Located in the U.S. where we could double the population without starting to feel cramped. We can and we should.
The dust bowl absolutely destroyed a large part of the US. In prior centuries, massive droughts, volcanic explosions that blackened the skies, and massively deadly pandemics ravaged the world. These things happen periodically and absolutely destroy any population that's pushing the limits of its population totals.
So far we've managed to sustain huge population numbers by pumping up ground water. That's drying up across the world. We've survived off fish. Those populations are collapsing. We've diverted rivers for agriculture in deserts. There isn't enough rain to keep those flowing and hasn't been for years, plus with climate change glaciers and mountain snow that fed into rivers are increasingly a thing of the past--rivers and lakes that exist today will cease to exist within our lifetime (and long before we expect). Fertilizer let us push the land well beyond sustainable limits and vegetables are less nutritious than they've ever been due to nutrients being wiped out of the soil. Most countries are dependent on food being shipped from hundreds if not thousands of miles away and often from other countries entirely.
The world is severely overpopulated. We've just been lucky to have had a few decades of peaceful trade and a very, very, very mild environmental situation with zero major global disasters. This isn't the norm. One massive volcanic eruption, one actual plague, one massive drought and it's all over.
But that's not sustainable - the US has the highest CO2 emissions per capita when you factor in imports, etc. nevermind other environmental damage. And is also dependent on terrible conditions in Asia, etc. to produce all the cheap goods and clothes that you enjoy.
It's like the prisoner's dilemma though - the first countries that try to act responsibly with environmental policies, transitioning from fossil fuels, reducing population growth and unnecessary consumption are just at a disadvantage to those that don't.
Would you still argue against a higher population once we largely solve the emissions issues? Or is there a more fundamental reason you’re against a higher population?
I think it's better to ask why should population keep growing? We don't need it and it physically has to stop growing at some point.
It seems much better to focus on growing quality of life and quality of environment rather than growing number of people.
Because you can’t stop people from breeding apart from killing them, at which point you’ve become Hitler. That or tax and social disincentivization at which point you’ve become the Illuminati. That or a procreation suppression field at which point you’re the Combine.
(Godwin point reached very quickly...)
Still slowing population growth would be the easiest gradual way of dealing with resource and environmental issues. It also helps to spur automation and innovation by reducing the amount of cheap, desperate labour available (which is not a fulfilling existence for the workers either).
It can also be tied into ensuring that children have a good upbringing - introduce a child licence with requirements for raising a child to ensure some stability and responsible parenting - e.g. mandatory parenting and nutrition classes, $10+k in savings, living space requirements, etc. - this would help reduce crime and poverty and improve everyone's lives.
Take a theoretical world where population was drastically lower (or individual consumption is hugely slashed amongst the top consumers): We would drop within the safe boundary for all limits simultaneously, because the underlying multipliers for all of them are number of people and individual consumption.
[1]https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2...
The US is at a huge scale though, and that mining is probably going towards building American SUVs, military equipment, etc.
Most African countries need less than one
You mention mining and deforestation but where do you think the material extracted are going ?
I would think it's still more energy consumption but not as huge of a gap, depending on the state.
Telling Africans they need to stay poor and stop having children is a pretty standard Western stuff.
100 years ago people were saying we would all die from starvation after a few billion more people. Doom sayers have zero credibility.
The current fertiliser shortages might undo some of that, there's a real chance we see severe famines in Lebanon, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Yemen, and other countries next year.
Soil is now becoming depleted and fertilizer isn't enough.[1] Globally, much also depends on rapidly depleting ground water that isn't being replenished. Agriculture is exceeding its limits.
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conserv...
Why ignore human ingenuity ?
A lot of those people died because no fix was found in their lifetimes. Nobody fixed the plagues that went around Europe. Nobody fixed the droughts that killed millions. Entire civilizations went extinct because they weren't able to find a fix before a problem caught up with them.
A lot of problems won't have a fix within our lifetime. Thinking it's guaranteed to happen is magical thinking--assuming we're the main characters in the universe and things must work out. Most of the time, they don't.
Living today doesn’t guarantee living tomorrow.
The discussion is around whether the human race will survive and continue to grow.
As you may have noticed, population numbers have increased since the days of the Aztecs.
Hence proving the fact that we have no good insight of the future.
Thanks to globalization... corporations influencing governments around the world to favor a global market. It's colonization all over again. Even back then, at the time of discovering America, for example, it was corporations that went around the world in their ships and did it for profit. The only difference today, is that there are no governments doing it explicitly (i.e. Iraq war), but rather corporations via the excuse of capitalism.
I'd be fine with buying everything local and more expensive, but often that option is not even present anymore. It's like the battle was won, and now we're all dependent on this global chain of commerce in one way or another.
Instead of taking a defeatist attitude, this has the opportunity to be a conversation starter with many big companies to champion a more ethical, sustainable future.
But I guess that's just my opinion.
edit: I'm not really sure why you're being down-voted. You're just expressing your opinion here.
Persons are autonomous, and if we would educate them correctly, they could help to make more of earth hospitable and use resources more efficientlly.
Fascism is generally used to describe right wing dictatorships with hierarchical structures which are opposed to democratic principles.
Do you really believe any of the people advocating for population stability are fascists?
There is room on this planet for more humans, but taking it for our own comes at a cost. If we choose to use it for people, then it can't also be wild. So, we have a choice to make about the kind of world we wish to live in.
[1]: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/29/17386112/al...
I'm not against population growth, but this whole rhetoric fueled by Musk, among others, stirring panic that the population will collapse is crazy. Sure, we would have a problem if people suddenly stopped having children. But this is not the case. World population is still growing, and it should stabilize at around 10B people. That's not too bad, why do we need to keep growing?
Talk by Hans Rosling worth watching:
https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_global_population_gro...
You're already running out of resources: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-11/californ...
If you build a solar energy farm on the dark side of the moon you shouldn't be blaming the people who want to use the energy, you should be blaming the people who managed the project.
A solar panel on the dark side wont be much use.
But then people have discussed landing on the Sun at night.
If the population increases in a system where there is enough access to good education, and enough economic opportunity, to advance humanity's knowledge, we will be fine.
If the population increases in a system with too much ignorance and destitution, we are in trouble.
The root cause of this is not "overpopulation" as often proclaimed, but our mode of production, which assumes endless economic growth is possible and everyone can be lifted out of poverty - all while relying on those in poverty to generate wealth (and more wealth inequality). Steven Pinker can shift the poverty line all he wants, it doesn't make the world less unequal.
I really dislike degrowth arguments, but it needs to be acknowledged that the standard of living for the top few percent is simply impossible to scale. At least with the means we currently have, and I'd rather measure based on those than hypothetical future developments that may or may not come to be.
In terms of energy, nuclear. In terms of food, there are still large swaths of un-farmed areas. We can farm these and still maintain natural parks and not destroy the environment. Opening up immigration will solve labor issues.
We have the technology, we just have to distribute it to easily quadruple the carrying capacity of the earth
As things stand, doubling of US population would be a global disaster.
Though the US could cut emissions in the neighborhood of entire developed countries in Europe right now if they just stopped military spending.
What we see continually rather is a narrative of overpopulation pushed and advanced by seemingly related points about lack of food and water. In reality these are completely orthogonal points which have some correlation to, but are not directly proportional to population growth all.