Is the earth getting overpopulated?

[wtf]

Thomas Malthus was the first population gloom-and-doomer in 1798. His predictions turned out to be wrong.

Paul Erlich was another famous population gloom-and-doomer in 1968. He made a series of specific predictions about the future price and availability of various natural resources. Every one of his predictions turned out spectacularly wrong.

I don't deny that population gloom-and-doom is a growth industry these days. But when you compare population gloom-and-doom predictions to actual results, the doomers don't have a very good track record.

We came out of caves and built all that you see around you. Never bet against the human race.

[Dubious]

When we have replaced all environmental assets with poor people, does that mean that poor people then get to eat poor people?

What we are doing is simply not sustainable. Like an alcoholic who figures that the next drink can't hurt, our societies will keep pushing until something important breaks and chaos ensues. Don't expect anyone to admit being wrong when that happens.

According to policy, no government, institution, corporation or society will admit it. But we'll still know the cause as we desperately try to clean up the mess we created. Up to now we've always gamboled with nature nervously testing its abilities to keep supporting our activities without too many side-effects. We don't really know when these barriers get crossed and so we keep on playing and testing until we truly get to experience unequivocally the point of no return. Nature itself never gets to that point; it merely changes according to the processes initiated in total disregard of what it previously and for so long supported.

It's then that most members of this super-idiot species will succumb and pray to its God(s) for mercy offering repentance for making the planet into a giant microwave that doesn't get turned off. We'll see how great God is then in ITS infinite mercy!

...put in a simple quatrain...

If screw-ups follow screwing
which seems to be the case
and the most we do is our undoing
then even god will hide its face.

Being responsible for the extermination for so many species possibly incipient to his own, would it be an injustice if he exterminates himself as well!

Nature is unimaginably cold in whatever destiny it prescribes and no god within it to ameliorate its indifference. It doesn't bode well for any species anywhere in the universe except for those perspicacious enough to short-circuit catastrophe. There is nothing to offer mercy or a new beginning. It has only one rule; live with it or die wherein the latter is not always an option.

[wtf]

It doesn't bode well for any species anywhere in the universe except for those perspicacious enough to short-circuit catastrophe.

So you would favor killing all the poor third-worlders rather than supporting growth policies to lift them out of poverty? Environmentalism at all costs? Have you given this matter any thought?

[Dubious]

It doesn't bode well for any species anywhere in the universe except for those perspicacious enough to short-circuit catastrophe.

So you would favor killing all the poor third-worlders rather than supporting growth policies to lift them out of poverty? Environmentalism at all costs? Have you given this matter any thought?

I don't know how of this relates to what I wrote so I can't respond.

[wtf]

I don't know how of this relates to what I wrote so I can't respond.

Briefly, environmental action is directly opposed to the well-being of impoverished people in the third world. As one example, when you use legislation to force power companies to reduce emissions, you make energy more expensive. When energy becomes more expensive, the people at the bottom end of the economic scale can't afford to keep themselves alive. The air gets cleaner over the cities of the liberal elite, while a few hundred thousand Africans die.

Environmentalism can be seen as a concern of the global elite, who can afford the cost of their policies, and who don't see the victims of those policies.

When you say, "Oh we must clean up the environment," that's a feel-good position taken by many who haven't thought through the deadly consequences to the global poor. What lifts the poor out of poverty is economic development. And what economic development produces, unfortunately, is environmental problems.

There are difficult tradeoffs that simplistic feel-good thinking doesn't consider.

[Greta]

Short term thinking. When the available soil is too degraded for adequate farming, how will the poor fare then? Food prices go up through scarcity and even more of them die than otherwise because the problem by then will be intractable.

Modernisation of energy production and farming look to be the only way of alleviating the problem but there is a drag factor from vested interests in fossil fuel industries.

[Dubious]

I don't know how of this relates to what I wrote so I can't respond.

Briefly, environmental action is directly opposed to the well-being of impoverished people in the third world. As one example, when you use legislation to force power companies to reduce emissions, you make energy more expensive. When energy becomes more expensive, the people at the bottom end of the economic scale can't afford to keep themselves alive. The air gets cleaner over the cities of the liberal elite, while a few hundred thousand Africans die.

..and what about the engineered genocidal politics of African tribalism killing millions destroying their own ability to be productive on their own lands! You conveniently haven’t mentioned that...religion and politics having created its own apocalypse.

Environmentalism can be seen as a concern of the global elite, who can afford the cost of their policies, and who don't see the victims of those policies.

If the environment gets meaner & meaner as already apparent, who won’t be a victim?

When you say, "Oh we must clean up the environment," that's a feel-good position taken by many who haven't thought through the deadly consequences to the global poor. What lifts the poor out of poverty is economic development. And what economic development produces, unfortunately, is environmental problems.

...and what will kill “the poor” before anyone else if not environmental degradation whose tendency is to become more extreme. It’s the middle class and the merely rich who will suffer next and only the super rich who will suffer last. It’s the poor who suffer most whatever the conditions. Altruistic sentiments will solve nothing for anyone, least of all the poor.

There are difficult tradeoffs that simplistic feel-good thinking doesn't consider.

There is nothing that “feels good” in what I wrote or the scenario it entails. The “feel good” sentiment relates purely to your own self-indulgence of the poor as victims...the usual convention in such cases which has nothing to do with the argument stated.

What I wrote has nothing to do with the poor or the rich or any suchlike BS. It merely relates to this…

Retreat now (if still possible) and win in the future for as you say “never underestimate the human race” rather than lose now and diminish forever the human capacity for self-preservation. You don’t think that’s possible in a world so intensely ruled by expediency meaning short-changing the future for the present? How often can this repeat before chaos surmounts our efforts to make it retroactive!

[wtf]

Retreat now (if still possible) and win in the future for as you say “never underestimate the human race” rather than lose now and diminish forever the human capacity for self-preservation. You don’t think that’s possible in a world so intensely ruled by expediency meaning short-changing the future for the present? How often can this repeat before chaos surmounts our efforts to make it retroactive!

That's impassioned rhetoric but I don't see you engaging with the tradeoffs between environmentalism -- a concern of the global elite -- and the aspirations of the "wretched of the earth," in Frantz Fanon's immortal phrase.

There are tradeoffs. Passion and self-righteousness are in fashion but they don't solve problems.

[Dubious]

Retreat now (if still possible) and win in the future for as you say “never underestimate the human race” rather than lose now and diminish forever the human capacity for self-preservation. You don’t think that’s possible in a world so intensely ruled by expediency meaning short-changing the future for the present? How often can this repeat before chaos surmounts our efforts to make it retroactive!

That's impassioned rhetoric but I don't see you engaging with the tradeoffs between environmentalism -- a concern of the global elite -- and the aspirations of the "wretched of the earth," in Frantz Fanon's immortal phrase.

There are tradeoffs. Passion and self-righteousness are in fashion but they don't solve problems.

I completely agree with that "immortal phrase" as you put it, though I don't know what's particularly immortal about it. It's true and practical and that's enough!

If you think I'm being merely self-righteous there's nothing more to discuss though I have noticed how well you conform to these attributes in your solicitations of the poor as defense for current environment policies.

[wtf]

If you think I'm being merely self-righteous there's nothing more to discuss though I have noticed how well you conform to these attributes in your solicitations of the poor as defense for current environment policies.

Well if you have no substantive points to make I guess we're done. I haven't got a dog in this fight. I just remember many years ago being startled by Indira Gandhi's speech in which she pointed out that western environmentalism goes against the interests of the great mass of poor people trying to get a leg up in the world. If you can't see or prefer not to discuss the tradeoffs involved in setting the right environmental policies that's cool. Many people are like that these days. All simplistic solutions and no thoughtfulness.

[Dubious]

If you think I'm being merely self-righteous there's nothing more to discuss though I have noticed how well you conform to these attributes in your solicitations of the poor as defense for current environment policies.

Well if you have no substantive points to make I guess we're done. I haven't got a dog in this fight. I just remember many years ago being startled by Indira Gandhi's speech in which she pointed out that western environmentalism goes against the interests of the great mass of poor people trying to get a leg up in the world. There are no simple answers and if the best you can do is toss insults, well have a nice life.

...likewise!

[wtf]

...likewise!

Glad we found an area of agreement! LOL.

I'm not against the environment. I just think the issues are a lot more nuanced than many people realize. You have 2.5 billion people without access to sanitation, 780 billion without access to a steady supply of clean drinking water. Without economic growth they're all doomed. With economic growth, you'll have some degree of environmental degradation. It's a very complex set of issues. That's all I'm saying.

[Greta]

Do these priorities change as the natural environment continues to shrink or do we just allow it to shrink until all of the natural systems break down? If those systems break down, who do you think will be the first and hardest hit?

[Dubious]

Glad we found an area of agreement! LOL.

I'm not against the environment. I just think the issues are a lot more nuanced than many people realize. You have 2.5 billion people without access to sanitation, 780 million without access to a steady supply of clean drinking water. Without economic growth they're all doomed. With economic growth, you'll have some degree of environmental degradation. It's a very complex set of issues. That's all I'm saying.

I agree, it is nuanced and definitely not simple when it compromises our well-being or that of future generations; but the logic of it remains eminently simple without regard to sentiment. The point I was trying to make is lets not heat up the planet to the point where its ability to support life becomes dangerous or nearly impossible; we're already seeing warning shots and we're ALL nixed if that becomes an incipient process immune to correction.

Also, economic growth can only deliver what's already there in the raw. Clean drinking water still depends upon precipitation; too little there's drought with massive economic consequences aside from making life miserable for human and animal. Too much and it's as Coleridge wrote in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner...

“Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.”

The poor have always been with us even before someone first inscribed his name in cuneiform on a clay tablet. Humans have always lived and continue to live in all kinds of conditions based as much on economic as on sociological stratifications, re India . If we are ever to ameliorate the problem then time should allow it and not diminish its prospects. We rightly depend on the power of technology to supply those solutions if given that time. But if the screw-ups continue screwing up, well then...let's all pray together!

[Atla]

I just remember many years ago being startled by Indira Gandhi's speech in which she pointed out that western environmentalism goes against the interests of the great mass of poor people trying to get a leg up in the world.

I'm not against the environment. I just think the issues are a lot more nuanced than many people realize. You have 2.5 billion people without access to sanitation, 780 billion without access to a steady supply of clean drinking water. Without economic growth they're all doomed. With economic growth, you'll have some degree of environmental degradation. It's a very complex set of issues. That's all I'm saying.

This is all true, but this wasn't actually the question, the question was, is the Earth getting overpopulated? The short answer is, yes.

Who is to blame the most for the current situation? The West, imo. Others aren't much better either though, it's just a difference between being extremely or very inconsiderate towards the future of the human race and all life on this planet.

(I'm bit of a racist so I'll add that if a few certain cultures would have reached technological, financial and militaristic supremacy before the West, over this planet, then we would be even worse off by now.)