The Population Bomb Doomsday Scam | Hacker News Reader

The Population Bomb Doomsday Scam

spectator.org

12 pointsRickJWagner11 comments

Terrible article. It's been decades since anyone has taken Malthusianism -- the naïve version discussed in this article -- seriously. It was never the scientific consensus that we would see mass starvation from overpopulation. "Some prominent scientists believe x" is not proof of a consensus.

Besides, why would it matter if the scientists were wrong? Being wrong might be rational if your belief is based on the best available evidence. Changing your mind doesn't mean you past belief was stupid or a lie. This is how science works. We all should have learned this in middle school.

A version of overpopulation is still very much a concern. Obviously, most kinds of environmental destruction scale with population. Our current farming practices have managed to keep people fed, but only by draining aquifers and polluting waterways. Our current modes of transportation have managed to transport billions of people, but only by pumping out destructive amounts of carbon.

Overpopulation is not, in itself, the problem. We know how to sustainably support a population much larger than the one that exists today. However, a large population is a multiplier to the destruction of all our unsustainable practices.

Why is it a goal to populate the world to a maximal amount? Yeah, we could make room for more people by restricting the lives of the others... but why? Why not identify a comfortable, sustainable level, and keep the level there? The earth is not crying out for more people to be on it, and no societal problems are solved by adding more (quite the opposite). Being told you can only have 2 kids max is less dystopian than outcomes from overpopulation.

This very topic has, unsurprisingly, been the subject of debate for a long time. You might want to read this:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion

>no societal problems are solved by adding more

That's not true. Old people often need expensive support and may not be able to work as productively as they once did. If the population ages, the relative amount we spend on medical bills will go up and productivity will go down.

On the whole you might think it's not worth it. That doesn't mean there's no benefit whatsoever.

> but only by draining aquifers and polluting waterways.

That's by choice, not by necessity. It would certainly be possible to feed 8 billion people in a more sustainable fashion, but it would cost more. Some people can't afford to pay more (or would need assistance to do so) and most don't want to pay more.

Yikes, the last few paragraphs about how cold kills more than heat sounds a lot like climate change denialist bs.

Looks like the authors missed the point that the population boom was accompanied by an energy consumption boom, which we all know the consequences of. It's painfully obvious that an exponentially growing population evolving in a finite environment is a recipe for problems.

The article reads a lot like "scientists were wrong in the past so they must be wrong now", which has to be the level 0 of rational thinking

https://www.overshootday.org/

Economists have discredited themselves with failing predictions much more often and they don't even understand the premise of the argument of overpopulation.

Imagine every Chinese and Indian and everyone in Africa would live on the level of an American. With all the energy use that comes with it...

Also, some even go further and say mass extinctions are already taking place aside from the changing climate.

edit: To clarify: The argument isn't that you cannot put everyone on the planet on Sardinia. You can do that. The argument is that most people would die from dehydration after a few days.

To my mind the authors completely fail to acknowledge a serious conflict of interests and therefore have no credibility. Both are affiliated with the Committee to Unleash Prosperity (what a comically Orwellian name that is, btw) which seems to be sponsored by John Catsimatidis [0] an oil industry billionaire. The whole thing seems to be some sort of offshoot of ALEC, a completely ideological business driven lobbying endeavor.

[0] https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/committee-members/

Of course written by an economist, single graph showing just economic data, nothing related to the actual ecological impact of that population.

Seems like a guilt-by-association climate action hit piece -- and of course it's written an economist*.

*: https://www.themintmagazine.com/nordhauss-nobel-prize-is-saf...

> To appreciate what an embarrassing reversal this is for the green movement

This is an embarrassing sentence from the authors. Being concerned with the environmental issues of the planet is not a team sport. The "green movement" was never invested in being right about population explosion and have not now lost face with this "embarrassing" reversal, as these conservative writers wish us to believe. Rather, a sustainable population is a good thing that the green movement celebrates. There are a lot of things to track and population was just one of them. But if conservatives want to think they won something and the green movement lost, that is their prerogative.

Ok, we’ll take a mulligan on that one.

But we’re totally right this time, and we’re willing to bet your life on it!

Sincerely, Every Politician

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