Current Events > Do you think the world is overpopulated?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Agonized_rufous posted...

They keep making shitty apartments and townhouses slower than people can move in. That's all I need to know

And yet most of America is lightly populated and we have giant areas that are just wide open spaces.

DarkDoc posted...

Basically, a million people unemployed means there were a million people too many born 20 years ago

Basically the entire country is intentionally understaffed for service jobs and other low-level employment, not to mention how expensive education is for more advanced jobs.

Companies say no one wants to work and you're saying no one has jobs to work, and it's all a bunch of lies.

CSCA33 posted...

Even if we manage to end our use of fossil fuels without allowing billions to starve to death (not currently possible), and create some magical technology to remove all of the excess CO2 we have put in the atmosphere which doesn't exist, the oceans have already absorbed incredible amounts of energy that we cannot wish away. This is triggering positive feedback loops with irreversible melting of the ice on the planet, reducing albedo, melting permafrost and releasing methane (more than 80x more powerful than CO2 for near-term warming), as well as increasing water vapor in the atmosphere (another potent greenhouse gas.)

The earth will continue to warm for decades even without emitting more greenhouse gases, and aerosol particulates from our pollution have helped artificially cool the planet by about 1C. The arctic will be ice free beginning during the summer within about a decade, until it is completely gone year round. This is known as a blue ocean event (BOE) and it cannot be stopped at this point.

^^^The elephant in the room that population deniers like to ignore

Yes.

Giblet_Enjoyer posted...

^^^The elephant in the room that population deniers like to ignore

Tired of this red herring that overpopulation doesn't am real because we could theoretically cram everyone into Missouri or whatever the fuck. It's not about that. Nor is it about how many we could theoretically feed if somehow excess market produce and your table scraps got transported to Africa via some sort of pneumatic tube system.

yeah i agree. Though many people disagree with this. Maybe most disagree. Why would they disagree with it? Idk

Far, very far from it.

Which is not to say that there aren't any problems with human population. War, hunger, disease, pollution, those are all very real. But there are solutions which are simply not being implemented. Like, pretty much at all.

Not really. There's just too many wasteful Humans. That wouldn't be a problem, though, if we didn't have such corrupted rulers.

Smallville posted...

yeah i agree. Though many people disagree with this. Maybe most disagree. Why would they disagree with it? Idk

It's just become a meme. There's no real basis to disagree with it, they're just repeating irrelevant talking points like the number of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder that you can fit in a city. As seen in post 106 and many others, there's just a nebulous idea of solutions to every problem that are being withheld by the powers that be and it's never elaborated upon what these magical silver bullets actually are

How do you actually arrange for the 50% or whatever of American food that becomes waste to go to needy impoverished people throughout the world instead? Idk man, but the powers that be don't want it done, man...

No, I think America is just really bad at managing what space it does have.

Although I think there are places that are overpopulated for what they can handle(the entire state of California, China, and India primarily.)

a-c-a-b posted...

People who think underpopulation is a problem tend to be racist shitheads who believe in "white genocide" type bullshit.

is there even such a thing as underpopulation? i'm pretty sure the planet would do just fine without us

Certain parts yes, others no.

Smallville posted...

Aren't you a huge GT fan? Thought i'd seen you before on some other boards.

Yeah, that's me. I used to love Gran Turismo, right from the first game. I used to run GT5.org, used to go to midnight openings, etc. I even travelled internationally to speak to the drivers in the GT Academy.

But I decided I would no longer buy any game that requires online saving, so I wasn't able to buy GT7. Plus the microtransactions got out of hand, so unless they change their ways, I will never buy another GT game...

Smallville posted...

What do you mean , you let that slide in the other thread.

Oh, it's just we were having a discussion in another thread a few days ago, where they said the same thing. I didn't respond, because the focus of that thread was more about ethics and I didn't want to derail the discussion.

Smallville posted...

I kinda agree with you with your response to that guy.

Yeah, the world is currently overpopulated - not enough food, not enough energy, not enough water, not enough money.

emblem-man posted...

Unemployment isn't meant to be zero. This isn't some Capitalism thing. An unemployment level of 0 means no one is moving around and switching jobs.
Unemployment doesn't tell you anything about overpopulation.

Huh, how about that.

emblem-man posted...

We have means of having energy abundance, we just don't fucking build it.

I'm not talking about "come back in 2060 and see if we've got fusion to work". And I'm not talking about "in the year 5000 AD we will have a Dyson sphere".

And yeah, we don't build it - why is that? A combination of not enough knowledge, not enough willpower and not enough money.

reincarnator07 posted...

I'm assuming I'm responding to a joke post, right?

Just briefly-
Lack of medical staff? So your answer is to increase the population?

I looked up NL population density and it's ranked 32, ie not in the top 10%. Main difference is everyone rides a bike. Try telling Americans or Brits to do that.

When you say "Too few jobs", that's another way of saying too many people for the jobs available.

bladegash posted...

All 8 billion people of the world's population could fit inside new york city. Not alot of elbow room

I was intrigued by this, so I calculated it.

There would be 6 people per square metre. I'd hardly say that fits, it would be like a rock concert or something. Even using 3 layers it would still not leave enough room for anybody to lay down, lol

DarkDoc posted...

And yeah, we don't build it - why is that? A combination of not enough knowledge, not enough willpower and not enough money.

A large part is zoning laws, permitting issues, etc. For example, it's just plain illegal to build more housing in many cities unless the housing is very specific (single family housing, minimum lot requirements, etc.).
A large issue holding back solar and other renewables for example is that it takes many years for companies to get electric transmission lines approved during permitting!! We are shooting ourselves in the foot on so many things

DarkDoc posted...

When you say "Too few jobs", that's another way of saying too many people for the jobs available.

Artificial scarcity of jobs doesn't prove overpopulation.

With people that are ugh. Yeah

no. some individual places are overpopulated, but the world at large definitely isnt and there is tons of unused space mostly everywhere

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Not only did you completely miss the point and fail to even address the environmental issue which is literally what I and the user I quoted have been talking about (you know, the thing that is and will increasingly continue to be our doom), but you even did the exact thing I already called out (pointing to problems that have no solutions and then saying some nebulous solution is being withheld)

Saying overpopulation doesn't am real because our table scraps are going to waste is, once again, a worthless statement. Hunger is not the pressing concern.

There seems to be a misconception overpopulation means unused space.

Like do some of you really not understand how resources work or the damage to the environment more people being born does to the planet.

As others have said this isn't simply about housing or feeding people. That shit takes resources that do not spawn out of no where. To those thinking its just a logistical problem, you do not understand how resources are produced, processed, transported, brought to the consumer and disposed of. All of which takes a toll on not only the environment, but the middle men you are unaware of that helped you get those consumer end products.

This is not just a free space, food and housing problem.

DarkDoc posted...

Just briefly-
Lack of medical staff? So your answer is to increase the population?

No, my answer would be to train said population and build more medical facilities. You even get the benefit of many of those positions being well paid, so they generate more tax revenue out of the same population.

I looked up NL population density and it's ranked 32, ie not in the top 10%. Main difference is everyone rides a bike. Try telling Americans or Brits to do that.

Did you include every miniscule nation? Most of the densest places are city states, island nations and some dependencies. NL ranks just behind India for density, 424/km2 vs 435/km2. To give some context, UK is at 277/km2 China is at 149/km2, and the USA, responsible for something like a 6th of global emissions on its own, is at a measly 35/km2.

The main difference is everyone is able to ride a bike. Dutch infrastructure and urban planning is outstanding, but it's not some freak accident. They actively choose to make things walkable and to invest in public transport and it's a relatively recent change, only going back a few decades at this point. I guarantee if everyone in the UK or USA was able to cycle or take public transport, you would see way more people do so.

When you say "Too few jobs", that's another way of saying too many people for the jobs available.

When you say too many people for the jobs available, that's another way of saying that there are workers available to be put to use. Even then, unemployment is at record lows, at least in the USA. If this was a metric of overpopulation, this would suggest the opposite...

FinalBraveNUT posted...

With people that are ugh. Yeah

I kinda agree with this. Sadly it may be true.

Inherently? No its possible to adjust our lifestyles, infastructure, laws and population distribution to have plenty for all. We have vast waste, inequality and ineffeciency. So much arable or home building land and energy is wasted on ineffcient polluting city design instead of being walkable with good public transit. Imagine if we had 50% less parking lots and smaller roads because most people do not need cars. Less fossil fuels. More land to use for better purposes.

With how our world is managed? Yes.

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Overpopulation is definitely part of the problem.

The damage to the environment literally comes from the resources the population uses.

This means the toll on the environment for material.
The toll to refine material on the environment.
The toll on the environment when factories create products from those refined material
The toll on the environment to get rid of the waste that factories/producers create when making your products.
The toll on the environment to transport that product from producer to seller. (Infrastructure for transportation is not readily available all over the planet. It just isn't. Also if your answer is to just make infrastructure, that also requires a lot of resources.)
The toll on the environment to store that shit in a store or warehouse of some kind so you cans shop for it.
The toll on the environment to get that shit to your house.
The toll on the environment to get rid of the waste you produce from that product you bought. Waste does heavy damage to the environment, and waste isn't easy to deal with for all material. It just isnt.
The toll on the environment for literally everything I listed involves less unfortunate people doing each and every thing I listed above needing resources to do the things I listed aisn't.

I barely scratched the surface here. You seem to be under the impression that resources come and go like magic given its not being considered here. That the electricity or water or clothes you where or the electronics you use dont just poof into existence. That there's a toll on creating, transporting and getting rid of waste so you can use even use the most basic of necessities.

Logistically we could definitely mitigate our problems. I don't think anyone disagrees there. However mitigate doesnt mean get rid of the problem.

Also 2 things can be true at the same time. The population can be part of the problem, and rich people can be hogging a lot of the worlds resources.

But again, the idea that our population isn't a problem to the planet is just not true. The population is definitely taxing to the environment even if we mitigated resources.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

No we can't.

We could mitigate those things, but we most definitely could not stop the damage it's doing to the environment. Resources aren't as easily and readily available tax free to the environment. It just isnt.

We need to get the numbers down

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In your fantasy world, I'm sure it is.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

You're right, you're not living in a fantasy world. My apologies, let me rephrase.

In your wishful dream world we can.

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I'll stop you at the first sentence. None of my posts argue we need to reduce the population to solve the world's problems. You inserted that extra detail based on whatever preconceived notion you have I'm arguing.

I simply stated that logistics, housing, food, and land is not going to solve our current population of the planet being taxing to environment. Claiming so, shows just how much you don't understand how resources come to be.

Do you think technology will alleviate many of the concerns you stated?

emblem-man posted...

Do you think technology will alleviate many of the concerns you stated?

Most definitely.

But mitigation and alleviation should not be confused for getting rid of the problem like some believe.

It's also often forgotten that tech to alleviate the problem, proposed solutions also involves taxing the environment too, to get us there. Which isn't going to be the fast and easy journey some imagine it to be.

Like clean renewable energy. I support the idea completely. But some seem to imagine that shit is produced without harming the environment. To produce and distribute this stuff we still have to harm the environment to get there. It's not as simple as some imagine of, "just go green" or "just install something eco friendly."

There's steps and resources and manpower that require resources, and infrastructure that also needs resources, and the waste produced from all of that, and so much more needed that's all taxing on environment to get us to that point.

I don't think people assume it will just instantly get fixed, but I think the idea is that all the new work needed to for newer forms of energy are going to tax the world significantly less than continuing down our current path.

emblem-man posted...

I don't think people assume it will just instantly get fixed, but I think the idea is that all the new work needed to for newer forms of energy are going to tax the world significantly less than continuing down our current path.

There's definitely those who don't factor how resources work in the grand scheme of things and just how taxing ALL of it is on the environment.

Evident by just listening to them thinking the world problems will be solved and not even factoring just how much goes into resource management and how taxing it is on the environment.

That being said, your post is digging into something my post is not arguing against, so I'm not sure what's your point in replying to me.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Well you simply don't understand that certain numbers are bigger than others if you think this. Unless you care to explain how it is that reducing the number of polluters will somehow not reduce pollution?

Also I'd like to point out how the point I made earlier about how no solutions are ever proposed by the population deniers still stands strong and mighty. They're still doing the exact same thing again and again all these posts later: "We can have any number of people sustainably. Just fix (all these problems) and the issue goes away! Why hasn't anyone thought of that?? The how isn't important, just do it"

Giblet_Enjoyer posted...

Also I'd like to point out how the point I made earlier about how no solutions are ever proposed by the population deniers still stands strong and mighty. They're still doing the exact same thing again and again all these posts later: "We can have any number of people sustainably. Just fix (all these problems) and the issue goes away! Why hasn't anyone thought of that?? The how isn't important, just do it"

Oh and I'd also like to point out another thing. The very people that suggest we just need to change the way we do things to get to sustainability are also the ones who say that everyone deserves comfort, luxury, good food, adequate living space, etc. and who say things like "I will not live in the pod, I will not eat the bugs"

I wonder why so little progress is made towards sustainable practices??? Maybe because...no one wants to reduce their quality of life, even by a little? Whoa...

I'd disagree that no progress has been made. The amount of progress in renewable energy has been quite substantial over the past few years.

Hell, for example during daytime hours California's net power is through renewable energy. And improvements in battery technology will help solve the non daytime hours.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/b0c2457b.jpg

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/4fd1decb.jpg

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I believe that large numbers are larger than small numbers, yes. Covid lockdowns alone proved what I'm saying after we saw the dramatic reduction in pollution.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

No, you're waving your hands and saying "uh, just -fix it-"
Several other users have pointed out exactly why just taking our resources and pushing them somewhere else isn't a real solution.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Predictably, you made the genocide accusation but this is, thankfully, already happening in some parts of the world just by people choosing to not have kids. It's not fast enough or universal enough, but it does debunk your claim that genocide has to happen for depopulation to happen.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


smh you won't convince them. deep down it really is a mentality problem. whenever you hear someone call something a "utopia", that's a euphemism for "I know it's impossible". they already know it's impossible. it wouldn't matter even IF you gave them a step by step carefully measured and peer reviewed study and plan detailing down to a margin of error less than one percent what the solution is. they already know it's impossible, you see. there's too many people in the world and nothing anybody does will solve the problems that come with this situation. people themselves are the problem, you see. inherently.

watch the way people talk, also. it's amazing how much people project. when someone says "they're not giving any concrete evidence or arguments", guess what they're doing.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Even if this were true (it isn't, much of the pollution was due to car traffic), those industries serve consumer demand. You're doing the thing the left always does where they act like industry pollutes not in the process of making goods we buy, but because they're just that maniacal.

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That's a lovely guess as to what the future holds and I hope you're right, but it would be thoroughly unprecedented and therefore I really doubt it will.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

You're making the case for infinite growth here. I hope me pointing that out is enough to help you understand why it's a very silly thing to say. Especially in light of what we know about climate change.

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You know this has already happened, right? Ever heard of the black plague?

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The fact you can't contend with my pointing out that industry serves consumer demand is noted, along with your failure to address the fact that people driving less contributed to pollution going down

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

So it's never gonna drop by any amount somehow? It's gonna stay right at that 12 billion? And again, it's an interesting guess but it doesn't really help things when we can't even feed and house the 8 billion we have.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

The Kurzgesagt video that you literally told me to watch says it will. In their graph, all but one of the example countries is below replacement rate.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Who's got the meme about how gamefaqs the only place where well articulated sentences get misinterpreted, help me out.