
Overpopulation Is Not the Problem - cs702
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/opinion/overpopulation-is-not-the-problem.html
======
bayesianhorse
Good to hear that I'm not the only one with this opinion. While I'm all for
keeping resource-consumption in check and keeping sustainability in mind, I
don't like what people say about overpopulatiion.

Sometimes I would hear people hoping that population numbers would decrease by
natural catastrophies or diseases. Or they caution the expansion of health
services in Africa "because it would make the problems worse".

~~~
cnorgate
The reality is that the best way to control population expansion is by
bringing good healthcare to a region. People in the third world have huge
families for a number of reasons - a few of them include the reality that:

1) Many children will die young, so in order to have at least a few that
survive they need to have a large number of them

2) They have no form of birth control available available to them, so even if
they wanted to they could not control the population

To go along with this, in societies that lack a social safety net / old age
pensions, your children are your retirement fund, so you tend to have many of
them.

It's a multi-faceted problem, but there are humane, concrete solutions that
don't involve acts of god.

~~~
fedvasu
No that is the problem right there. The advent of good(pretty good for a 3rd
world country) health care in India ensured explosive growth of population.
The only humane way to control population is extensive education of the
masses,strongly backed by government(military can be engaged, if required) It
means breaking away from religious factions and beliefs. It is impossible in
India where minority politics is very important and in an Islamic country like
Bangladesh it would be difficult.

~~~
lutusp
> The only humane way to control population is extensive education of the
> masses ...

Absolutely true, but for one thing. If we educate the masses, we will reduce
the average fertility along with doing a lot of general good. Who could argue
against that?

But natural selection does perverse things with our best-laid plans. If we
educate the masses, natural selection will efficiently select those who
weren't educated, or who weren't educated very well, and within 100 years,
those people will represent the entire human population.

Those who doubt this scenario need only study the spread of MRSA, in spite of
many well-educated people fighting the good fight:

[http://mrsa-research-center.bsd.uchicago.edu/timeline.html](http://mrsa-
research-center.bsd.uchicago.edu/timeline.html)

Quote 1: "1960-1967: nfrequent hospital outbreaks of MRSA in Western Europe
and Australia - See more at: [http://mrsa-research-
center.bsd.uchicago.edu/timeline.html#s...](http://mrsa-research-
center.bsd.uchicago.edu/timeline.html#sthash.bCnuu7BG.dpuf")

Quote 2: "2012: Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology-published study
showed MRSA infections doubled at academic medical centers in the U.S. between
2003 and 2008. Hospitalizations increased from about 21 out of every 1,000
patients hospitalized in 2003 to about 42 out of every 1,000 in 2008, or
almost 1 in 20 patients."

We fought and lost that battle, in the midst of the most advanced society that
has ever existed, with a full armament of scientific methods and knowledge.
And we didn't have to honor the tastes and individual rights of the organisms
we were fighting -- we could be ruthless and warlike. We lost anyway.

Now, because of MRSA, to visit a doctor exposes you to a greater risk than ...
well, than most reasons to visit a doctor.

~~~
fedvasu
so we are in a fix (in other words ooh! poops).any study or effort to beat
nature from selecting stupidity?. I used to joke about natural selection as
"survival of the dumbest"(I used to be a creationist nut, back in freshman
days) I guess "dumb is the new fit!"

------
cnorgate
The problem with this thinking is a failure to realize that we are already
taxing the Earth far beyond its carrying capacity. To continue supporting even
our current population will force us to devastate our planet to the point that
we won't recognize it in 50-100 years. What's the point of supporting more
people if we bring them into a miserable world?

Certainly we COULD continue developing innovations that harness and shape the
natural world to support continued human population growth... but that line of
thinking doesn't give room to consider whether we SHOULD do that.

Should population growth be a goal? What about raising the standard of living
of all those who are already on the planet - helping them move from mere
sustenance to abundance, and the opportunity to explore the true wonders life
has to offer?

Should we live in a world void of natural beauty? I don't think it's a fair
trade to have a few more billion people on the planet if everyone then has to
read about how beautiful the Earth was before we poisoned the seas, melted the
ice caps and drained the soil of its nutrients.

We are at a point now where we as a Human race can and should be thinking
about our population growth responsibly. To suggest that we COULD adapt to a
future world taxed by overpopulation doesn't imply that we SHOULD follow that
path.

~~~
pdonis
_we are already taxing the Earth far beyond its carrying capacity_

And your evidence for this is?

 _To continue supporting even our current population will force us to
devastate our planet_

And your evidence for this is?

 _What about raising the standard of living of all those who are already on
the planet_

As the article clearly states, the obstacles to doing this are social and
political, not environmental or technological. People are starving or living
at bare subsistence level, to put it bluntly, because our social systems suck
at empowering people to make a better life. We allow predatory individuals,
whether they are tinpot dictators or investment bankers, to siphon off
resources they don't need and will squander anyway at the expense of others.
_That_ is what we need to fix.

 _Should we live in a world void of natural beauty?_

No, and we don't.

 _before we poisoned the seas, melted the ice caps and drained the soil of its
nutrients._

And your evidence that this is happening is? More precisely, your evidence
that all these things are worse than they were, say, 1000 years ago, is?

~~~
cnorgate
You can form your own opinions about global warming, rising ocean levels, the
acidification of the seas, the destruction of our rain forests or the
unsustainable nature of our carbon based economy (see peak oil). I don't have
time to reference the multitude of articles on the subject, but they're
abundantly available... there's this great site called Google.com which can
help you with that.

Regarding the issue of 'natural beauty' in the world, I see it on a micro-
level when I go to a lake in the summer that was once pristine but is now
overrun with seaweed due to Nitrogen runoff from farmer fields. I see it on a
macro level when I read about things my children's generation might never
enjoy, like the beauty of a coral reef.

At the end of the day with so much 'pseudo science' thrown around from fringe
scientists, all anyone has is an 'opinion'. You now have mine.

~~~
pdonis
_At the end of the day with so much 'pseudo science' thrown around from fringe
scientists, all anyone has is an 'opinion'._

That was kind of my point, except that you and I would probably have different
opinions on which particular arguments about these issues come under the
heading of "pseudo science".

Also, you are basically saying that we don't know enough about these issues to
make useful predictions about the future. At least, if that's what you were
saying, I agree with you. But your post was full of predictions about the
future; saying that they're "opinions" doesn't give them any more weight. If
you don't know what's going to happen, the correct thing to say is that you
don't know--and to base your actions on understanding your lack of knowledge,
not opinions that have no useful value.

------
tgb
What a ridiculous article. Not because it doesn't make some reasonable points,
but because it assumes these points are so unique and unknown. Doesn't
everyone hear the classic Malthus-versus-technological-advancement argument in
highschool? I certainly did multiple times.

I mean, it's more-or-less the basis for all Sci-Fi: stories fall under either
A) rich-get-richer and pending disaster as the Earth is overburdened, B)
technology makes everything wonderful, C) Humans explicity inhibit their
population, or D) humans find new land on other planets (usually also coupled
with A,B, or C or Earth)). This isn't some debate that hasn't happened. This
isn't some revelation that one comes to as an ecologist, this is an often-
rehashed discussion. A worthy discussion, certainly, with points on both
sides. But not one which the author has just now discovered a barely-known
side of.

Now if the author had done some serious research and presented actual evidence
for his side, I'd be all ears. Too bad there wasn't anything new in the
article.

------
pyre
> Our predecessors in the genus Homo used social hunting strategies [...] to
> extract more sustenance from landscapes than would otherwise be possible.

Social hunting strategies don't disprove the Earth having a "carrying
capacity." You're not farming the animals that you hunt; they are part of the
natural environment.

------
grannyg00se
"Who knows what will be possible with the technologies of the future? "

This entire argument is based on the idea that we should be able to
continually expand carrying capacity by our inventiveness. Stating for example
increased farming yield with technology.

Not only is there a likely limit to our ability to squeeze more and more out
of finite resources, but the author completely ignores the subtle long term
damage that our technology creates. Our current food production systems are
highly toxic to the environment and are a major source of CO2 output. So while
we increased food carrying capacity we did so by reducing long term
habitability of the planet.

Personally, I'd like to see populatin growth reduced by a global increase in
quality of live. But not western culture consumption obsessed quality of life.
That would need to change. As would the growth based financial system. Those
two go hand in hand so this could all gradually happen at the same time. In
theory.

~~~
gd1
In what possible way can freeing fossilized carbon back (where it came from)
into the carbon cycle "reduce long term habitability of the planet"?. It may
make it awkward for some low lying cities in the short term, but long term it
guarantees a warmer, moister, more bountiful planet if anything.

~~~
phillnom
In what way does it guarantee a more "bountiful planet" other than more
extreme weather?

~~~
gd1
Basic biology? Are you seriously asking or just being obtuse? Do you know what
the world looked like the last time we had 1000+ ppm CO2? Teeming with plant
life. C3 plants were facing extinction if CO2 levels dropped any further than
they had, we've done the biosphere a huge favour by digging it up and putting
it back in the air where it came from. Maybe we haven't done _humans_ a
favour, but that's a different conversation.

------
telephonetemp
This strikes me as a rare case in which the article itself contains (the
academic equivalent of) middlebrow dismissal.

------
clicks
I think they're looking over the social aspect of this. Areas with highest
birthrates tend to be the most uneducated ones, and thus you will have a
greater amount of people who will more likely make irresponsible decisions for
the planet's sustainability. Look at how many people still don't believe in
global warming, and how fiercely they're opposed to the government taking
initiatives to solve these problems. Look at a list of countries by population
growth rate, and look at a list of countries by how much they recycle --
you'll see a compelling correlation.

~~~
lutusp
Anyone who think the problems caused by overpopulation are limited to the
uneducated, is himself uneducated. It's a classic case of self-reference.

~~~
seclorum
Its a projection of Malthusian ethics: "Humans are stupid".

Actually the point of this article is: "Evidence suggests that despite what we
think: Humans are smart".

~~~
lutusp
> Actually the point of this article is: "Evidence suggests that despite what
> we think: Humans are smart".

Yes, and ironically enough, the article represents a glaring counterexample of
its own thesis.

------
genofon
The way I see is that technology goes with the money. The demographic boom is
happening mostly in the third world which company will invest in technology to
make resources available to all the people? and these countries that are
facing the challenge of an increasing population will exploit the resources
that they have too fast? that's what append in Easter Island: the population
cut all the trees and they disappeared from the face of the heart.

------
fedvasu
I think we are seeing evolution and natural selection in action right in front
of our eyes here. Nature produces stupid people like this are in influential
position and most of our species has this mentality and we will reach a point
where it is truly unsustainable and nature has it's way in form mass
extinction events, even if we survive that, our species is way more violent
and a civil/traditional war will obliterate most of humanity.

------
aaron695
If they have a valid point they are not telling it well or at all.

They seem to think current food supplies can via efficiencies be increased
magically by a 100% or something.

They don't even seem to be looking at non food issues like oil use or the fact
the 1st world (And it's mega resource use) is tripling.

Let alone technologies that might increase the life span by years which'll
cause 9 billion to seem like a small figure.

------
drjesusphd
I'm tired of this Buckminster Fuller / Alfred E. Neuman "What, me worry?"
argument. Just because humans are clever doesn't mean we're exempt from
natural and physics boundaries. To deny that is hubris to the extreme.

------
lutusp
This is the most purblind, misguided editorial opinion I have read in weeks.
It repeats an old saw often repeated by people who don't understand the
Logistic function and its role is describing biological systems:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function)

The Logistic function concisely describes the behavior of biological systems
that don't have any control over their numbers, as humans most certainly do
not.

At the left, the function's curve is nearly flat because there aren't enough
living organisms to support a higher birth rate.

At the right, the functions's curve is nearly flat because _mass starvation
and death prevents a higher birth rate_.

The Logistic function models a growing biological colony in a finite world,
and it applies to any biological colony. For such a biological colony,
eventually _mass birth is balanced by mass death_.

Does this model have any bearing on the human biological colony? Let me answer
by saying as time passes, more and more accounts of mass death are met by less
and less surprise or alarm among the world's population.

At Sandy Hook, a boy has a fight with his mother, so -- being a healthy young
boy, possessed of normal instincts -- he kills her, then goes to a local
school and kills as many people as he can possibly manage. The story makes
national headlines for a few days, all those innocent children systematically
killed by an amateur, acting on a whim. But that story evaporates, pushed out
the public's consciousness by another story of mass death, and another.

By contrast, when the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped in March 1932, it made
national headlines for years -- _years_ \-- until the perpetrator was
apprehended, tried, and executed in 1936. It's the story of one family, one
child, one murder. Today that story wouldn't be able to compete with the
latest mass murder account. "Oh, Bashar Assad has killed 1,500 people in a
nerve gas attack. Oh, well, they're not anyone I know personally. What else is
in the news?"

The author of the linked editorial concludes his article by saying, "The only
limits to creating a planet that future generations will be proud of are our
imaginations and our social systems. In moving toward a better Anthropocene,
the environment will be what we make it."

Both claims are likely, but with one important difference -- future
populations will wonder what we were thinking, as we struggled to avoid
considering the consequences of our own actions. As to "the environment will
be what we make it", that is certainly true -- we will gradually tolerate more
and more mass death, a process that has already begun.

At the next Sandy Hook mass killing, people will say, "Hey, what can you do?
Boys will be boys. But this can't be allowed to stand in the way of progress."

~~~
bayesianhorse
The logistic model especially assumes that the carrying capacity is constant.
Which it's not, for humanity.

~~~
lutusp
> The logistic model especially assumes that the carrying capacity is
> constant.

Yes, but the model easily accommodates scenarios in which more and more
sustenance is squeezed out of the environment, which is the primary argument
of the deniers. Finally, though, because big loaves of bread don't give birth
to little rug-rat loaves of bread, the Logistic function predicts the same
outcome -- mass birth balanced by mass death.

I'm not saying there's a solution to this problem -- there isn't -- only that
people who deny that it's a problem are living in a fantasy.

~~~
pdonis
_I 'm not saying there's a solution to this problem -- there isn't_

It seems to me that you actually agree with the article's claim that the
primary problem is social. You just don't agree with the article's claim that
the problem can be solved; basically you don't think humans will be able to
come to grips with the social changes that would be required to manage
ourselves as a species responsibly. Is that a fair statement of your position?

~~~
lutusp
> You just don't agree with the article's claim that the problem can be solved
> ...

That's correct. The article relies on a common logical error, to wit:
catastrophe hasn't overtaken us yet, and that stands as evidence that it
cannot ever happen, i.e. the past predicts the future.

It's one thing to accept that we can't solve population problems by pointing
fingers at other people. But it's quite another to try to claim the problem
doesn't exist at all.

> basically you don't think humans will be able to come to grips with the
> social changes that would be required to manage ourselves as a species
> responsibly.

It's a bit more complicated than that. In a mixed population of people who can
grasp the nature of biological limits, and others who cannot, those who cannot
eventually become the entire future population -- people congenitally
indisposed to act intelligently. It's the inevitable outcome of natural
selection.

That's an easy problem to state, but impossible to do anything about without
abandoning all civilized standards of behavior. If we do nothing, mass death
becomes the problem. If we try to "solve" the problem, fascist and eugenic
political measures become the problem. That's not any kind of choice.

My point? This isn't a movie in which everything gets resolved in the third
act. All our choices are bad ones, but the worst is to imagine the problem
doesn't exist, as the author of the linked article tries to do.

~~~
pdonis
_In a mixed population of people who can grasp the nature of biological
limits, and others who cannot, those who cannot eventually become the entire
future population -- people congenitally indisposed to act intelligently. It
's the inevitable outcome of natural selection._

Yes, I see you make this argument on your page on evolution that you linked
to. The only possible flaw that I can see is that you say it is

 _impossible to do anything about without abandoning all civilized standards
of behavior_

I'm not saying I have a solution that doesn't require that; but I'm not sure
that our only option is giving up on trying to find one. I.e., instead of
"impossible" in the quote above I would put "extremely difficult". But I admit
that's purely a matter of opinion on my part.

~~~
lutusp
> I'm not sure that our only option is giving up on trying to find one.

No one is suggesting "giving up". In any case, it's not in the nature of
science to give up on searching for solutions. But as things stand, there's no
obvious solution.

> instead of "impossible" in the quote above I would put "extremely
> difficult".

My use of "impossible" was only with respect to measures that modify the
behavior of individuals by force. That's impossible without abandoning
civilized standards. I don't normally use the word "impossible" without good
reason.

~~~
pdonis
_My use of "impossible" was only with respect to measures that modify the
behavior of individuals by force. That's impossible without abandoning
civilized standards._

Ok, yes, I agree with this.

------
zobzu
yay black & white comparisons.

and climate change isn't due to human activity!

------
hannibal5
The main failure of this article is that it assumes that social problems are
outside biology and that they are easy to solve.

Currently world produces enough food for everyone. Then why do we have 700 -
800 million malnourished people, even more people facing food insecurity, why
we are destroying farmland and why are we wasting the primary macronutrients:
nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K).

Overpopulation is real because we as species are not distributing resources
equally and we are not rational.

~~~
seclorum
>The main failure of this article is that it assumes that social problems are
outside biology and that they are easy to solve.

The main point of this article is that the archeological record proves that
this is the case. 200,000 years of evidence suggests that, in spite of our
superstitions, we humans _are_ capable of managing our resources and
replenishing the world from which we derive our sustenance.

Are you _sure_ you're not just harboring a fixed superstition on the subject,
which has just been challenged?

~~~
lutusp
> The main point of this article is that the archeological record proves that
> this is the case.

DO you know what they say on Wall Street? "Past performance is no guarantee of
future returns"? The same rule applies to biology. The reason the future
diverges from the past is because it's guaranteed to be different. As to human
population growth, there's no basis for comparing the future to the past. But
I will say this -- on at least one occasion in the past, humans were nearly
wiped out by just one volcanic eruption:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck)

Quote: "The Toba catastrophe theory suggests that a bottleneck of the human
population occurred c. 70,000 years ago, proposing that the human population
was reduced to perhaps 10,000 individuals[3] when the Toba supervolcano in
Indonesia erupted and triggered a major environmental change. The theory is
based on geological evidences of sudden climate change and on coalescence
evidences of some genes (including mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosome and some
nuclear genes)[4] and the relatively low level of genetic variation with
humans."

Ten thousand humans. The only reason we survived as a species is because of
chance, not destiny. And that event is easily seen in the genetic record --
it's very likely to be just one of many examples where we survived only by
chance, on a planet where 90% of all species have been wiped out.

> Are you sure you're not just harboring a fixed superstition on the subject
> ...

I just quoted the scientific record. I can also describe the Logistic
function, a scientific biological modeling tool that reliably predicts the
future of species who try to exceed the carrying capacity of their
environments:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function)

The curve is nearly flat at the left because there are too few organisms to
sustain a higher growth rate.

The curve is nearly flat at the right because mass starvation results in too
few surviving organisms to sustain a higher growth rate.

Welcome to natural selection, and to science.

~~~
seclorum
We managed to survive. We'll continue to manage to survive: if we manage.

Welcome to logical positivism. :P

