The Overpopulation Myth, The Underpopulation Crisis

reply to post by CHA0S


Here you reveal your agenda, or misconception. Not all "natural" areas are thriving. Deep in the woods you see areas where half the trees are dead, not much else is growing, etc. That's natural habitat, and there's nothing wrong with it, I'm sure lots of worms and bugs are living their lives happily in those areas.

And humans are living their lives too, in other areas.

But you haven't proposed any reason we should favor the bugs over the humans. We can all "get along." Did you know that deer populations are booming, largely because more human settlements create more "edge habitats" which are what deer like. Not deep forest, not pure meadow, but the boundary. Wildlife adapts to us and we adapt to it.

No reason for population reduction, of wildlife or humans.

Huh, I just did a persuasive speech on overpopulation.


I said it's imperative that we manage our resources effeciently and tame wasteful behavior if we are to cope peacefully on Earth. If we continue like we are now without any form of a governing body to help the population live on Earth in a way that maintains ourselves such as volunteer sterilization or rationing. Otherwise, there will be war, or something far worse.

I used to believe in overpopulation, that is until I read that the state of California has 36 (almost 37) million people... thats 2 (almost 3) million more people then ALL of Canada, the second biggest country in the world. So I think it's fair to say the world is NOT overpopulated!

Yes I think not everyone should be able to have a child unless they have been qualified.Yes I do think that.Do you think any tom dick or harry should be able to have a kid?What if they can't afford it?Or how are you gonna know if they are mentally capable unless they are somehow tested?How many times have you heard of someone killing their own kids?Too many times I bet.

And the people that think there is no population problem you forget that if it wasn't for all those virus's or diseases killing billions a year we would be overpopulated.

Virus's and diseases=Population control

Except it.

The overpopulation of the earth is no myth, with people starving, and the threat of what a major disaster, could do to the earth at any time, it is overpopulated.
The big thing that needs to be considered is the management factor, there is none, end of story.

Get real, the real world is a big joke, look what's on the news everyday, this one big cluster ( snip. )
Things are going to change soon when things change, someone is going to clean up this mess, maybe Mother Nature.

[edit on 18-8-2010 by googolplex]

reply to post by googolplex


To answer your points:

(1) People are starving generally in countries with governments that steal aid rather than distributing it, and in part because of charities that don't get their job done either. People look at pictures of starving or bloated babies, give to charities, and the money never reaches the recipients. If that aid went where it was intended, the bellies would have decent food in them.

(2) What if we have a disaster? Well then maybe billions would die. But it hasn't happened yet. Do you predict it is coming soon?

(3) If this world is such a lousy place why are you still here? I mean it as a serious question. I'm not suggesting you off yourself, but that you extend the chance to other souls as well.

I still opt for the whole Native Americans' advice thing and living the circle of life: taking and giving from, to, and with the Earth. Not just taking.

reply to post by LiveForever8


"Overpopulation" might be a myth to the emotionally weak, but "Limited Resources and Limited Distribution Capacity" is the harsh reality that the world faces. I still can't believe how so many from the PC brigade continue to mistake Land Mass with Resource Allocation & Distribution. The world does NOT have unlimited resources, and the distribution methods currently at our disposal struggle to aid almost half of the world's current population...

This thread is dangerous because not only does it attempt to denigrate an important issue, it tries to suggest that the world is UNDER populated and we need to increase the Global Population!

[edit on 18/8/2010 by Dark Ghost]

Well done! S&F . I too was under the mistaken belief that the world was over populated. Kudos.

reply to post by Dark Ghost


So we can grow the food but we can't get it to the hungry people?

We could if the criminal regimes they live under would let the food in.

And besides the places trying to control population are not the places where people are starving. Basically nobody starves in the USA. So there's no need to control the birth rate here. We aren't even replacing ourselves!

And Europe is even worse. The people having 6 babies per family won't listen to sermons about population control. Do you want to have no babies because they are having so many? Come on!!

I have found that I don't like to bicker much or worry about a little thing being right or wrong. I guess it is my desire to stay focused on the big picture that leaves me just plain not caring about some of the smaller arguments that break off here and there. I think the OP was a decent observation, he obviously didn't intend to say that there are no problems caused by our lovely species. He was just saying that the population is increasing not because birth rates are increasing, but because people are living longer- which in and of itself should tell you that over population isn't really a problem for our generation, though it may be causing environmental problems for future generations. Thanks!

Overpopulation is a myth, perpetrated by the elites, because they want us to ACCEPT measures of STERILIZATION and MASS MURDER, not because they care about the environment, but because the fewer people, the more money the elites can have all to themselves.

Originally posted by 19872012
Overpopulation is a myth, perpetrated by the elites, because they want us to ACCEPT measures of STERILIZATION and MASS MURDER, not because they care about the environment, but because the fewer people, the more money the elites can have all to themselves.

Have you considered that a spiralling Global Population might actually benefit the Elite? More Taxes, Wars, Consumers, Division, Doubt and Competition etc. on a planet with dwindling resources and infrastructure.

-----------

In terms of those living in Third World Countries, people keep saying "their leaders are corrupt and they are not getting the aid". This may be true, but how exactly do we change this? Invade every nation that "we" feel has a government that oppresses their people? What becomes the criteria? This line of thought would lead to some dangerous consequences...

[edit on 18/8/2010 by Dark Ghost]

From OP:

However, Malthus plagiarised many of his ideas from Giammaria Ortes, a defrocked Camaldolese monk who first wrote of population control on 1790. Ortes' magic number for maximum human population? 3 billion. Anything more than this and the world would collapse into itself and be destroyed.

With estimates that the Earth could naturally sustain somewhere between 600 million and one billion people, I would say his estimates aren't that far off when farming practices of the day are taken into account. I would be interested to see the estimated global population based on pure food production using methods of the late 18th Century instead of the artificial, industrial food production methods we use today. It's highly unlikely those methods could support today's population of nearly seven billion.

Also to Mattias,

I used to believe in overpopulation, that is until I read that the state of California has 36 (almost 37) million people... thats 2 (almost 3) million more people then ALL of Canada, the second biggest country in the world. So I think it's fair to say the world is NOT overpopulated!

While it's true that California has more population than Canada, keep in mind that a vast majority of our land mass is uninhabitable. There are Inuit in the North but they have a small population and, imo, have levelled out at a natural population over the centuries based on access to food and resources. I would even go so far as to guess that their population has increased since the Europeans came over and started providing them with housing (pathetic as some of it may be) and access to industrial-produced food (tinned, jarred etc).

The OP looks at over-population as a matter of actual space on the planet to exist in, and how much food we can grow.

That's ridiculous, there are many more factors that contribute to over-population than the actual space for you to live on.

[edit on 18-8-2010 by Rthaothal]

Some people believe that the world has an overpopulation problem. The strongest supporters of that idea usually live in parts of the world that do not have an overpopulation problem. Strictly speaking the overpopulation problem is not their problem.

India and China are two countries generally agreed to have an overpopulation problem. Are they howling in pain, demanding that other countries accept their refugees, to ease their burden. No. They are using their own resources and a degree of social engineering to solve those problems, thankyou very much, first world.

Some people believe that Brazil has an overpopulation of poor. Some Brazilian policmen have taken to solving that problem by shooting poor children like stray dogs in the street. But Brazil's problem is more like a socio-economic one, rather than, strictly speaking a case of malthusian overpopulation. Again, there is no sense of panic emanating from the Brazilian government.

The sparsely inhabited Sahel region of North Africa is "overpopulated" because people are starving to death there, but again, they suffer from politically induced "overpopulation" and are allowed to starve because the local version of George Washington or the Rockefellers or John Gotti, just flat out prioritizes the survival of those poor people below the importance of their own personal hold on power and wealth.

North Korea is over populated for a similar reason. It really boils down to "political overpopulation".

People mention Canada. Political overpopulation has occurred in the extremely sparsely populated far north of Canada, where communities of Eskimos have been starved to death by a combination of natural variances of climate and wildlife population and political indifference or ineptitude.

When I look at "our overpopulation problem" I see a lot of individual problems that can almost always be factored down to one problem and that problem is political.

I think globalism is a reinvention of Kipling's version of "the white man's burden". I think it is fundamentally racist and uses "global problems" as a way to get the camel's nose of big oligarchical business into the tent of other people's affairs and other people's economies and other people's politics.

The answer to "we've got an overpopulation problem" is "what do you mean we, paleface?" And the follow up comment is "Mind your own business."

[edit on 18-8-2010 by ipsedixit]