''

Human ecological exceptionalism?

It will be a race toward either paradise or oblivion, right to the last moment.
-- Buckminster Fuller

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
-- H.G. Wells, The Outline of History

''At this point, many people refer to human exceptionalism. Of course we are smarter than yeast or reindeer, and our scientific advances and our technology will save us from ecological overshoot. We can expand the carrying capacity of the Earth.

Raymond Kurzweil has argued in his 2005 book The Singularity is Near that scientific knowledge, like populations, also grows exponentially. He believes that this will allow us to expand the Earth's ecological carrying capacity, cure disease and aging, and solve problems of energy depletion. He is confident that technology will help us prevent ecological overshoot and population collapse.

So, we have two opposing, exponentially increasing trends. One exponential trend leads to ecological overshoot and collapse; the other trend could lead to scientific/technological solutions to these problems. Which will arrive first? Ecological overshoot and collapse (Malthus), or a "techno-fix" (Kurzweil)? No one knows. But, we probably won't have to wait long to find out. One of these two scenarios will likely occur within the next several decades. But, which one? Generally it is healthy to be optimistic, but optimism can be deadly if it produces a Pollyannaish denial of real problems''

 

[barbos]

It could also be postulated that "the current overpopulation" is damned good because it is an insurance policy against human extinction in the event of a natural catastrophe. Humans are spread everywhere so there is good chance that at least some will survive to repopulate the Earth after some disastrous event.

The "correct population" generally has nothing to do with the Earth but everything to do with the wishes of the one defining it.

People today are not more spread than in the past. And in case of global catastrophe large population only means that more people will die. And spreading has no effect anyway, people will be dying from loss of infrastructure and food sources, not from immediate effect of let say asteroid impact.

 

[barbos]

From Psychology Today:


Can evolutionary psychology provide insights to aid in our survival?

''Can humans be "smarter than yeast?" Can we be the only species that can successfully anticipate and avoid ecological overshoot and collapse? Issues of sustainability are psychological problems. Are we sufficiently psychologically sophisticated to manage our own collective behavior to achieve sustainability on a finite planet?

One sobering answer provided by evolutionary psychology is that we, like all other species, have no evolved psychological adaptations designed specifically to perceive, anticipate and avoid ecological overshoot. In fact, we have just the opposite.

One problem is that inclusive fitness, the "designer" of psychological adaptations, is always relative to others; it is not absolute. That is, nature doesn't "say," "Have two kids (or help 4 full sibs), and then you can stop. Good job! You did your genetic duty, you avoided contributing to ecological overshoot, and you may pass along now..." Instead, nature "says" (relative inclusive fitness): "Out-reproduce your competitors. Your competitors are all of the genes in your species' gene pool that you do not share. If the average inclusive fitness score is four, then you go for five... "In other words, our psychological adaptations are designed to not just "keep up with the Joneses" but to "do better than the Joneses." This is in whatever means that may have generally helped to increase inclusive fitness, such as status, conspicuous consumption, and resource acquisition and control.''

Yep, ecologically smart individual are being outpopulated by ecologically dumb.

 

[OLDMAN]

Well, we would have fished the oceans out by now, if not for fish farms. Problem is that simply allows us to produce more people and the pressure on the oceans doesn't get reduced very much. Of the seven big events that could take us out in the next 1000 years, they all are unsolvable without a major change in our societies. I don't see that coming in time.

 

[ruby sparks]

Did you read the question/answer options section? This is supposed to be a poll.

Yes. And I didn't see what you were suggesting, that defining overpopulation as the problem means ignoring other measures.

 

[ruby sparks]

Sure, but a problem with no solution is the easiest kind of problem to deal with - You can achieve the optimum outcome by ignoring it completely.

Either we can address the problem effectively, or we should ignore it, in favour of putting our efforts into problems we can address.

So my question stands. Unless you are saying that the problem is impossible to solve, in which case you are wasting your time discussing, or even mentioning, it at all.

I do not know if we will solve the problems or what will happen in the future. But if disaster is to be averted then almost everybody and every country needs to do more, individually and collectively, and there is no good reason this should not include reasonable measures to limit or reduce population (education, contraception, raising women's status, tax benefits, etc etc) because it would help. Every person not born reduces the current burden. There is no one silver bullet. We should be aiming for culture changes on as many fronts as possible and again there is no good reason to leave reproduction and population out of the equation.

If it is or were the case that other countermeasures hold out the promise of achieving more than addressing overpopulation then sure, we should spend comparatively more time and effort on those. I have no problem with that.

 

[bilby]

Sure, but a problem with no solution is the easiest kind of problem to deal with - You can achieve the optimum outcome by ignoring it completely.

Either we can address the problem effectively, or we should ignore it, in favour of putting our efforts into problems we can address.

So my question stands. Unless you are saying that the problem is impossible to solve, in which case you are wasting your time discussing, or even mentioning, it at all.

I do not know if we will solve the problems or what will happen in the future. But if disaster is to be averted then almost everybody and every country needs to do more, individually and collectively, and there is no good reason this should not include reasonable measures to limit or reduce population (education, contraception, raising women's status, tax benefits, etc etc) because it would help. Every person not born reduces the current burden. There is no one silver bullet. We should be aiming for culture changes on as many fronts as possible and again there is no good reason to leave reproduction and population out of the equation.

These changes have already happened, and further moves in that direction will have little impact on population numbers in the short to medium term in which climate change must be addressed.

If it is or were the case that other countermeasures hold out the promise of achieving more than addressing overpopulation then sure, we should spend comparatively more time and effort on those. I have no problem with that.

It is. And we should.

But instead, the people with the most voice waste their breath discussing overpopulation as though that problem hadn't been solved before most of them were even born.

It's hugely frustrating. The world seems to be divided between those who refuse to admit that a problem exists, and those who strongly advocate for solutions that have already been fully implemented, while simultaneously strongly opposing solutions that are known to be effective.

Frankly I sometimes wonder whether people deserve to go extinct. Mankind has two features that distinguish him from the other animals - a large and powerful brain; And a baffling disinclination to use it (to paraphrase Douglas Adams).

 

[Jokodo]

Did you read the question/answer options section? This is supposed to be a poll.

Yes. And I didn't see what you were suggesting, that defining overpopulation as the problem means ignoring other measures.

It may or may not mean that, but the OP clearly doesn't give us the option of answering that other issues are more pertinent.

 

[ruby sparks]

Did you read the question/answer options section? This is supposed to be a poll.

Yes. And I didn't see what you were suggesting, that defining overpopulation as the problem means ignoring other measures.

It may or may not mean that, but the OP clearly doesn't give us the option of answering that other issues are more pertinent.

Not seeing that at all. Wondering how on earth you got to that in fact.

And even if it were the case that one person, hypothetically, put too much emphasis on only one issue, is that a good reason to deny that it's an issue, a part of the problem? No. That would be just repeating the error in the other direction.

 

[ruby sparks]

These changes have already happened, and further moves in that direction will have little impact on population numbers in the short to medium term in which climate change must be addressed.

They have not already happened, though they may have partly happened, and neither you nor I know what the cumulative effects could achieve.

But instead, the people with the most voice waste their breath discussing overpopulation as though that problem hadn't been solved before most of them were even born.

Are you sure it's overpopulation 'instead' and not overpopulation 'as well'. This idea that there are people who cite overpopulation but not other factors is, so far in this thread, looking a tad bogus, to be honest.

 

[bilby]

These changes have already happened, and further moves in that direction will have little impact on population numbers in the short to medium term in which climate change must be addressed.

They have not already happened, though they may have partly happened, and neither you nor I know what the cumulative effects could achieve.

But instead, the people with the most voice waste their breath discussing overpopulation as though that problem hadn't been solved before most of them were even born.

Are you sure it's overpopulation 'instead' and not overpopulation 'as well'. This idea that there are people who cite overpopulation but not other factors is, so far in this thread, looking a tad bogus, to be honest.

While I hesitate to raise the subject of arithmetic with you once again, it is a mathematical impossibility for further reductions in birth rates to have more than a very minor impact on the 2050 population of the world.

Even in the extreme case where birth rate fell to ZERO, the population would still likely exceed six billion by that date.

So, no, You may not know, but I DO know, what the cumulative effects of the already completed birth rate reduction measures plus any further measures might be; And it's almost indistinguishable from the already completed measures alone.

Feel free to be ignorant, if you must; But don't claim that everyone else must be equally ignorant.

Oh, and your straw man regarding 'overpopulation instead' vs 'as well' is pointless. It's enough that any effort is wasted on this non-issue - nobody (apart from you) has suggested that anyone wastes ALL of their effort on this nonsense.

My position in no way depends upon monomania on the part of the idiots I am deriding.

 

[ruby sparks]

While I hesitate to raise the subject of arithmetic with you once again, it is a mathematical impossibility for further reductions in birth rates to have more than a very minor impact on the 2050 population of the world.

Even in the extreme case where birth rate fell to ZERO, the population would still likely exceed six billion by that date.

So, no, You may not know, but I DO know, what the cumulative effects of the already completed birth rate reduction measures plus any further measures might be; And it's almost indistinguishable from the already completed measures alone.

Feel free to be ignorant, if you must; But don't claim that everyone else must be equally ignorant.

And you should indeed hesitate, because once again, as when your homegrown maths about the supposed postponing of the eventual inevitability of a global catastrophe ignored a crucial factor (namely natural sequestration rates) your maths on the population issue is also overly simplistic.

First, even if it were just about total global numbers and the returns from countermeasures were modest, there is (a) nothing whatsoever wrong with a modest or minor impact and (b) the assertion that population is not a causal factor is still wrong. And it is worth noting that you saying that it will only have a minor effect is merely an assertion at this point. For example:

Following a slower population growth path could reduce emissions from fossil fuel use by 1.4 to 2.5 billion tons of carbon per year by 2050. This is roughly 16 to 29 percent of the emissions reductions needed to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent the most damaging climate change.

About half of those reductions would come from fertility decline in the United States and developing countries (not including China), and could be achieved through meeting existing demand for family planning services in those countries. The emissions reductions that could be expected through meeting these family planning needs would be roughly equivalent to the reductions that would come from ending all tropical deforestation.

https://pai.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/PAI-1293-Climate-Change_compressed.pdf

That for example does not sound quite as insignificant an effect as you imply.

But in any case, overpopulation at, for example, the regional level, can, I read, adversely affect climate change (and arguably as importantly the adverse effects of it) directly and indirectly via factors such as migration, economic development, education, conflict and poverty. So again your analysis is lacking.

And no, you do not know, partly because, so I read, relatively little research has been conducted to explore the links between population dynamics and climate change. If anything, it could therefore be argued not that citing population and discounting other measures is the problem in discussions or in practice (and certainly it has not surfaced in this thread at least because no one as far as I know has discounted other countermeasures) but that the population issue is the one being under-acknowledged, by you and some others here.

Population dynamics and climate change: what are the links?
https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article/32/2/150/1610588

"In fact, very few organizations deny that reductions in both consumption in the North, and global population growth are important; it is often a question of which they emphasize more."

Overpopulation is widely understood to be one of a number of causal factors and there is no good reason to discount it from the range of options for analysis and implementation of possible countermeasures and very few organizations are doing that. It is a matter of emphasis only. And the analysis is more complicated that you might think, so pause before drawing simplistic conclusions from simplistic arithmetic and declaring the issue to be independent of population.

 

[Jokodo]

It may or may not mean that, but the OP clearly doesn't give us the option of answering that other issues are more pertinent.

Not seeing that at all. Wondering how on earth you got to that in fact.

And even if it were the case that one person, hypothetically, put too much emphasis on only one issue, is that a good reason to deny that it's an issue, a part of the problem? No. That would be just repeating the error in the other direction.

This is a verbatim quote: "Our population numbers and activity is not sustainable"

This is not an option: "Our economic activity is not sustainable"

How on Earth is that not strongly implying that if there's a problem, population must be a major driver...

 

[ruby sparks]

It may or may not mean that, but the OP clearly doesn't give us the option of answering that other issues are more pertinent.

Not seeing that at all. Wondering how on earth you got to that in fact.

And even if it were the case that one person, hypothetically, put too much emphasis on only one issue, is that a good reason to deny that it's an issue, a part of the problem? No. That would be just repeating the error in the other direction.

This is a verbatim quote: "Our population numbers and activity is not sustainable"

This is not an option: "Our economic activity is not sustainable"

How on Earth is that not strongly implying that if there's a problem, population must be a major driver...

You lost me. Did the person you are quoting say the second sentence?

It seems to me you are floundering here.

As far as I can see there isn't anyone (here at least) making the argument you alleged. It seems to me that the OP is not discounting other factors or countermeasures, because (a) the thread title questions both the things you mention (population and economic activity) as does your verbatim quote, (b) in the first post the OP in fact listed several others, and (c) in subsequent posts said that there are a range of options generally.

 

[skepticalbip]

Did you read the question/answer options section? This is supposed to be a poll.

Yes. And I didn't see what you were suggesting, that defining overpopulation as the problem means ignoring other measures.

Actually even the word "overpopulation" makes the assumption that population IS a major if not the problem.

 

[ruby sparks]

Did you read the question/answer options section? This is supposed to be a poll.

Yes. And I didn't see what you were suggesting, that defining overpopulation as the problem means ignoring other measures.

Actually even the word "overpopulation" makes the assumption that population IS a major if not the problem.

No it doesn't.

 

[skepticalbip]

Actually even the word "overpopulation" makes the assumption that population IS a major if not the problem.

No it doesn't.

Then why is it "OVERpopulation" rather than "current population"? What does OVERpopulation mean?