Why do people keep reviving the "overpopulation" myth?

Question

Every generation, a new group takes up the "overpopulation" myth, only to force society to de-bunk it again. From Malthus to Erhlich and beyond, it's like "groundhog day" - the same debate is repeated ad nauseum with the same side winning every time.

Why do we forget?

Why are some people so easily convinced that "this time it's for real?"

http://www.overpopulation.org/

http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

Answer 1

Overpopulation is not a "myth."  I live/work in the agriculture sector.  I can see what happens with overpopulated livestock to a piece of land all the time.

Same thing happens with humans.  Too many people, in too small an area, water shortages, pollution, food shortages, disease, ect.

Only a profound idiot would not realize that if you put too much of ANY living organism into too small an enviroment, that damage will not be done to that enviroment.

Yes, your standard of living is going up, as is mine.  Of course it is quiet obvious you (and I) have a VERY high standard of living, compaired to most of the humans on earth.  We are conversing via computer.  That means we rank among the most wealthy people on earth.

Problem is, the rich are getting richer (and their standard of living is going up) and the poor are getting poorer (and their standard of living is going down).

There was a time, not that long ago in human history, when we humans were almost all equal.  We all hunted and gathered for our food.

Then agriculture came along.  With agriculture came an abundance of food.  It ment that some people didn't have to work at all!  They could be kings, and holy people, or they could just make pretty things, like jewlery for people to wear.  

Classes of people started to evolve, and rapidly.  

I'm outside in nature every single day.  I know what happens to the wildlife when schools, churches, and subdivisions are built over land that was previously pastures, and open fields.  I can clearly see what wildlife suddenly vanished.  I can see how crime went up, and general disrespect of other humans.  

When too many people live in one area, they stop caring about their neighbor, and what is happening to them.  They begin to only care about their own family, or even only themselves.

Why is it "for real" this time?  Well it's actually ALWAYS been "for real."  Too much population, in too small an area, is why things like the black plague, and Spanish flu happened.

The big problem is we are living in a time that is one grand experiment.  Never before in the entire history of the earth has there this many humans on earth.  6.5 billion (at least) at the moment.  So what disease, or famine, is going to cut through the masses, to bring the population back down?  

The other big problem you are forgetting is that humans can learn, and "stand on the shoulders of those who came before us."  That means a human baby born today does not have to go out and discover fire.  Instead that baby can grow up and go build a coal fired plant.  Since we do not have to relearn the information that people who came before us learned, we are able to advance rapidly.  That means the quality of life of the wealthy can advance rapidly.  The quality of life of the poor decreases at about the same rate as advancement.

This is a terribly difficult concept for those born in the U.S.A. and other first world countries to be able to grasp.  That's because we actually host so little of the population.  Yet if you were able to take a trip to India, Africa, or China, you'd understand what a titanic problem human overpopulation has become.

~Garnet

Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years

1% of the people who live in the world, earn 96% of the money.  The rich are getting richer....the poor are getting poorer.

Answer 2

The two sheeple at the top, above me have fallen into the same old mindset trap of which you speak.

The problem as I see it is one of a lack of education.

Young people who have not lived through what we geezers have, tend to believe that life on earth began at their birth. All the knowledge collected heretofore is discounted as that of old dead guys and not the "New and Improved" and therefore somehow "better" knowledge of the Now Generation, who, because they are young and new are, in their Madison Avenue steeped brains somehow better informed than we oldsters.

Case in point: the illogical statements made concerning the demise of the earth caused by man. If the green's reports of XXXX number of acres of rain forest, fish, fresh water, clean air, etc. were even close to correct, we'd have all perished years ago.

These new generations are not taught to think and therefore they don't. And it behooves teachers in public schools to keep their charges ignorant: If they become smart, they'll soon realize that public schools are the antithesis of liberty and will abolish them!

Anything I write here will be poo-pooed as right-wing propagandizing (which is funny since I'm a classical liberal). But here's a tidbit nonetheless:

All the water that was ever on the earth is still on earth (except for some on the space station) and will always be on the earth forever. We're not running out of water, nor even of fresh water, as it's constantly being naturally recycled by the systems put in place by random big-bangs/men from outer space/God many centuries ago. And the air is the same air breathed by dinosaurs, cave men, Gandhi, Hitler, Nixon, etc.

Answer 3

Well let's see - we've got global warming, coral reef bleaching, overfishing of virtually every species of fish that we eat, rampant suburban sprawl, poor air quality, water supply shortages, peak oil inevitable, deforestation...

Overpopulation doesn't contribute to any of these problems huh?

Answer 4

wow, randal you are not a bright one.

Answer 5

Because people can't see new resources and keep assuming that they'll just have to make do with what they already know.

Nuclear power and GM foods will allow us to support a lot more people on Earth than we do now at a higher standard of living and without causing environmental devastation (of the type you deny) for those who stay on Earth (and we'll probably have space solar power and fusion in a few decades).

Ultimately we'll need to start building space colonies (the Earth is actually very inefficient when it comes to land area, we could get a lot more by pulling it apart and building a lot of smaller space settlements (although the asteroids could be turned into enough extra living area that it'd be a while before we consider that)) and eventually we'll expand to the stars.

Some of the ideas from transhumanism might also be useful (e.g. uploading our minds into more efficient devices).

We may run into some limit on how much we can do, but if we spread over a good proportion of the universe we'll have done pretty well.

Answer 6

It has always been real (and still is), and not a myth, ever.  There is only so much space, so much clean air and so much water.  People are the cause of global warming, pollution and the alarming rate of extinction of many species per day.  The problem of overpopulation has been growing steadily worse for decades and continues to threaten all life on earth more each day.