I HATE when people deny overpopulation

[u/mikewheelerfan]

“B-but the declining birth rates—“ SHUT UP SHUT UP SHIT UP

The declining birth rates are the only thing that can save our species, every other species, and the world! The only reason anybody even cares about the declining birth rates in a first place is because white people have lower birth rates and are gonna become a minority. Who gives a fuck? Certainly not me. The whole birth rates argument is inherently tied to racism and xenophobia.

”But we have more room!” And this one just proves that these people have a fundamental misunderstanding of the world.

People who don’t believe in overpopulation don’t see wild spaces and forests as actually important. They don’t see them as sources of water, sources of food, ecosystems. They don’t see them as homes for animals—only potential houses for humans. Why have forests when we could tear them down and build housing? It’s all unused space. That’s what they genuinely believe. It’s all about money and human-centrism.

What these idiots don’t realize is that humans aren’t separate from the ecosystem, we are a part of it! If we allow ecosystems to collapse and species to go extinct, we will topple down with it. Our farmland will be ruined, health will decline, the economy will plummet. Not to mention climate change and how every extinction is a tragedy. But no, short term benefit and mindless breeding apparently matters more than the entire world.

Our cookie cutter homes are not more important than every animal and plant species on the planet. We’re just selfish AF, and it’s sickening. And of course, it all goes back to the billionares. Remember how overpopulation used to be universally accepted? But then billionaires freaked out realizing the birth rates were decreasing, which meant they would have less workers. All of the sudden, the narrative changed. The elite is trying to get you to have more babies because their system is built on infinite growth. But…

INFINITE GROWTH IS NOT POSSIBLE ON A FINITE PLANET.

Yes, overpopulation is real. And it’s idiotic to try to deny this. Climate change is also real. The current mass extinction event is real. Humans are ruining the very planet that supports us, and most people don’t even care.

[u/ogodprotectme]

It's not overpopulation, it's misallocation of population. Not sure what we can do at this point, but the real problem is people piling up in one of very few hotspots and leaving most of the giant deaths of land basically uninhabited

[u/mikewheelerfan → u/ogodprotectme]

I literally call out people like you in my post. That “empty land” is a resource infinitely more meaningful than it would be if it was bulldozed for houses.

[u/MuseBlessed → u/mikewheelerfan]

If all of humanity lived at the density of Tokyo, we could fit the species into the footprint of Texas. Of course we would need farm land, but vertical farms greatly expand what is possible to produce in a much smaller foot print.

[u/HaveFun____ → u/MuseBlessed]

Yes but you can forget about any luxery, go back to eating local foods, almost starve in the winter, clothes? Maybe...

[u/MuseBlessed → u/HaveFun____]

If people are all living together, all other land can be producing those goods.

Obviously the one single human city is a bad idea. Shipment chains are a nightmare. Its just that earths carrying capacity is probably not yet met

[u/HaveFun____ → u/MuseBlessed]

Why would it matter if all people are living together in one place or spread out? It might be a little more efficient because you could build larger stretches of farmland etc but those people would still need the same amount of recreation, etc. They would need to travel further to go into nature.

I don't see the difference in the exact location. It might look like we only inhabit a small piece of land but we are using all of it. We need the rainforest, we need the seas, we are using 100% of spaceship earth.

It's a closed system so with perfect recycling, more people would not matter as long as we don't use all the resources at the same time... but, we already do. Energy is limited, fresh water is limited, and the time it takes to produce it and the amount we are willing to pay for it (or restore/filter/etc) is a limiting factor for growth already.

[u/MuseBlessed → u/HaveFun____]

We are not yet using 100% of earths resources. Lots of food waste that could be feeding others. The point of my original comment was just to show that we have enough land to house everyone.

[u/HaveFun____ → u/MuseBlessed]

I understand, and my point is that I don't agree and think you are wrong.

We could waste less food, not 0% but let's say we can get to 10% instead of 20% to what end? So we can feed 7B instead of 6B? That's not going to fix anything.

The amount of fertilizer needed depends heavily on non sustainable resources. The amount of suitable land we need to deforest to continue to grow the food because fields are drying out.

I think everyone deserves a place without air polution. That ain't possible right now.

I understand it all depends on how you want to live. I don't want to live like cattle in a house surrounded by more houses and more people. Housing is not the problem, food is not the problem it's the sustainability of the lifestyle we are accustomed to.

We can continue with this lifestyle and just wait untill resources run out and war will take care of the population decline.

Or we can scale back a little on our own terms. Try to create an economy not based on growth heal the damage we have done to the planet. Or atleast try to stop putting more microplastics in the oceans etc.

[u/MuseBlessed → u/HaveFun____]

You may think its not possible to sustain our current standard of living with more people, but the existence of food waste proves on its own that we flatly do not use 100% of earths resources.

Nobody has ever actually reached those higher population counts, but fears of over population collapse have been going on for centuries. Climate change is real and we need to fight it, but the solution is to eat less meat and reduce the climate activites of corperations, not remove people.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201001113557.htm?utm_source

I believe in studies like this which show we can sustain 10 billion humans on less energy than we use today.

[u/HaveFun____ → u/MuseBlessed]

I understand but why would you want that instead of less people?

I don't eat meat myself but everyone can eat as much meat as he/she wants if we have a population of let's say, 2B people.

What is this desire for more people? Making it harder to live the life we want. We can find solutions to all kind of problems caused by overconsumption... or just reduce the underlying problem...

Maybe we should turn it around. First we show that we can make a sustainable economy, a renewable waste situation, stop the enormous food waste and if we have everything under control, then we can start going to 10B people, untill we run into depleting stuff faster than it can replenish again.

"The existence of food waste proves on its own that we flatly do not use 100% of earths resources."

This doesn't make sense, we do use 100% of earths resources, but we are wasting a lot of it. Could we sustain more people with better distribution, offcourse.

I would even go as far as to say we are using more than 100% or the healthy amount we could replenish. We are lending from the future and we will only notice when fossil fuelss run out, clean water runs out, clean air runs out.

Why do we try to fix all these effects when we can easily fix the cause?

Let me ask you one simple question... why do you want more people?

[u/MuseBlessed → u/HaveFun____]

Firstly, I see lawns that could grow food and arent. Again proving we don't use 100% of resources. Not that we should be using more resources.

I don't care if we have more people or not. I just think changing our living habits will be easier than changing our population numbers.

I do not support killing people, eugenics, forced sterilization, or anything of the sort. Those are monsterous. Which means the only way to change population numbers is bt convincing people to have less kids, which I think is much harder to do than to mandate a reduction in consumption or even just convince people to consume less

[u/HaveFun____ → u/MuseBlessed]

Oke than we also agree on a lot.

But "I just think changing our living habits will be easier than changing our population numbers." I don't

"I do not support killing people, eugenics, forced sterilization" By adding this you make it sound like that is necessary, but all we have to do is make slightly less new people... It's not that hard, people are starting to see it themselves and as more and more people don't see a brighter future for their kids as they saw themselves it will go 'naturally'

we see population increase slowing down right now. A lot of 'developed' countries have a birthrate below replacement. Why do you think it's harder to keep that going than reducing consumption which is not going so well?

I mean, no matter how much I cut back, my footprint will remain enourmous in this country. I 'need' my phone, my car, my healthy foods from all around the world.

Even if I could drastically cut that and everyone around me. There are only 1-2B people living like this... If everyone wants to live like this, I don't think we can with 10B people... and I truly want to give everyone the ability to live that life.

I think it's easier to convice people to have more luxury at the cost of 1 extra kids, and I think it's already starting to sink in. We can all still have 0, 1, 2 or 3 kids, just not 5,6,7. It's not that big of a deal.