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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

There's so much to object to about the idea that Earth is overpopulated. Then you get it and it hits you like a ton of bricks. The signs are everywhere and couldn't be more clear. But we're addicted to growth and efficiency, ignoring our limits, and our addiction blinds us to seeing what's plainly all around.

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When you prevent housing from being constructed in cities, the families that would've lived there don't disappear; they sprawl elsewhere and — as confirmed by statistics — go on to have more children than they otherwise would've.

Calculate a standard of living index for every square mile on earth. Then add a slider that only shows you all areas greater than the chosen standard of living. When you crank it all the way up to California living standards the earth does look overpopulated.

Of course when all we want is the mere existence of humans then there can be as many additional humans as rats on the planet and they'll get to live the same quality of life.

Even if the population went down dramatically, we should should still stay dense. Density is good. Mutual defense did jump-start density before, let's hope something other than violence can cause it this time.

Car Suburbia is damaging and wasteful no matter the population size.

Here's one definition I like: if not everyone can live comfortably and happily, even with infrastructure densification using current tech, without pushing the environment over carrying capacity then we're overpopulated.

Could everyone in the world own property without pushing the environment to the brink? Probably not.

Why fill to capacity?

Even at small scale, a venue might hold 500 people, but it's probably a nicer experience if there are far less than that many there.

Indeed.

The primary objection is that "overpopulation" is badly defined when it comes to humanity.

It's a taboo topic because of people's fears and anxieties that it triggers.

A (cold) rational perspective sees that many (if not most) challenges facing society share a root cause of there being simply too many people.

Earth is not overpopulated. The problem is that certain places have too much population density. If everyone spread out across the world there wouldn't be any of these issues. For a variety of reason people can't or won't spread out.

Spreading out would be the worst case scenario for the environment. (And I'm afraid we might see it due to easy remote work)

A single apartment building uses far fewer resources per person than the equivalent number of people would if they all had 10 acre lots in the countryside. The habitat destruction alone would be an ecological disaster.

It's not that there isn't space for all the humans, but that we are very industrious and consume an impressive level of resources. I think it is reasonable to be concerned when a significant fraction of the planet's energy budget is diverted by a single species.

> Earth is not overpopulated

Beg to differ. Exhibit A: climate change. Your solution would not ameliorate climate change. In fact it would likely exacerbate it. We need as much of the land as possible to be rewilded(left alone to maximize CO2 absorption and heal the planet). And stop having babies. Do you really want to bring a child into the nightmare we are barreling towards?

Plants are carbon neutral, not carbon sinks. They don't put the fossil fuels back into the ground because they decompose before they're buried.

Wow, this is so exactly wrong and dangerously so. Any land humans use at above hunter-gatherer impact is highly damaged. The goal is always thus to use as little land as possible.

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