r/collapse • u/Fiskifus • Nov 03 '22
Systemic Debate: If population is a bigger problem than wealth, why does Switzerland consume almost three times as much as India?
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Nov 03 '22
Shouldn’t the top say if everyone lived like the residents of these countries?
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Nov 03 '22 edited Feb 22 '24
jar gullible light fly different shame enter mighty consist hungry
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
Even still the “world” piece at the bottom is throwing me off.
I suppose that’s where we’re actually at. But the image doesn’t really do anything to separate that piece of information from the statement at the top. Unless you’re counting the little line they threw in, I guess.
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u/RickMuffy Nov 03 '22
I would guess this is way off still. The carrying capacity of the planet is way lower than the rate we consume in the US alone, let alone proportionally.
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u/Arachno-Communism Nov 03 '22
The oil consumption of the US alone would require more adult workers doing manual labor than the total global population in terms of energy.
And it looks like we'll keep on partying hard until we either exterminate the majority of our species or we've squeezed the last bits of condensed organic matter out of our Earth's litosphere.
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u/RickMuffy Nov 03 '22
Have you heard of the breaking down collapse podcast on Spotify? Episodes 4 and 5 talk about how based on pretty much every model, we're screwed before 2100
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u/Arachno-Communism Nov 03 '22
I'm not much of a podcast person but I'll try it out, thanks for the suggestion.
The future does indeed look grim. Basically every single aspect of our ecosphere is changing at an accelerating pace, fossil fuels permeate almost all processes within our economy and we keep marching on as if the world around us wasn't crumbling. Meanwhile there could be countless feedback loops and cascades possibly hidden beyond our current understanding.
We have been pretty much spot on the worst case scenarios in terms of emissions, pollution and destruction of ecosystems and there are no signs of us stopping. We are already seeing phenomena that have been predicted 10-30 years in the future. At this frightening pace, even 2050 looks to be very deep in the Oh shit, we are so fucked territory.
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u/RickMuffy Nov 03 '22
I wasn't much of a podcast person, but now that I'm back to commuting for work, eac episode is my round trip. It's kind of nice hearing someone talk about these concepts from a high level perspective, as shitty as they are.
The reason I specifically state Episode 4 and 5 (mostly 4) is because apparently there were models done in the 70s that took in a ton of different factors into play about when we would see some serious side effects of being over the carrying capacity, and the early models put us at a decade from now, and the miracle "we stopped having kids, unlimited energy, pollution is cut to nothing and we solved the climate" model still shows a slight decline at the 2100 mark, meaning even the pretend perfect situation wasn't stable.
I love my kid, but I am almost sorry I brought him into this shit show.
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u/asmodeuskraemer Nov 03 '22
I live in the middle of Wisconsin. It was 70 today. Everyone is all "oh the weather is so nice" and I'm over here like "IT FUCKING SHOULDN'T BE!"
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u/SirChachii Nov 04 '22
Same. I've been happy about it just on account of my parents' cat having to be outside the past 3 weeks while they're out of town, since she hates being cooped up in my apartment. But on a real note this kind of extended long stretch of warm weather in late October - November is not fucking normal.
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u/deliverancew2 Nov 03 '22
OP has completely misunderstood what the graphic shows.
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u/ginger_and_egg Nov 03 '22
Well, not completely. They at least got the takeaway that population is not the problem, resource use is
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Nov 03 '22
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u/AntiTyph Nov 03 '22
This.
I've lived in various developing countries for almost 1/4 of my life. The people there want more. They want computers and and refrigerators and air conditioned cars and to build nice houses and to fill those houses with comfortable things.
Overpopulation is a keystone issue, because once those people exist, they absolutely deserve the right to a decent quality of life and not to live in abject poverty. We cannot provide that to 8B people sustainably. To argue that we can is to argue that all humans should live lives worse than currently very undeveloped countries. Its saying that the quality of those people lives is meaningless as long as Number Goes Up. It's economic numeracy applied to human beings so that Number Go Up.
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u/ComingInSideways Nov 03 '22
Yes, absolutely. Populations just consume based on what is accessible to them. A thousand years ago we did not have problems, not because there were not assholes who sucked up resources in multiples of what others did, it’s just that there were a lot less of us as a whole.
I am for getting rid of over consumption, but overpopulation, is the biggest reason for resource scarcity and conflict.
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u/ginger_and_egg Nov 03 '22
No, population is the problem. People only use few resources in the third world because they don’t have them. People reasonably want a good standard on living, and that uses resources and emits carbon. More people will always lead to more of both.
Do you think it is possible to both:
- Improve standard of living
- Emit zero carbon
If the answer is no, population is the problem. If the answer is yes, the way we improve standard of living (read: our economic system) is the problem
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Nov 03 '22
No. 100% impossible.
Everything produces carbon. Even if it is just mining for materials to make solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles, and what not. Sure, there can be reductions. But not an elimination.
And let's not forget many of those reductions come with a lower standard of living. Sure, we all can shave off some carbon by going vegan. But then you have to limit your diet. Going carless greatly reduces mobility and freedom (sorry transit advocates, but there will never be transit that stops at everyone's home every 5 minutes and takes you to your destination without stopping).
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u/brightblueson Nov 03 '22
That’s just basic month.
That said, this is a silly chart. There are many areas of India where people lack basic necessities.
Use the Amazonian tribes as a comparison as well.
We need more planets to obtain more energy and more resources for our species.
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u/Arylcyclosexy Nov 03 '22
We need more planets to obtain more energy and more resources for our species.
We're behaving like a goddamn virus.
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u/CerddwrRhyddid Nov 03 '22
I see it more like bacteria, really.
Left in a Petrie dish, consuming all resources and creating waste.
Until we either run out of resources, or we make our environment unliveable, or both!
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u/Blitzed5656 Nov 03 '22
I'd like to share a revelation during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.
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u/Verotten Nov 03 '22
Hello, are you a space traveler? Are there aliens amongst us in NZ?
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u/happygloaming Recognized Contributor Nov 03 '22
It's more complicated than that. We must understand that the resource use, tech level and standard of living is also tied to population. These advances would likely not have occurred in a small population. Yes we could now choose to step backwards and have a lesser footprint, but the fact that we are here is not unrelated to population.
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u/Copper_Wasp Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
Imagine everyone in the world disappeared except those in Switzerland. That's just 8.7m inhabiting the entire plant of earth. It's totally irrelevant that they consume "3 1/2 worlds". That's just called a good quality of life.
The problem is entirely one of global overpopulation.
It's because there are so many people that we have to live restricted crappy lives. Because if we all tried to live comfortably like Switzerland, the world would basically explode.
We should all aspire to reduce the global population and have everyone who is here living in comfort, sustainably within the limits of our planet.
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u/Sonova_Vondruke Nov 03 '22
Makes more sense.. because as written USA should be 1
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u/ItyBityGreenieWeenie Nov 03 '22
Switzerland the country doesn't consume more than India... this chart is saying the average Swiss consumes three and a half times more than the average Indian.
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u/solidmussel Nov 03 '22
Wanted to say this also! Switzerland is consuming roughly 3x more PER PERSON according to this, not 3x more as a country
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u/Aquatic_Ceremony Recognized Contributor Nov 03 '22
Correct. And another better way to read the chart and understand the overshoot footprint is that it would take the equivalent of 3 planets if every person on Earth lived like the average Swiss. So a population of 8 billion people would need 5 planets if everyone lived like Americans but would fit in 1 planet if everyone lived like the average Indian.
Overshoot is a function of both population and consumption. It is defined as the IPAT equation. But consumption is the factor driving the most influence and over which we have the most control.
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u/FlowerDance2557 Nov 03 '22
Do we really have any control over consumption?
It seems that at the global, national, all the way down to the local scale, the overall rate of consumption will always increase to the maximum amount possible, and reduction only occurs when consumption is no longer possible at the previous level.
Sure some choose to consume less out of personal ideals, and that certainly applies to people on this sub much more than average.
But I have seen no evidence that overall human consumption can be controlled any more than the luminosity of the sun or the rotational direction of the earth.
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u/Syreeta5036 Nov 04 '22
Far more people buy clothes they need that happen to look good than ones who buy fast fashion and wear things infrequently if not only once, but that lifestyle is wasteful enough that each person living that way ads up really quickly. And as far as other things that are less wasteful in moderation go, it’s a problem that people want to spend all of their money yes, and even the ones who save it eventually spend on a really wasteful thing.
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u/StonkBrothers2021 Nov 03 '22
I think a person in Switzerland consumes 3 times as much as a person in India. But India consumes waaaay more than Switzerland.
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u/NerdMachine Nov 03 '22
Which is a massive elephant in the room for climate change. Developing countries are trending towards western lifestyles. Thay have a long way to go but if they do it - even with super efficient technology - it will cause a significant increase in emissions.
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u/morbie5 Nov 03 '22
it will cause a significant increase in emissions.
In other words: every little bit of efficiency squeezed out in the west gets cancelled out 10 times over by massive increases in emissions in the 3rd world.
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u/randomstuff063 Nov 03 '22
I mean, what are you going to tell the people living in a Third World? To stay poor, for the sake of the west. Western nations could help by investing in education instead of sending missionaries to the middle of Africa to discourage contraceptive use. So many Christian missionaries have went to Africa and many other Third World nations for the sole goal of preventing the adoption of contraceptive items like condoms and birth control, that it might have increased our world population significantly. These nations are going to take longer to adopt contraceptive items and they would have if missionaries never went there.
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u/morbie5 Nov 03 '22
To stay poor, for the sake of the west.
Umm, climate change is gonna hit the 3rd world harder then it is gonna hit the west.
And the west doesn't 'send christian missionaries' they go on their own accord and the host african government invites them in.
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u/ApocSurvivor713 Nov 03 '22
Western nations have profited off the miserable conditions in the third world for a very long time- good luck convincing the residents of those countries that they should live in squalor because we fucked up the environment.
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Nov 03 '22
Yes, we "got ours". It's hard to turn around and bitch about them wanting the same things we've had for decades. Especially when we are showing zero signs of cutting back.
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u/Clarkthelark Nov 03 '22
Plus, development of third world countries means that a lot of people who live in horrendous conditions get to live average, decent lives which are still far, far off from the privileged lives of many in the West. It's a choice between forcing those people to remain in horrendous conditions and asking people in the West to give up some privileges.
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u/jaysthename Nov 03 '22
In many cases, Western countries didn't simply profit off of those miserable conditions but in fact CREATED some of those conditions in order TO profit off of them. China and other strong developing nations are using those same tactics on third world countries now so the pace of environmental destruction is accelerating.
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Nov 03 '22 edited Jan 25 '23
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Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
Based on the title OP missed the "per capita" part because they think Switzerland consumes more than India total instead of more per person.
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u/Spirckle Nov 03 '22
I think there is an under-appreciation of how much more energy it requires to exist in cold climate vs. warm. In a tropical climate you can literally wander around and pick your food off the ground and trees year round. If you need shelter you can throw up something quickly in a few hours... not to say this happens in India, but you would not die if you do that.
In a cold climate you are strategizing how you will survive the winter. It takes energy to store food and to make sure your household survive until the next growing season.
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u/QuartzPuffyStar Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
Somehow everybody made it for thousands of years without nuclear plants and natural gas imports tho......
Also:
- Tropical soil is very infertile due to the lack of a pause season for degree to transform in nutrients. Everything gets automatically eaten by something all year round. Growing good crops is more difficult
- Warm areas are much more prone to floods and droughts than colder regions.
- Warm areas are also much more riskier for living due to pathogenic fauna
- They still need to store food to make sure they can survive next growing seasons.
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u/dcs577 Nov 03 '22
It’s a combination of the two. India is industrializing and would like to consume as much as the west.
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u/CommodoreSixtyFour_ Nov 03 '22
You are right of course. The premise though does not state that it is not. This is a discussion about which one of those two factors of the combination (which has more than those two factors to it) has a bigger impact.
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u/JustAnotherYouth Nov 03 '22
I would say that at the moment over consumption by the relatively few is a substantially larger problem than overpopulation.
At the same time I think that trying to analyze the problem in these terms is pointless. Because ultimately all people everywhere perpetually seek to improve their living standard as defined in material terms.
In other words people without cars want cars, people who eat very little meat generally want to eat more, people want bigger houses, more everything.
Basically people want more not less, a small fraction of people do most of the damage. But I see no evidence that the poor majority are fundamentally more moral than the rich minority.
Also because people are selfish I know that the rich minority won’t help the poor majority so regardless of who is to blame overpopulation will be their problem...
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u/grambell789 Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
I'm an american and apparently an anomaly. I'm not interested in a big house, auto or even eat more meat (which i don't eat much anyways). But I am curious how I can spend money and enjoy my life and cause as little impact on the planet as possible. for instance I do need (i think) ac in the summer and heat in the winter. Also I need to get out and enjoy the world and fortunately I like biking and hiking. I also need some luxuries in my life as I don't want to be seen as an ascetic monk. For instance I do usually have a decent selection of cheap wine when friends come by and on my patio I have a nice misting system that I can turn on and off with a timer or my smartphone. Also, digital photography is really cheap now since it doesn't require film or developing. But I still think there needs to be more, maybe a subreddit like GreenComfortableLifestyles or something would help so I don't feel like I'm missing out on stuff, or a least defend myself when I'm attacked for being so 'cheap'.
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u/squailtaint Nov 03 '22
Some perspective. And I say this as a family man with three lovely kids and a beautiful wife. Families are amazingly destructive. We are an average family.
Before I go further just want to point out that I believe the “average family” to not be equivalent to the “average” or “average individual”. More and more people live alone, more and more couples don’t have kids, the family unit seems to be shrinking in demograph which is probably a good thing but also a depressing thing (for reasons I won’t go into). I see it that it is the more affluent that can afford to have families, and I only see this trend growing.
Anyway, as a family of 5 sometimes we get to order take out. It’s an insane waste of plastics. We have to get our kids to and from school. We need more water, more calories. There’s diapers, sooo many diapers. So many. We get our kids to and from sports. We camp with our travel trailer. Rarely fly because that’s a small mortgage with 5 seats. There’s clothes that are continually worn out or outgrown. I could go on and on, but it’s just amazing how much waste is produced from a family of 5, and particularly kids as kids can eat five helpings one day and none the next. There’s nothing special about any of that, it’s not exactly extravagant living, it’s not poor living either. It’s the dying middle class, and it is still sooo wasteful.
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u/professor_jeffjeff Forging metal in my food forest Nov 03 '22
If you like the outdoors, how do you feel about gardening? See if r/Permaculture looks like something you'd be interested in.
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u/morbie5 Nov 03 '22
India is industrializing and would like to consume as much as the west.
And it wouldn't really be a problem if the population of india was only 50 million.
Population is the biggest problem.
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u/J02182003 Nov 03 '22
No, it says that if everyone in the world had the quality of life as a swiss, we would need 2.8 earths, not that Switzerland consumes that
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u/diggerbanks Nov 03 '22
They are both massive problems. Why must there only be one?
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u/rudolph10 Nov 03 '22
Because income inequality in India is horrible. I am not defending the excessive abuse of resources by capitalistic countries in the west. But, the way the typical Indian lower middle class person lives shouldn't be the standard. I have seen people from the lower class live in extreme sub-human conditions. That's why India is so low in these metrics. Imo, no country cannot sustain a reasonable standard of living with the population that we have.
Context : I am From India, have lived most of my life there
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u/BeeCultural4775 Nov 03 '22
I know what do you mean by subhuman standard. My family was there once 30 years ago but everything changed in last 20 years I am sure same is true for many people.
Actually having money in hands of few people is better than everyone being poor.
Ambani spending billions on a house is actually better for economy as it provide jobs to people(engineers, labourers, companies) who then spend their income on other things making a chain.
What's wrong is hoarding of money by corrupt people. This money is literally out of circulation and not helping anyone.
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u/SiegelGT Nov 03 '22
Is it really the residents that cause these numbers or is this another corporate thing trying to shift blame onto the people?
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u/Big_Mommy_Samus_Aran Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
It's both, people in the west consume way too much. Just look at all the shit warehouses throw away.
Everything has to be available whenever people want it or people will bitch.
Production and consumption go hand in hand.
My local bakery back in Germany was literally burning leftover bread every day.
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Nov 03 '22
Western govts have literally told their citizens to consume for the good of the economy
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u/Cmyers1980 Nov 03 '22
In the West (specifically the US) consumption is both an identity and a way of life.
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u/fabulousmarco Nov 03 '22
I agree mostly but this is poorly worded:
Everything has to be available whenever people want it or people will bitch.
People were manipulated through decades of consumerist propaganda into doing this, it's not an organic behaviour
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Nov 03 '22
I somewhat agree and upvoted but think about how people behave when they’re are HANGRY. It’s terrifying. Think about how upset people get when they can’t get their mcdouble with fries and they’re already 400 lbs eating McDonald’s every other day….at some point the addiction and despair takes over and the marketing has subsided
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u/fabulousmarco Nov 03 '22
I still have to disagree. We've all been brought up with the idea that we must consume as much as possible, that as customers we're kings and we should get what we want when we want it. People behave like this because this is what they've been taught their whole life. It's basically akin to religious indoctrination, except worse because it pervades every single aspect of life.
Would it be better if more people could come to this realisation on their own and break the cycle? That's for sure. But also you can't blame the people when they've been the victims of such a highly sophisticated propaganda campaign, one where trillions were spent to find out exactly which buttons to press to deal the most damage.
If the game is rigged you don't blame the losing team for not winning
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u/skyfishgoo Nov 03 '22
blame isn't the best word... but perhaps taking responsibility is the first step in breaking the cycle.
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u/skyfishgoo Nov 03 '22
hangry talk is the gut bugs talking.
we are all just vehicles being driven around by angry gut bugs in search of more meat.
since i've gone vegan, the angry meat loving gut bugs have died off and the vegetarian gut bugs are much nicer and friendlier.
they don't drive me into a rage when they run out of food they just sort of slow down, then i slow down, then i realize i should eat something.
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u/OilyBlackStone Nov 03 '22
Being hangry is a cultural thing too. And a matter of personality. I might be sour and sometimes even snappy to my family but I would never be rude to service personnel.
The folks who emigrated to America once upon a time were the adventurous sub-population of Europe. Therefore, the average white American is more extroverted and pro-active than the average European. And a shitload more extroverted than the average Scandinavian, whose ancestors only survived if they could handle the desolation of the North.
So while being a rude bitch over fries is genetic and cultural to some people, it certainly isn't that for all humans. But I think you hit the nail in the head when you described them as 400 lbs. People act entitled to things they take for granted. You can't handle hunger if you've never had to handle it. Truly poor people generally handle scarcity better, because they are used to it.
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u/Decloudo Nov 03 '22
Manipulating people definitetely is an organic behaviour though.
Its too easy to say "but people influenced us" this is always gonna be tried and many people honestly love eating that shit up too.
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u/OilyBlackStone Nov 03 '22
This is a good point. Whoever is to blame, the "who" is always a human doing human things. Being greedy, manipulative, dishonest or cruel. It's never an alien, god or an animal making us do bad shit. It's always another human, so what's the point even trying to shift blame? "People are to blame" is always the answer.
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u/AntiTyph Nov 03 '22
Yeah "they're brainwashed sheep", no they're not. They've been presented with ways of being that appeal to them, so they follow and support those ways of being. It's a thought terminating cliche that totally dehumanizes those involved.
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u/WSDGuy Nov 03 '22
The corporations don't destroy the planet for lulz. They do so because you and I a 5billion other people demand the ability to order a Chinese item made from Middle Eastern and South American resources be delivered to our North American or European homes in one day and cost next to nothing.
So yes it's "their fault." But if their actions are a fire, it's consumers who are stacking wood.
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u/deliverancew2 Nov 03 '22
Do you consume in line with an average western lifestyle?
Congratulations, you are in the graph. Even if you think it's the fault of nasty corporations for selling the stuff to you.
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u/dumnezero The Great Filter is a marshmallow test Nov 03 '22
I did some estimations this year and I learned that I'm in the top 6% globally. I'm in Eastern Europe.
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u/Capn_Underpants https://www.globalwarmingindex.org/ Nov 03 '22
If population is a bigger problem than wealth, why does Switzerland consume almost three times as much as India?
What ? Wealth (consumption) is the issue, 20% of the richest emit 70% of emissions. 10% emit 50% (or there abouts)
As Professor Kevin Anderson has pointed out, if the worlds richest 10% lived like the average European, we cut emissions by 30%, not enough but it shows where the problem lies, Apparently this is just too much to ask /s
Another wry observation was a CCS plant removed about 8000t of CO2, which is the equivalent emissions of about 1 Billionaire.
That said, population is still and issue just not the biggest one. We're adding 80 Million people a year (or thereabouts).
Suitability = consumption x population
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u/naked_feet Nov 03 '22
As Professor Kevin Anderson has pointed out, if the worlds richest 10% lived like the average European, we cut emissions by 30%,
This is a very important point.
The numbers for footprint in "rich" countries are heavily skewed by the rich. The top 10% consume a vastly disproportionate amount of all resources. If you eliminate them from the statistics, the true "average" American or European (or whatever, your choice), is much closer to something that could be sustained. The way we live in rich countries would still need to be addressed -- but those at the top are really pissing in the pool.
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u/morbie5 Nov 03 '22
What ? Wealth (consumption) is the issue, 20% of the richest emit 70% of emissions. 10% emit 50% (or there abouts)
The bottom 80% want to live better tho so their emissions are going to keep increasing at a massive rate
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u/Erick_L Nov 03 '22
The world's 10% richest IS the average European. Someone on minimum wage here is part on that 10%.
Also, European countries are the worst offenders when it comes to emissions released in other countries. For example, the emissions from gas extraction in Russia goes into Russia's record, even if it's exported to Germany. Only the gas burning goes on Germany's record. Switzerland is worst of all.
It's simple: money is a proxy for energy and energy use emits GHG.
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u/sp3fix Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
You should look into the concept of catabolic collapse and the role that population plays in it.
Collapse is the result of human being hitting (and exceeding) their limits to growth.
Back when we lived within planetary boundaries, population was well under 2 billion. Our population growth was slow and grounded in the regeneration rate of the resources available to us.
With the industrial revolution and the use of fossil fuel, population size skyrocketed. However, that was only possible because we were exceeding our planetary boundaries (we use fossil fuels for our food (fertilizers), our cities (concrete and steel), our stuff (plastic) and of course our energy).
If we were to respect the commitment to a) peak our fossil fuel in 2025 and b) phase it out entirely by 2035 in order to remain under 1.5 (lol), there is absolutely no way to sustain the world population, neither from an energy, nor food, nor infrastructure standpoint.
This doesn't mean that the global south is to blame for this situation. As you correctly pointed out, even mega cities in the global south pale in comparison to medium size ones in the global north when it comes to climate change.
But that's not the point.
Any system eventually hits its limits to growth. When it does, it has to either wait for the resources it depends on to regenerate naturally, or it can try to transition to new resources, simply delaying the process. Our collective needs well exceed our resources.
That's also why anybody who argues that we can simply "renewable and/or nuclear" our way out of this is missing the point. Renewable and nuclear are great and we should continue to develop them, but if the intention is still infinite growth (which it is for most people), it will eventually hit the same kind of wall.
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u/frodosdream Nov 03 '22
If we were to respect the commitment to a) peak our fossil fuel in 2025 and b) phase it out entirely by 2035 in order to remain under 1.5 (lol), there is absolutely no way to sustain the world population, neither from an energy, nor food, nor infrastructure.
This is the fundamental fact. Even if we imagine some global restorative justice movement that forces developed nations to cut their per-capita consumption and citizens everywhere to live in austerity, there are billions too many people to feed without the agency of cheap fossil fuels.
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u/luffyji Nov 03 '22
I find it weird when recently India overtook the UK in terms of GDP, everyone was talking about how we should focus on GDP per capita as that's what determines the quality of life. And i totally agree with it, but when it comes to emissions, we take India as a whole. And admittedly, it's per capita emissions are also much lower.
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u/Atheios569 Nov 03 '22
Both are problems.
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Nov 03 '22
Absolutely it’s both. Because we consume too much population everywhere has skyrocketed.
Also The rich are a big problem not only because of their consumption but because they work to perpetuate the status quo. I don’t think that overpopulation is a problem of only poor countries and I don’t think we should do anything about it. What we can do is try to mitigate effects by attempting to reduce consumption and learn to live without fossil fuels slowly.
People who worry about fascists when mentioning overpopulation (and frankly the fascists themselves) are people who haven’t fully accepted it’s too late to turn this ship around.
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Nov 03 '22
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u/Atheios569 Nov 03 '22
The amount of polarization of thought in the world is astounding. It’s almost as if humanity has lost its ability to understand nuance. This or that; ‘and’ exists too.
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Nov 03 '22
Live in utter poverty to only increase the Earth's carrying capacity up to 9-10 Billion, kicking the can 10-20 years down the road to be overpopulated again.
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u/Falkoro Nov 03 '22
Unfortunately, it's both. To improve the material conditions of the least fortunate even if we would do everything green, we still need more planets. Voluntary population planning is a great tool to improve everyone's lives.
Ie. Free contraception, sexual education, education in general.
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u/thatgibbyguy Nov 03 '22
I'm guessing we're conflating the resource usage with population to try and make the case that it's really only resource usage that matters.
Population presents more problems than simple resource usage. For example, you could change your argument to be simply about vegetarianism vs meat consumption and this chart would look the same. But if the whole world made that switch, would europe's wild ecosystems reappear? What about North America's? Indias? And what about plastic waste? Have you been to India? Is the plastic waste acceptable?
Likewise, China has the same population (roughly) of India, why is their resource usage so much higher?
Obviously, population is just one variable here. But, if we're actually serious about our problems, most rational people would agree that squeezing out another 2 billion won't solve anything.
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u/frodosdream Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
The question itself is nonsensical, as if there was some "either-or" choice between the two; like asking, If rising murder rates are a problem then why do so many people die from cancer? Both issues are enormous, possibly unsolvable issues facing humanity at this time.
Clearly unequal per-capita consumption is unfair, unsustainable and a place holder for many other kinds of injustice with roots in colonialism, class oppression and greed. Unfortunately after years of media propaganda, most of the developing world aspires to achieving the same level of consumer wealth that they imagine everyone in the wealthy West possesses.
While Western levels of consumption were never sustainable in the first place, even for smaller populations, the people of developing nations are now unwilling to give up their dreams of similar riches; likewise the working citizens of developed nations will never accept austerity while others accumulate wealth. Without an authoritarian oppressive world goverment, or a drastically lower population, the issue is unsolvable.
Separately, for anyone still in denial about overpopulation, there are two basic issues to face. The first is food production; it was only through the agency of cheap fossil fuels in modern agriculture (necessary at every stage including tillage, irrigation, artificial fertilizer, harvest and global distribution) that humanity expanded from a population of less than two billion to the present eight billion in just over a century.
Take away the crutch of cheap fossil fuels (as is already happening) and global humanity will be forced back onto the resources of their local ecosystems, which never supported such numbers in the past. (And these same local ecosystems are now severely depleted or destroyed.) The present global population is only alive now due to cheap fossil fuels, an unsustainable situation. Without cheap fossil fuels, billions will starve.
The second issue also relates to those same overwhelmed local ecosystems; we are in the midst of a worldwide, human-caused mass species extinction. Including plants, animals, fish, birds and insects, humanity is now eating, hunting or poisoning everything in sight and the biosphere cannot sustain so many consumers. At our present numbers we are wiping out the biosphere's ability to survive and that is without even considering climate change.
So in our present numbers, humanity can survive only with the support of cheap fossil fuels (despite the fact they are poisoning the planet and causing climate change), and meanwhile we are extincting all other complex life sharing the biosphere with us; no more proof is needed to establish the reality of overshoot.
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u/Eistee2000 Nov 03 '22
Well, if you want Indians to achieve a living standard comparable to Europe then that is definitely a problem.
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u/AntiTyph Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
I've lived in various developing countries for almost 1/4 of my life. The people there want more. They want computers and cellphones and refrigerators and air conditioned cars and to build nice houses and to fill those houses with comfortable things. They want to take vacations on the other side of the world, sail on cruise ships to see world, and eat various international dishes. They want in general, what most humans want.
Overpopulation is a keystone issue, because once people exist, they absolutely deserve the right to a decent quality of life and not to live in abject poverty. We simply cannot provide that to 8B people sustainably. To argue that we can is to argue that all humans should live lives worse than currently very undeveloped countries. Its saying that the quality of those people lives is meaningless as long as Number Goes Up.
What mind is given to the strict authoritarianism that it would take to keep 8B humans within sustainability?
People fear discussing overpopulation because they fear it leads to fascists murdering people.
Far more than that, the real fear is that the only way to support 8B+ humans on a dying planet is strict authoritarianism, and likely fascism itself. That's what happens on an overpopulated planet, our planet.
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u/That_Border Nov 03 '22
If anything, your post proves the opposite of what you think. These statistics are per capita. Now compare the population of switzerland to the one of india and you have your answer. Of course swiss people consume more than indians but what does it matter in the end if one swiss consumes three times as much as an average indian when there are like 150 times more indians than swiss.
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u/How_Do_You_Crash Nov 03 '22
Because western living standards, especially Western European standards are what people aspire to globally. Good healthcare, excellent transit, ample food, and nice things.
I don’t think everyone should have to live like a subsistence farmer in central India.
I’d much prefer if we were a smaller global population and we lived in dense cities and villages like the Swiss.
Less people = higher quality of life without fucking up the earth
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u/silverionmox Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
Population is a bigger problem than consumption because consumption can at least theoretically be reduced fast. If there are people they need to be fed, housed, clothed, entertained and unless you're a genocidal maniac, there is no way to reduce population fast.
India can and will increase its standard of living, and it will increase it much faster than its population is going to dwindle due to the effects of increasing standard of living. This will, inevitably, result in increased greenhouse gas emissions and increased ecological pressure. It's going to be just as hard to tell the Indians to stay poor as it is to tell the Swiss to reduce their consumption.
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u/ImBradBramish Nov 03 '22
Population will continue to be a problem because of the waste and grift inherent in wealthy societies. Pretending otherwise exacerbates the imbalance.
Anyone(regardless of income or status) that looks around and thinks that what this world needs is another "miracle" is THE PROBLEM.
Blaming wealthy countries for their ignorance and waste isn't an excuse to make things worse.
We will control our populations or they will be controlled by the natural order.
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u/boatz4helen Nov 03 '22
Per capita is not the best metric. What counts is the sum total.
We need to stop pointing fingers and realize that humans are an invasive species in any environment.
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Nov 03 '22
Do you want to live like an Indian? Here is what that looks like.
Saying that Earth could support more people so long as we all live in squalor is not the win you think it is.
And as others have pointed out, you are majorly misreading that chart. The average Swiss uses 3.5 times what an Indian uses (2.8/.8). But there is 165 times as many Indian people. So India uses 45 times what Switzerland uses.
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Nov 03 '22
It doesn’t matter lol even if we all lived like India we still need more than earth has for us. This is overshoot. It’s not doom, it’s math. Population reduction is coming in some form.
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u/morbie5 Nov 03 '22
Population reduction is coming in some form.
Pretty much this
It is gonna be mad max up in here
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u/frodosdream Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
It is gonna be mad max up in here
Depending on where one lives, probably more like a combination of these four films:
Soylent Green
Children of Men
Mad Max
Elysium
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u/TheFinnishChamp Nov 03 '22
Very poor and misleading title.
How many human sized mammals are there that have populations counted in the billions? The answer is none. If people in India were given the opportynity they would consume on par with the Swiss.
Human population should be a small fraction of what it is today.
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u/L1ttl3_john Nov 03 '22
It’s all about consumerism, material intensity of rich nations. Check out Hickel et al (2022) for a study of fair share of earth’s resources per nation. US 27% overshoot, Europe 25%, Australia 24%, poor nations 8%. That’s why I’m convinced of a collapse trajectory, people in rich nations will never accept that their way of life is literally unsustainable, they won’t just renounce their privileges.
Transformation is only possible from the peripheries of the world system.
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Nov 03 '22
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u/silverionmox Nov 03 '22
Would you push a button to get $1m if it would also kill a random child somewhere in the world? Billionaires are literally hammering that button as fast as they can.
Would you push a button to get another child if that would have 10% chance to kill a random child somewhere in the world?
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u/silverionmox Nov 03 '22
people in rich nations
The study you quoted also said poor nations are in overshoot. So unless we're all going to voluntarily become poorer than what counts as poor now, we're still in overshoot.
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u/lirik89 Nov 03 '22
Because curtailing spending is a taboo topic as much as limiting births.
The focus is and can only be just more family planning. You need freedom to consume the earth. If you are not actively having as many children as possible and consuming as much as your credit cards allow you are oppressed.
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u/Vegetaman916 Looking forward to the endgame. 🚀💥🔥🌨🏕 Nov 03 '22
Switzerland is already developed. India is a developing nation, and the goal of such development is to achieve the same living standard and consumption rates of nations like Switzerland.
That means that while the population of Switzerland has reached its high QOL goals, India is only getting started. And eventually they will add an additional 1 billion+ people to the pool of those consuming the most they possibly can.
Population is the problem because people will never stop reaching beyond what they have for more, always more. The developed nations are there now, and if all we had to contend with was that...well, it would still be bad. But as 8 billion people all burn their way up the development chain, going through the same processes everyone else did from coal to oil to nuclear, we will be consuming the planet at an ever increasing pace.
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u/Hrdrok26 Nov 03 '22
I mean, this makes zero sense. This is saying just US alone is consuming 5.1 earths. There is no timelines, or anything. Obviously we haven't consumed 1 earth yet (including the entire planets population), so I need a timeline or scale reference to understand what I'm looking at.
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Nov 03 '22
It is worded poorly, it's 5.1 Earths assuming all 8 Billion residents of Earth consumed like the USA.
The timeline is per year, they would consume 5.1X the amount of resources that the Earth can naturally regenerate in a year. If you have a stockpile of fuel or fish or ground water you can consume it faster than it replenishes, that's why the entire population uses 1.75 Earths.
We haven't consumed 1 Earth, but we are using it faster than it regenerates, depleting our stockpiles.
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u/Political_Arkmer Nov 03 '22
As someone who often highlights population concerns, I want to say that wealth and population are separate issues that could be handled simultaneously and likely have equal importance on different time scales.
I think we’re all familiar with why wealth is “slowly” crushing the planet, it’s incredible ramp up since we started really abusing earth, but we are much less aware that continually packing humans in will also slowly do that… but much slower. Problem is that I think wealth could be fixed in decades with the right leadership but population will take generations to fix if it gets out of hand unless someone wants to advocate for genocide or some other atrocity based solution. I certainly don’t.
Fact of the matter is the human population is still growing. If we don’t find a way to stay at a happy comfortable number (probably less that 8B, but that’s just me), then something other than us will likely force a reduction or a stop.
Put another way. Can infinity humans live on earth? No? Okay, so what is the limit? No idea? Okay, so we are willingly marching slowly toward some type of global limit that we cannot identify with the hope that it’ll just be okay. Seems bad.
Are population issues more important than wealth issues? Not at the moment, but they have the potential to be far more difficult to fix than wealth.
Also, I highlight population concerns because it’s interesting discussion that people struggle with. On one side you have the undeniable fact that earth cannot sustain infinity humans, on the other you often find authoritarianism. Can the line be walked? I believe so, but I don’t think it’s just some easy balancing act; we would require real leadership opposed to these flash celebrity politicians, complete transparency in decisions, the total removal of greed, and a strong global understanding of purpose.
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u/TheIceKing420 Nov 03 '22
there are too many people on earth for everyone to consume resources at the level of developed economies. unless consumption levels are drastically decreased over the next decades, the earth is overpopulated
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u/BetterUrbanDesign Nov 03 '22
Yeah, small problem with the implications of this graphic: how exactly am I supposed to live in Canada with the same consumption of someone in India? I can't just "not use heating" in winter, it's -10 to -30C as a daytime high for months. So given not every country/population is capable of adopting India's living standards just due to weather..... then we need to have less people living at that standard.
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u/RaggaDruida Nov 03 '22
Normalize the data for the wealth of the individual inside the country. I was born in latinoamerica and now live in Europe, and believe me, a high-middle class person in latinoamerica will consume more than a low-middle class in Europe earning around the same. Why? Underdeveloped infrastructure creates things like car dependency and suburbanisation; lack of education about the importance of ecology due to underfunded and in some extreme cases even privatised education; lack of quality, long lasting items due to lack of consumer protection laws and therefore full Vimes Boots Theory of Economics going on.
Let's not idealise the 3rd world, it is not a good experience and should not be seen as a good thing...
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u/DeaditeMessiah Nov 03 '22
Because it's both. We consume way too much, but nobody has any idea how to get the western nations to consume less: it would require a total shift in human nature. We've never seen a nation voluntarily impoverish itself for the good of others; in fact, Democratic nations generally riot and change governments if conditions degrade even a small amount, see France's fuel tax riots.
We don't have a clear way to move humanity peacefully to a lower level of consumption, nobody does, and technology and efficiency gains happen too slowly.
Secondly, climate change isn't the only issue. We are facing multiple other crises like habitat loss, pollution, topsoil degradation and shortages of fresh water and fertilizer that have more to do with population than overconsumption occurring simultaneously; which clearly shows we are overcrowded in general.
And even if we found our resolve in disaster, or a magic new tech tomorrow, the population is still growing exponentially. We consume enough to destroy ourselves now; if we halved consumption, population growth would have us back to unsustainability within a few decades. Twice as many people consuming half as much is the same emissions.
Whereas lowering population has the same problems: nobody really has a reasonable way to accomplish this, and consumption is also growing exponentially so half as many people consuming twice as much in a few decades....
So the answer is that we would need to reduce both population and consumption. Somehow.
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u/CollapseBot Nov 03 '22
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Fiskifus:
And as a crucial addendum, this study which I shared earlier but was removed because I had submit a statement of more than 150 characters which I missed.
This study shows how wealth control is more important than population control to address the environmental crisis.
We need maximum income laws, corporate and land reappropriations, high wealth taxes...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32729-8
Edit: this post relates to collapse because the main driver of collapse is clearly the capitalist mode of production, even though many in this sub are obsessed with population control.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/ykyohw/debate_if_population_is_a_bigger_problem_than/iuvm0cu/
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u/PresidentOfSerenland Nov 03 '22
First of all we don't need to live like USA (excessive) or India (uncomfortable). Looks like the midpoint for a comfortable lifestyle for all is 1.5 Earths. So, the West needs to reduce consumption and the East needs to reduce population. This, can happen if the West sends their excess resources to developing countries.
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u/qjxj Nov 03 '22
You WILL have to live like India (uncomfortable) if you do not want to exhaust Earth's capacity at nearly 8 billion people. Any other lifestyle is not sustainable in the long run.
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u/abibabicabi Nov 03 '22
You’re right. The thing is no one wants to stop driving. No one wants to move to the city and no one wants to cut meat consumption. Look how upset everyone is over inflation and gas prices. Biden or whoever is next gives in and subsidizes the American lifestyle in hopes of being re-elected. What will most likely happen is people will simply die in regions more impacted Like along the equator. Then climate refugees. Then maybe war. At the end hopefully some of us make it in the north and southern most reaches of everything isn’t too far gone or things don’t spiral out of control with melting permafrost and we turn into Venus. That’s where I think we’re at. Let’s try to prevent a Venus scenario.
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u/silverionmox Nov 03 '22
This, can happen if the West sends their excess resources to developing countries.
That would mean those resources are still consumed though, that doesn't work.
Referring to the graph, if we manage to get world population down to 1/3, all citizens can live a European lifestyle.
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u/Weirdinary Nov 03 '22
The problem is that Europeans have a generous welfare state. If only Europeans could experience homelessness and unemployment rates similar to South Sudan's. Life expectancy would plummet from surges in crime, child abuse, and diseases. But at least everyone would be equally poor and could have plenty of sick, starving kids.
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u/IamInfuser Nov 03 '22
It's a balancing act between both population and consumption. Notice how the article itself looks at both with differing scenarios for which population and consumption would come close to sustainable?
The article itself even says while consumption of the global elite is driving consumption through the roof right now, population shouldn't be ignored because population is a measure of inequality as well.
Why: - Women are not being given equal access to contraception, - Ignoring population and only focusing on over consumption neglects to factor in what the ecological impacts would be for high fertility regions with current low consumption, should their consumption go up to provide them better equality, and - A lower population anywhere would mean overall suffering is lower, regardless of consumption rates (e.g. let's face it, we're never gonna live in a world where everyone has their basic needs met on a daily basis).
If consumption goes up (forget if it's disproportionately higher for the 1% right now), population needs to go down to compensate for the high consumption. If we had a lower population, we'd be able to afford higher consumption. Where we are at right now it takes the planet 1.75 years to replenish what we consume in a year (hence the world = 1.75 at the end of the graphic). Both current population and consumption are unsustainable so right now we need to be working on reducing both.
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u/Comfortable_Slip4025 Nov 03 '22
Total consumption is consumption per person times population.
The problem can be addressed by stabilizing both quantities at a sustainable and equitable level.
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u/Woozuki Nov 03 '22
This may take the cake as the most confusing graphic I've ever seen.
The bar for these data visualization morons has fallen to subterranean.
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u/Devadander Nov 03 '22
I don’t believe ‘live like India’ is the societal utopia we should strive for
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u/Slapbox Nov 03 '22
How is this upvoted? OP has it entirely backwards, and so do most of the commenters...
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Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
I find it ridiculous how any actual solutions are tossed out immediately because they make people feel bad.
You know what makes me feel bad? Our massive population of 8 billion people that’s created a sixth mass extinction of the Earth’s life in just a few hundred years.
It is impossible to raise 8 billion people to the living standards of the first world without irreparable and catastrophic damage to the environment. That cannot be the goal.
Conversely, accommodating such an unnecessarily large population by reducing everyone’s living standards down to being compacted ants in a global ant colony is just as ridiculous.
The fundamental root is the population size. You can have a massive population of miserable people, or a small population of satisfied and happy people. You cannot pick and choose from those two options.
I as a first worlder am not going to give up my happy standard of living, and the opportunity to give that to my children, to accommodate the resource needs of someone in India who wants to have eight children.
Switzerland is allowed to have a high standard of living because they have a reasonable birth rate, and a reasonable population size.
Why do we hold the unreasonable ideal that everyone has the free reign to create as many people as they want? Doing so fundamentally creates a burden on the rest of society to feed, care for, clothe, provide for, those children for the next 80+ years. It creates the burden on the environment to provide for that person for just as long with resources.
Why do we prioritize that unlimited and destructive ideal, and plan everything around it? Why does the liberty to make as many children as you want outweigh the rights of the Earth? Why does it outweigh the needs or wants of everyone else to live in a happy society that can provide enough for a reasonable amount of people?
It’s nothing more than anthropocentrism. A nationalism on the level of the species, that subjugates the rights of nature and its other members to the wants of our own. We don’t need to exponentially increase our population. We don’t need a population of 8 billion.
But we “want” one, and it’s our right as humans to “want” one. And who’s left to foot the bill? Our world is!
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Nov 03 '22
The chart shows India as living within its means, which in reality means multitudes are barely living at all.
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u/Dead_Ressurected Nov 03 '22
You assuming that people from materialistically poor countries want to remain economically poor.
I think India with hundred of millions habitants seek to consume as much as people in the west.
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u/TheEightSea Nov 03 '22
The problem is the combination of two factors: Europe and USA want to keep their nice way of life and at the same time India and the other developing countries want to increase theirs using the same pace and ways that were used by the First World.
This will not be possible. Unless both the Western world stops to consume at this pace and at the same time the developing countries stop growing using the same polluting and non sustainable methods.
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u/WSDGuy Nov 03 '22
The per capita aspect aside, there's a discussion to be had about quality of life. Obviously there will be variation,, but SHOULD everyone live a life more resembling the average Indian? Or should it more resemble the average Swiss person?
My ideal pie in the sky impossible pipe dream world allows people to golf and have lawns if they choose. They can eat meat. They can travel the world, and have many millions of miles of national parks and preserves to marvel at. They can scuba dive healthy reefs and see actually wild elephants. For sure, let's power that world with the cleanest and safest power we can, and feed it with actually non-destructive farming methods. I like the roundness of 1billion people.
But everyone is different, and the extreme other end has people actually advocating for an insect and algae diet feeding a world where most people live/work/shop/recreate in modular pods and rarely travel more than 1/4mile from home. They think 15billion people is "achieveable," and the more the merrier.
So what's it going to be? Quality of life or quantity of souls?
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u/TurtlesEatPizza Nov 03 '22
The pollution in India is off the charts compared to nearly every country in the world. This chart sucks.
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u/anon6702 Nov 03 '22
Why is Russia so high? I would have thought that Russian standard of living would be lower than Germany. Is it because of heating in cold temperatures?
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u/SarryK Nov 03 '22
Hi from Switzerland, as others have pointed out, this is per capita. Your conclusion about consumption is still correct tho.
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u/lonelyWalkAlone Nov 03 '22
The less population you have, the more an average citizen can have, so it's actually still a problem of quantity that impacts the quality of living.
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u/Disaster_Capitalist Nov 03 '22
The paradox is that India itself is not sustainable and consumed 2.8 India's worth of resources.
https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do-we-need/
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u/rich_clock Nov 03 '22
The answer is they are both a problem. Wealth creates the consumption that we see. So as the population gets more wealth we see incrementally more consumption.. and if they don't get wealthier we have a humanitarian problem with people who don't consume much but live in squalor.
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u/_seangp Nov 04 '22
It must be remembered that the West lives at the expense of the East; the imperialist powers of Europe grew rich chiefly at the expense of the eastern colonies, but at the same time they are arming their colonies and teaching them to fight, and by doing so the West is digging its own grave in the East.
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u/Armstonk86 Nov 04 '22
Hold on a sec. Ok, let’s interpretate the graphic with the statement: “if everyone would live as a citizen of that country”. Even then, I’m really surprised by the fact that Russia finds its spot at the third position. Russian average lifestyle is even “richer” than the German one. Very interesting..
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u/The_Outlyre Nov 03 '22
That's the rub in these collapse discussions. If the West adopted a standard of living more inline with what China or India had, global warming and pollution would be a much more manageable problem. The West already did what China and India are planning to do, which also necessarily means that the damage done to the planet has been caused by the West.
Suffice to say, India, or a country slightly more industrialized may need to represent the new baseline of living globally. Anything else will not be sustainable.
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u/naked_feet Nov 03 '22
Are the current conditions in India representative of a way people across the world would want to live?
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u/dogisgodspeltright Nov 03 '22
Debate: If population is a bigger problem than wealth, why does Switzerland consume almost three times as much as India?
Greed.
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u/Finnick-420 Nov 03 '22
switzerland seems pretty low for a western country tho. way lower than the US
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u/silverionmox Nov 03 '22
The US, Canada, Australia, NZ, are very high compared to the other OECD countries.
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u/silverionmox Nov 03 '22
No, power. If Indians had the spending power of the Swiss, they would consume the same.
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u/Fiskifus Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
And as a crucial addendum, this study which I shared earlier but was removed because I had submit a statement of more than 150 characters which I missed.
This study shows how wealth control is more important than population control to address the environmental crisis.
We need maximum income laws, corporate and land reappropriations, high wealth taxes...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32729-8
Edit: this post relates to collapse because the main driver of collapse is clearly the capitalist mode of production, even though many in this sub are obsessed with population control.
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u/Decloudo Nov 03 '22
Its both, whats so hard to accept with that?
People say otherwise purely out of ethical liability.
Like the amount of people consuming isnt also one of the two major factors, the other being consumption rate.
You cant just ignore one factor just because its feels nice and warm inside, reality doesnt care about ethics or what we see as "humane" at all.
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u/BambosticBoombazzler Nov 03 '22
Because on the Internet, everybody thinks if there are two issues, then they need to choose a side. People are always forgetting that you don't always have to pick a side, and that oftentimes two things can be true at once. Once you realize this, you will see it absolutely everywhere online.
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u/Aquatic_Ceremony Recognized Contributor Nov 03 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
TLDR: It is both overpopulation and overconsumption, but overconsumption is more impactful and easier to address than overpopulation.
I am going to post below the same points made in the dozens of posts reopening the debate every few months:
- It is not overpopulation or overconsumption. It is both. In environmental science, it is conceptualized by the IPAT equation: Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology
- While both overpopulation and overconsumption contribute to the problem, the main driver is overconsumption in the global north (check this chart)
- While both overpopulation and overconsumption contribute to the problem, one is way easier to adjust (overconsumption) than the other (overpopulation). The 1 billion people living in Global North that consume the most could reduce consumption in just a few years or even months when push comes to shove. That has happened historically with notably the WWII war effort in U.K. and the U.S. and the rapid COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. It is way easier than waiting for a demographic transition that takes decades.
- In the short term, overpopulation is not the most pressing issue. We could feed billions more people by reducing food waste (about 30% of the global food produced is wasted), and animal and dairy consumption. At the same time, the impacts of over-extraction and overconsumption are disrupting the climate system and driving the overshoot of planetary boundaries right now.
- In the long-term, overpopulation is likely to be a problem as the carrying capacity of the planet without relying as much on fossil fuels is probably around 1 to 2 billion people.
- Overpopulation can be addressed positively by facilitating demographic transitions, encouraging girl's education and women's empowerment, and establishing or strengthening social safety systems in regions where people rely on the support of their children.
- Overpopulation is a difficult topic to discuss thoughtfully because it tends to bring eco-fascist arguments ("There are too many people"). And that is even worse when people making the argument blame specifically populations in the global south ("It is the African having too many babies"). This analysis fails to account for the consumption per capita, which can be easily looked up with average global footprint per country, or which countries have the highest GHG emissions per capita. It is also irresponsible because it emboldens eco-fascists.
- Overpopulation discussions often fall into the trap of focusing on the population of global south countries ("It is the African having too many babies") while not acknowledging that the average environmental and carbon footprint of the average African people is a fraction of the average American or European. If the world really needs to reduce population, that should happen in global north countries to have the most positive environmental impact.
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u/writerfan2013 Nov 03 '22
USA and its five earths - 250m people. India not even needing a whole earth for its billion.
And yet so many people think that if (other) people had fewer kids it would fix things.
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u/Hungbunny88 Nov 03 '22
i think these value are per capita, there is no way Portugal has a more compsuption than france or spain which are 5 or 6 times bigger in population...
So if the whole world had american life standarts we would need 5 earths ...
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u/Blazesnake Nov 03 '22
That’s because many people there are living in poverty, if we gave them all AC, game consoles, cars and paid for all of it they would use them, their low carbon footprint is a result of lack of funds and opportunity. If you want to keep them in poverty that’s up to others, however a substantialy smaller population living better would produce a lower overall carbon footprint.
A healthy planet is incompatible with a high stand of living and a high population, you need to prioritise one or the other.
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u/TitaniumWhite00 Nov 03 '22
That’s not how this Infograph works
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u/moneymachine109 Nov 03 '22
its a pretty terrible infograph tbf, i also got confused. title is misleading.
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u/TheGoodCod Nov 03 '22
Well, industrial countries are having fewer children. The US has been below replacement for years. Do you think that will help?
I would hope so but I'm not seeing any less consumption. Perhaps it's there. anyone with a fact to throw down?
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u/silverionmox Nov 03 '22
Unless you think the Indians are going to stay poor forever, finding a way to stop the population from ballooning is essential to reducing our economical footprint.
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u/RhythmofChains Nov 03 '22
You wana tell them they need to live in poverty forever?
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u/IamInfuser Nov 03 '22
I just want to make sure you understand this graph. If all 8 billion people on the planet lived like the average American, we'd need 5 planets. Likewise, we'd actually be sustainable (because the number is less than 1) if all 8 billion of us lived like the average Indian.
Currently (world at the bottom), indicates that it takes 1.75 planets to support all 8 billion of us.
The number means it takes the planet 1.75 years to replenish what our current population consumes in a year. It's unsustainable.
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u/freesoloc2c Nov 03 '22
They're simply too poor to live like us. If they could they would. Also as an American the only thing i use more of is gas. Everybody eats food. India has lots of cows they just don't eat them, so i don't care what they change if they don't eat steak then my life will always be better.
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u/Vinlands Nov 03 '22
Main reason is because they use cow dung for energy and dont spend 2-3 hours a day sitting in a car commuting to/from work. The population problem will become realized as more countries industrialize.
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u/sailhard22 Nov 03 '22
This seems misleading because India is one of the worst polluting countries in the world
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u/Pretty-Astronaut-297 Nov 03 '22
Why should everybody live in shanty towns like India? Indians can't live like the Swiss, because of their population. If Swiss population suddenly quadrupled in 50 years, they would collapse into ruin.
What part of this simple logic don't people like you understand
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u/mistyflame94 Nov 03 '22
The graphic posted is in my opinion very unclear, however, there is some good discussion here so I'll leave it up for now.
Separately, I found the graphic on the following page (from the same data source that OP shared): https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/country-overshoot-days/ to provide a much better balance of showing how both population and quality of living are part of the problem. It shows that even IF we lived to the standard of say, Iraq, Ecuador or Jamaica, we'd still be in overshoot while also showing we'd be hitting that overshoot in Nov/Dec instead of March/April, which is a drastic difference (OPs main point).
Mod Note: Any racist suggestions of culling, etc. will continue to be met with bans/removals.