I cannot imagine living in a population density of of 742 people per mi² (287 per Km²).
[edit/assumed/obvious, as implied by the full quote: ".... and then have a third of the space flooded, i.e. a very sudden change"].
That's a significantly lower than here in Belgium (376/km², and 490/km² here in Flanders).
I'm not sure which country you live in, but although I would absolutely move back home (at about 100/km²) if I could, it's not the urban hell you seem to imagine.
* this is a common pattern of settlement
* the different geographies of two countries make a very simple (population / land area) density figure misleading, because Belgium is nearly 100% riverbank or floodplain and Pakistan is not
This is such a known problem that the US Census already has a different density measurement method, population-weighted density: https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kobe-Boussauw/publicati...
As a result, the region has a population density of 240/km² (only slightly less than Pakistan) but about 2/3rds of the population is in this valley representing 1/16th of the area of Wallonia. Flanders is mostly flat and more evenly settled.
This is actually more similar than I expected to the population distribution in Pakistan, with Punjab being a flat plain with an evenly distributed population, and the rest of the country being mostly settled along one river. By the way, Belgium also suffered a large flooding event last year in this valley, although nowhere near as deadly as what is happening in Pakistan.
Macau is amazingly densely populated, but at the same time the same density as Paris, but 1/3 of the size. It's an hour walk from one end to the other according to Google Maps.
India on the other hand is just 10% denser than Belgium, but doesn't feel like that when you look at photos of its cities and trains loaded with people.
[0] Ourworldindata.org
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/land-cover-atlas-uk-1.74...
e.g. More land is peat bogs than is built up.
Can't tell from your comment - do you think that is higher-density or lower-density compared to where you are now?
That is high compared to the USA as a whole, but 742/sq mile is low compared to ~50 other countries, and is lower than many states in the USA - i.e. DC, MA, NJ and CT.
I would guess that your number for Pakistan isn't really representative though: it's got dense cities and vast open spaces too.
I'm sure that will need to go sometime in the future but we still have plenty of space in the US to fill so I'm hoping it takes some time. lol
Ah. I live in California, population density 254 per mi², so about a third. California is also 2 times smaller than Pakistan - since a lot of California is inhabitable (contrast with Pakistan) and the surrounding areas easily accessible, it translates to a lot of "breathing room", even if you live in a densely populated county like San Francisco or Los Angeles.
> That is high compared to the USA as a whole, but 742/sq mile is low compared to ~50 other countries.
Made me look up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
Large scale population densities don't tell you anything, due to the fact that we have this habit of trying to fit as many of ourselves into the smallest places possible. San Francisco city, for instance, has a population density of 18,634/square mile. And while that's relatively dense it's dwarfed by places like Manila (Philippines) with a density > 111,000 per square mile. And if you want to go full on crazy there was Kowloon Walled City [1] in Hong Kong which had a population density in excess of 5,000,000 per square mile! That number's a bit misleading due to verticality, but not by much! That's probably the most densely packed area of a sizable population that there has ever been, and by a pretty wide margin.
Pakistan is a bit of a mix of both: three quarters are pretty empty, but the population is spread somewhat evenly over the rest [3]
1: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/California-population-de...
2: https://i.redd.it/oz7m4lfy37b51.png
3: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8e/fb/11/8efb11c1d9cc698ddca2...
But nothing at all has changed!
Population density is only one aspect of "what it feels like to live somewhere" - local density, land usage, etc all play into it.
And I’m not even saying that’s incorrect, just that there is a reason it’s not talked about.
If we want to allow continued population growth, we are saying that 'developing countries' must stop developing, and the wealthy countries need to vastly reduce the quality of not just their middle-classes, but their working class too.
We simply don't have the option of a low-footprint high standard of living right for the masses.
> The moment you start talking in the terms of the population being already too high, the obvious solutions become terrifying
Perhaps there are good solutions worth talking about, such as what kinds of crops and foods we incentivize and disincentivize, with concomitant impact on the environment and, ultimately, the space we need to thrive. Or another is giving women access to birth control so that they can make decisions about what they perceive to be an improvement to their own lives and that of their families.
The Gates Foundation’s work with vaccination will have a huge impact as longevity increases and child mortality drops, people tend to respond to the lower risk by having smaller families. Plus the general education and empowerment of women is a big strategy to control birthrates as well since it gives women more life options beyond motherhood. You will notice that the overall western narrative is that we have a low birthrate crisis and need to support family life better, but in Africa the effort is to bring that birthrate down. Touchy, touchy subject, especially since a massive population increase in the global south is already baked into the math and is as close to inevitable as it gets.
Zero-sum thinking can get you into a whole lot of trouble here, which is why I am basically a solar punk. If that’s not realistic we are screwed anyway and will tear each other to pieces over the last scraps of the biosphere.
At the rate the climate hysteria is growing, we are going to have wars specifically aimed at culling large populations. Maybe biological sneak attacks, I mean accidental releases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the...
And terrifying graph for percentage losses by country:
https://topforeignstocks.com/2016/04/19/chart-world-war-ii-c...
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lpm.2022.104111
Assuming that the "Spanish Flu" originated in the USA (possible but unproven), it would have spread everywhere even if we never entered WWI.
It is well known that "Spanish" Flu originated in Kansas. It certainly would have spread beyond in the absence of USA military action, but it also certainly would not have killed 100 million people. Exposure rate drives incidence rate, which in turn drives mortality. If only ten people in a location have been exposed and only one of those has become infected, the resources of that location are better able to cope with the epidemic than would be the case if 1M were exposed and 100,000 were infected. Both treatment and isolation are more successful with more resources. This was why Americans were urged to isolate in the initial stages of covid, to prevent a shortage of hospital beds.
A very wrong way to handle an epidemic is to transfer tens of thousands of people to ground zero, expose them for weeks, and then transfer them to various other continents.
With a little help, most of these nations could jump straight past the pollution of a fossil fuel based economy and directly into a renewable/sustainable economy, while only improving their lives.
This is also completely orthogonal to the fact that if you want less people on the earth all you have to do is send women to school, allow them to start a career, and give them easy access to birth control. Population drops pretty reliably after that.
How do you know that Pakistan's 'family planning' is not focused on increasing instead of decreasing the population?
What about religion in Pakistan is incompatible with 'family planning?'
* doesn't see 'family planning' as increasing population
* has religious traditions incompatible with any interpretation of 'family planning'
If Pakistan has a strongly increasing population then it will be in good position to take advantage of depopulation in China and elsewhere.
Pakistan too has a trend of decreasing birth rate with increasing economic power across the economic classes of people, even though all ascribe to the same religion.
Is 'family planning' not socially responsible?
0- https://www.newscientist.com/article/2277145-cias-hunt-for-o...
Pakistan's fertility rate has been falling down from 6 kids couple of decades back to now around 3.
Better in that many places which have comparable population densities on a national level like the UK or Italy are mixtures of villages, fields, and forests with substantial areas of wild space with a few very large cities set amongst them - though obviously not with the kind of wild space of, say, California.
Worse in that those countries have most of their land area flat, well watered, and temperate and Pakistanis are packed into a few river valleys.