What is overpopulation?

Almost in every stripe of society’s challenges and problems we hear the horrible fenomenon of over-population. I’d like to find out what it actually means and how concerned should I be?

Overpopulation: Excessive population of an area to the point of (1) overcrowding, (2) depletion of natural resources, or (3) environmental deterioration. (Dictionary on Answers.com)

So let’s examine the word following the three numbered points.

The first segment of the definition is “overcrowding.” This means the planet would be overcrowded with humans. I think this is a pretty easy one to crack.

Let’s imagine: Australia has 1,882,431,360 acres. The planet has 6,800,000,000 people. If the whole population of the world moved to Australia and were given even and divisive amount of land each person would be entitled to more than a 1/4 of an acre to live on. The rest of the planet would be deserted of human life. So I believe it is safe that the earth is not overcrowded, we might just as well have 80 billion and still be very confortable.

The second segment gives us the effect of “depletion of natural resources.” We know our natural resources are scarce. So depletion of these would be an over-consumption leading to the extinction of these resources.

So we just call it over-consumption. A couple questions... Where and what are the limits? I understand this argument but are there numbers, statistics, or theories? For each single resource? Is there an actual limit proportion between population and resource consumption? Are we at a limit right now? Let’s think food where an average American can eat to 6 or 7 plates of nice food for 6 dollars in an all-american buffet, while at the same time, a Zimbabwe dreams with some fish or rice. Is the solution to stop people from having children in Zimbabwe? Is it so serious that some would give reason to start wars, diseases, etc. so some of us can keep up the amount of natural resources we consume? Because technically the only place we are going to cut population growth is in the poorest places on earth. All developed nations have a negative nativity rate of under 2.1.

These poor places where we will cut population growth are the same areas where access to natural resources is scarce and poor. Doesn't make much sense does it? The doomsayers will come and talk about places like China and India. Ok, what will happen when all these Chinese and Indians are driving cars and eating food at the same quality and quantity as Americans and Europeans? “It will be the end of the world!” Not really. Just like everything, if resources do become scarce prices will go up and quantity supplied will lower. This will actually equilize the quality of life throughout the world just like the quality of life between the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Australia is more or less equalized. It wasn't always so... Now we will have more people living equalized with all us. Is this not what we all are always saying we want? I rest my case on the fact that I can’t find any cause and effect relationship between overpopulation and depletion of natural resources.

Now to the third point and maybe more complex: Environment deterioration.
This argument does make sense. I mean, if the environment and the planet earth are in imminent danger, or instead the human race is in imminent danger from them, because we are currently deteriorating the planet to a high degree and there is an addition of hundreds of millions of polluters, then we can conclude that this will itensify the problem to fatal proportions.

“The air is polluted, the rivers and lakes are dying, and the ozone layer has wholes in it.”
- Ann Landers

“Most environmental, economic and social problems of local, regional, and global scale arise from this driving force: too many people using too many resources at too fast a rate.”
- Blue Planet Group

“Overpopulation drains world resources.”
- Roman Catholic Bishops, 1991

This is a hard one because there is a demand for lots of hard data and information. What we do know is that the environment in developed nations is gradually getting better. Forests, rivers, oceans, air, pollution, etc is gradually getting better in the US, Europe, Japan, and Australia. The argument that more people will degrade the environment is not necessarily true. It is all about responsabilities, distribution, and quality of life (= development). In poor countries where personal and economic freedom is very limited people don’t have the wealth or time to worry about the environment. It is only when countries arrive at a certain quality of life like the above developed nations that people have time and wealth to clean up their environment. It is logical to say that China and India will follow the same trend after there people have attained a certain degree of wealth.

The only last argument, still part of environmental deterioration, is global warming. The more people the more pollution the more danger to our race and the planet. People love drama that is for sure. The truth is that there is no concrete proof that neither global warming is happening nor even that CO2 is damaging to the ozone. There are for sure many interpretations and theories from both sides of the argument. This will probably be proven to be one more great scare to our society just like the millenium bug, just like the acid rains of the 90’s, the global cooling of the 70’s, the oil or coal scarcity of the 1850’s and 1900’s, etc. For the last ten years the planet has been cooling, the overall ice is growing in the world, polar bears are found to be growing again, the astronomical sea level rise theories have been disproven, etc. However, like always, there are many people making a lot of money off the hysteria.

What is my solution to overpopulation?

Eliminate all subsidies, price controls, tax reliefs, public aids, etc. and let every person on the planet know the real cost of having and raising children. Eliminate free health care, free food, free diapers, etc. Without all these methods practices all across the globe, people would have children naturally and more responsibly and I really think of it to be arrogant and racist for any such person to think that there are too many people on the planet. Support free abortion, don’t have children, influence others to not have children, and oh yeah, go ahead and kill yourself. :)

Here's John Lennon on it "It's a myth" he tells us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yRh5NNiFG0

The "Heavy" Worker Approach

He walks fast.
The pace will shock those living in “laissez-faire” lives.
He doesn’t complain.
Complaining? Nobody makes you be here.
He doesn’t get emotional.
Things always go wrong. Just smile or laugh.
He doesn’t get hungry.
That means you are idle. Stop thinking about it.
He doesn’t get cold.
Just work faster. Movement creates heat. Just work faster.
He doesn’t regret messing up.
You just shut up, remove what took 3 hours to do, and do it again. And you do it again.
He doesn’t get depressed.
Think “fun, fun, fun.”
He doesn’t get tired.
Work will make you feel good. By the way, it always is a long day.
He always works more.
There’s always something more to do. Get ready to do it.
He has low expectations.
You’re going to have a hard time here or anywhere when you expect too much.
He walks fast.

After my anterior post I came across this prose text in my nightly readings. It is not directly relative to my content but interesting enough. Would we value nature without civilization?

"A firefly flashes forward at regular intervals. Around me the dark countryside is a huge lack of sound that almost smells pleasant. The peace of all this is painful and oppressive. An amorphous tedium smothers me.
I rarely go to the country, and almost never for a whole day or to spend the night. But since the friend in whose house I’m staying wouldn’t let me turn down his invitation, today I came out here, feeling all embarrassed, like a bashful person going to a big party. I arrived here in good spirits, I’ve enjoyed the fresh air and wide-open landscape, I ate a good lunch and supper, and now, late at night, in my unlit room the uncertain surroundings fill me with anxiety.
The window of the room where I’m to sleep looks out on to the open field, on to an indefinite field that is all fields, on to the vast and vaguely starry night, in which a breeze that cannot be heard is felt. Sitting next to the window, I contemplate with my senses the nothingness of the universal life outside. There is, at this hour, a disquieting harmony, extending from the visible invisibility of everything to the slightly rough wood of the white sill, where my left hand rests sideways on the old, cracked paint.
And yet how often I’ve longingly envisioned this peace that I would almost flee, if I could do so easily and gracefully! How often back home, among the tall buildings and narrow streets, I’ve supposed that peace, prose and definitive reality would be here among natural things rather than there, where the tablecloth of civilization makes us forget the already painted pine it covers! And now that I’m here, feeling healthy and tired after a good long day, I’m restless, I feel trapped, I’m homesick.
I don’t know if it happens only to me or to everyone who, through civilization, has been born a second time. But for me, and perhaps for other people like me, it seems that what’s artificial has become natural, and what’s natural is now strange. Or rather, it’s not that what’s artifical has become natural; it’s simply that what’s natural has changed. I have no use for motor vehicles. I have no use for the products of science – telephones, telegraphs – which make life easy, nor for its fanciful by-products – phonographs, radios – which make life amusing for those who are amused by such things.
None of that interests me, none of it appeals. But I love the Tagus [river] because of the big city along its shore. I delight in the sky because I see it from the fourth floor on a downtown steet. Nothing nature or the country can give me compares with the jagged majesty of the tranquil, moonlit city as seen from Graca or Sao Pedro de Alcantara. There are no flowere for me like the variegated colouring of Lisbon on a sunny day.


The beauty of a naked body is only appreciated by cultures that use clothing. Modesty is important for sensuality like resistance for energy.
Artificality is the best way to enjoy what’s natural. Whatever I’ve enjoyed in these vast fields I’ve enjoyed because I don’t live here. One who has never lived under constraints doesn’t know what freedom is.
Civilization is an education in nature. Artificiality is the path for appreciating what’s natural. We should never, however, take the artifical for the natural.
It’s the harmony between the natural and the artificial that constitutes the natural state of the superior human soul."

- Bernardo Soares (Translated by Richard Zenith)

Humans: Part of nature or planet-killer bacteria?

This semester I took Environmental Sustainability as one of my natural science requirements. It’s been an average class with an average teacher that I can’t complain, but what really caught my eye were the fundamentals of science. During my youth I was never any good at the science classes mostly because I really didn’t grasp any of the material whatsoever. Now that I am back to science classes under a new light, I have to say how intrigued I’ve become at the marvels that science has found which led to amazing contributions to society in general. I definitly encourage anyone that has the knack for it to engage in the life of scientific study which I consider one of man’s most valuing devotions.

Since last week I have been discussing the meaning of nature with my mother. “What is nature”, “what does it mean to be natural”, and “what isn’t” were the key questions. The discussion started off when I pointed out that everything is natural or at least comes from nature. There is no such thing as a line between natural and artificial. Artificial comes from natural. This was my rational thought which touched the feelings of both my parents as they both have their own, but different, attachments to the sacredness of “natural”. I then stated to them that a computer is natural. Everything in its compusure is derived from nature, or in other words, it came from the dust to become a computer: “Puff”and plastic, silicon, aluminium, metal, steel, etc all came from nature to make a computer. Of course plastic is immediately said not to be from nature but is it not really? Are the chemicals we handle and mix to form plastic not derived from nature? Everything is derived from nature!

I suceeded in pointing my view onto them but I kind of failed to make the point to the other question which asked if the implied “artificial” objects are themselves natural. I accepted for a while that the answer was negative. I mean a computer isn’t from nature or natural for nature doesn’t create it and it doesn’t belong to the natural process of nature. So I guess almost everything we do isn’t natural but artificial. Artificial comes from the Latin word artificium meaning craftmanship. So everything we do that changes the nature or natural process of things is artificial. It is man-made. We’ve heard that a lot lately right?
Still our definitions weren’t clear because let’s say e.g. a pure wooden desk is man-made. It is not mixed with any other resources but purely wood. However if it wasn’t for the craftmanship of man that desk would have never naturally existed, but we generally accept a pure wooden desk as natural because the resource was not meddled with in any form. So now we can take two options: 1) it’s artificial because artifical means anything altered by man, which deduces to me that practically everything we use and most of what we eat is artificial. 2) It is natural but man-made. This means that the subject is identifiable with natural resources but just altered by human hands to a certain degree. The “certain degree” lands before the line that divides natural and artificial; but since the meaning of the word artificial has been corrupted, the line is subjective to what each one thinks something is artificial or something is natural.

My mother falls into the second category and thinks that the location of the line is obvious. It might just be… I fall into the first category and just think that the word “artificial” has been attached to too many negative connatations so to say that the wooden table is artificial just seems like something we don’t want to hear.

The discussion didn’t end. Actually I ended up putting everything in perspective as I then asked what if everything we do and make is natural, from nature, part of nature, and part of the natural process it doesn’t matter how much we mix and combine! Imagine the rage fuming in the house! Well the fact is that everything every animal and being does in this world is natural! We don’t say it is artificial. We don’t say when beavers build dams it is artificial. We don’t say that when bees make honey it is artificial. So who is to say that if we consider humans part of nature and a creature of nature, then obviously everything we do and make has to be natural!

This brings me to my title because I think the human race doesn’t really know the answer. Are we a part of this nature like I mentioned in the anterior paragraph? Hasn’t everything we done and made have the same value of everything else made and done in nature?

My possibility is: Could it be that we are bacteria? Could we be a sophisticated universal bacterium that came from the vague of the universe to infect the earth slowly like a cancer destroying all cells and organisms in the body? Maybe that’s why we are here and what we are truly doing in a grand plan of things which we cannot grasp the “why’s” and “what’s”. I think this possibility makes sense. Is that not what we are doing in this planet right now? You could ask why it took us 200,000 years to finally get some damage in but who knows how long we take to wipe out a planet. I mean maybe it’s now that we finally got it going with the exponential population growth, the greenhouse gases, the massive threat to biodiversity and extinction of animals, the turning of the planet into a trash-container, the destruction of forests and natural environments, the overuse of the planet’s limited resources, etc. We the human bacteria have finally multiplied our damage to a point of no return. The organism Earth has obviously responded. She’s been attacking us with all she’s got: HIV, flu’s, earthquakes, hurricanes, melting of the ice capes, tsunamis, cold and heat waves, etc. However we are too many now! She can’t get rid of us. We’re at the latter stages of the cycle. Maybe Earth is the last planet left of this galaxy, maybe the Homosapiens have been doing this for eons: Jupiter, Neptuno, Mars (I bet Mars was just before us), Venus, etc. We killed them all. They were all beautiful with life.

Where are we from? I don’t know.

We are either a bacteria destroying the planet and if so there is no point trying to withstand our destiny as it is incompatible in our species DNA; or we are not only part of this nature but its most complex and ultimate creation and thus everything we make and use is natural. We should then be conscious of this and make more friendly natural technology to co-live with our environment and fellow species in a more harmonical way. It would definitly be in our self-interests.

Scott Alexander