Over Population

Introduction	The USA
World Population	The Good News
World Population Growth	The Bad News
Sustainable Population	Carrying Capacity
The Habit of Overpopulating	Club of Rome
The American Excuse	Infant Mortality Rates
Action	Links

“Humans are now the most numerous mammal on the planet. There are more humans than rats or mice. Humans have a huge ecological footprint, magnified by their technology.”
Dr. David Suzuki (born: 1936-03-24 age: 73)

Introduction

Nearly all global problems are made worse by overpopulation.

We have wars fighting over scarce resources and territory.
We destroy the habitat of every other species, pushing them to extinction. In India alone the population increases by 20 million every year. These people have to live and farm somewhere. The increase won’t stop until all the wildlands are gone. Which do we really need more of on earth? humans or the other species?
Dealing with the pollution of our industries and fecal waste is compounded by overpopulation.
Plagues thrive in overcrowded conditions.
We are rapidly depleting our non-renewable energy reserves. Every person in the developed world consumes 40 times as much as in the developing world. As the huge populations of the developing world demand the fruits of development the energy and resource needs will soar.

Yet we refuse to take any sort of action to limit our populations even though our species has hit the planet like a plague of tent caterpillars. We consider ourselves a rational species, but we foolishly overbreed in a race to turn our paradise of earth to a hell. We have no more sense than tent caterpillars, We are as much a slave to our gonads as any insect.

World Population

World Population Counter

“There have never been more people on Earth. There have never been more cows on Earth, nor pigs, nor chickens. We are using more pesticides today than at any other time in history and we are losing a greater percentage of the crops. At the same time, there has never been less clean water on Earth. There has never been less available topsoil, nor fewer fish, nor fewer mature trees. There has never been less cause for optimism for the future of the human race. Our natural resources are disappearing at an unbelievable rate, and our so-called leaders offer only cosmetic solutions. The Earth’s population calls for more of everything while the Earth demands time to recover from years of abuse.”
~ Howard Lyman (born: 1938-09-17 age: 70)

World Population Growth

You can see from this graph of world population growth the incredible extra burden we are putting on the earth’s carrying capacity, especially in Asia and the Pacific. source.

“The growth in population is very much bound up with poverty, and in turn poverty plunders the earth. When human groups are dying of hunger, they eat everything: grass, insects, everything. They cut down the trees, they leave the land dry and bare. All other concerns vanish. That’s why in the next thirty years the problems we call ‘environmental’ will be the hardest that humanity has to face.”
~ Tenzin Gyatso (born: 1935-07-06 age: 73) the fourteenth Dalai Lama

Sustainable Population

How big a population can the earth sustain? If everyone consumed like Americans, we would need three entire planets to support them. Experts believe that if we reduced consumption, we might be able to sustain 0.5 to 3 billion people.

The Habit of Overpopulating

Most animals don’t need to concern themselves with overpopulation. Predators take care of the problem. For predators, starvation handles it. On average only two offspring survive to adulthood, even when an animal has millions of young. Yet we humans have developed technology to strip the land bare and pile layer upon layer of humanity, protected by vaccines. No matter how densely we pack ourselves in, we still strive for ever higher populations out of an ancient biological imperative. It shows up in our outdated religious beliefs. They still push for maximal fecundity even though such fecundity is no longer appropriate. People also have children for status reasons. They also have children to provide for them in their old age. Social institutions refuse to adjust to the new reality of overpopulation.

The American Excuse

Americans tell me that it is not their fault the world is overpopulated. The fault lies in Asia and Africa where people have large families. Yet each American consumes 11 times the resources of someone living in Asia or Africa. Americans import these resources from all over the planet. Every American kid counts as 11 kids in terms of burden on the planetary ecosystem. Not only do Americans need to reverse their population growth, they must reduce their ecological footprint. Each American woman has about 2.07 children, equivalent to a family of 23 children in terms of drain on the ecosystem.

Action

We must change the archaic attitudes towards breeding. It must become socially unacceptable. This is quite a revolution in our thinking. The urge to breed is so strong it will prevail against almost any social pressure. There is no worry about going too far. If we do, we can adjust.

For example here are some approaches that have been tried, not all of which are very palatable:

We need massive research on birth control that is cheap to administer that works by default. Both parties should need to do something active, (other than have sex), to allow a pregnancy, e.g. take a pill.
We must provide programs to ensure people are cared for in old age whether or not they have children.
We must get rid of all government subsidies that encourage people to have children.
We should provide large cash incentives for vasectomies and tubal ligations.
We need new technology to attempt to support the huge populations with sustainable clean energy and sustainable agriculture.
We must start making rude jokes about people who have children. We must call them breeders or other nastier epithets.
We must discourage religions that encourage overpopulation by taking away their tax breaks.
We must encourage people to have homosexual relationships wherever possible.
We should encourage people to keep small pets instead of children.
We should continue the Bush approach to AIDS, namely actively encouraging it. We should create some new plagues as well, ones better aimed at those who have large numbers of children.
We should foment wars to help kill off the young men.
We should not intervene when crazed dictators such as Hitler, Idi Amin and Pol Pot decimate their populations.
We should relax the taboos against inter-species sex.

Not all these approaches are equally palatable. Even I don’t endorse them all. However, if we don’t get serious about the more palatable ones, we will be forced to use the less palatable ones instead. People sometimes write me furious that I would advocate such strange measures. I don’t. I merely list what has been tried or suggested.

The USA

There are three ways to approach the population problem:

reduce the birth rate.
increase the death rate.
increase the efficiency with which you can sustain a population with limited resources.

“Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.”
~ Henry Kissinger (born: 1923-05-27 age: 86)

America has focused almost exclusively on increasing the death rate. This is a startling thing to say, but look at her actions, not George W. Bush’s fine speeches.

She interfered with condom education in Africa, which does work, and forced religious-based abstinence education which has been proven to make the AIDS epidemic worse.
America blocked African countries from making and distributing AIDS drugs to stop the epidemic. Preserving patents was more important than preserving lives.
America is the stingiest country of all the western nations in terms of foreign aid. Even the “greedy” Saudis are 50 times as generous. It is ironic two of the richest countries in the world are also the stingiest. Canada is the second stingiest western country giving 2.8 times as generously as the USA as a percentage of GNI. What makes America’s stinginess even more shameful, is American gives the 1/3 her foreign aid to Israel who spends it on their military to oppress her Palestinian citizens. Israel is a relatively properous nation. There are many countries more deserving of help than Israel.
47% of the planet’s military spending (i.e. spending on ways to kill people) is done by America. Americans kill more people than all other nations combined. Ostensibly this spending is to protect Americans and to improve the quality of American life. However, it accomplishes this by killing people who live in countries that possess the natural resources America wants, such as Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Zaire.
America backs corrupt political regimes who oppress their people in return for access to natural resources. Let us not forget that it was America who originally helped Saddam, Marcos and Pinochet into power.
American sponsored immunization programs in Africa deliberately reused needles without sterilisation. This spread all manner of diseases including AIDS.
Americans are the most deliberately wasteful group of people on the planet when it comes to resources. There whole culture and status system is built on consumption and waste. Canada is almost as bad.
America encourages ever higher birthrates at home and abroad by discouraging family planning, contraceptives, condoms and abortion.
America encourages ever higher birthrates by destroying economic stability in other countries exploiting workers and destroying unions. Impoverished people have no social security other than a large family.

The Good News

Ever since 1968, when the United Nations Population Division predicted that the world population, now 6.6 billion (2006), would grow to at least 12 billion by 2050, the agency has regularly revised its estimates downward. Now it expects population to plateau at nine billion. That is still 2.4 times higher than the goal of 2 billion.

“I have severe doubts that we can support even two billion if they all live like citizens of the U.S. The world can support a lot more vegetarian saints than Hummer-driving idiots.”
~ Paul Ehrlich (born: 1932-05-29 age: 77)

Many western countries have achieved a negative population growth if you discount immigration.

Even in North Africa, regarded as the great exception to the shrinking population trend, birthrates have dropped somewhat. Egypt’s, for example, went from 5.4 births per woman in 1970 to 3.6 in 1999.

If all you do is teach people how to use birth control and provide women with access to it, you don’t need any coercion. In Africa people still have large familiies, but that is because there is no old age security other than children. When that security is provided, family size automatically shrinks, because birth control frees women to other things besides raise babies.

The Bad News

Corporations have magnified the power of human greed to widen the wealth gap. They have encouraged conspicuous consumption. Religions are still goading their adherents to breed faster than any other sect. At the same time the power of the earth to sustain is waning through the end of oil (upon which the green revolution is based), the erosion of soil, pesticide and chemical contamination of soil and water, urban sprawl into the prime farm land, and global warming which is destabilising climate and rain.

Too many things have to go right for us to get out of this one without massive pain. It is just not going to happen. Most of the world are like pigs in a trough trampling the environment not thinking about anything other than their immediate gratification. All we can do is try to make it not quite so awful, to preserve at least a few acres from the ravening caterpillars that humanity have become, so that at least there will be islands of life to reseed the earth after the human plague has passed. We humans are the biggest extinction event in the history of the planet, wiping out even more species than the asteroid that hit earth and ended the age of the dinosaurs. Being proud of being human is like being proud of being an ebola virus.

“They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.”
~ Joni Mitchell (born: 1943-11-07 age: 65) , Big Yellow Taxi

Earth’s Carrying Capacity

In 1961 the earth had 3 billion people. They were using 0.5 of the sustainable resources of earth.

In 1986 the earth had 5 billion people. They were using all of the sustainable resources.

Ever since we have been running that might be called an environmental deficit budget which is only sustained by plundering our capital base.

By that I mean:

overexploiting fisheries.
overgrazing to the point of desertification.
destroying forests.
polluting the waters and atmosphere, including greenhouse gasses.

You have seen the results of Bush deficit budgets. The same sort of thing is happening on a planetary basis.

At the rate we are going, we would need 2 whole planets to sustain our rapacious appetites in 2050. Something has obviously got to give — most pleasantly our wasteful use of energy.

Club of Rome

A group of scientists known as the Club of Rome back in the 1970s attempted to predict when population would outstrip resources. They predicted serious problems much too soon. The data they were given about energy and mineral resources seriously underestimated the untapped wealth of the earth. They were basically right, but got the timing wrong. In contrast, today we know exactly how many pollutants of each kind are being released into the atmosphere with great precision. Further, because of extraordinary improvements in computers, the mathematical predictions are now much more accurate. People afraid to look at the serious problems facing humanity like to bury their heads in the sand by telling themselves scientists are always wrong, because the Club of Rome’s timing was off. Of course they trust scientists in nearly ever other instance, from pharmaceuticals to aeronautics.

Infant Mortality Rate

The usual measure of a country’s health care system is the IMR, Infant Mortality Rate. the number of infant deaths per 1000 births. There are some surprises taken from this table compiled by the CIA. Countries near the top of the list have the best healthcare systems. Even though the USA spends more on health care than any other country it has the worst IMR of any first world country. Even third world Cuba beats it. Canada spends about half per capita of what the USA does, yet Canada ranks 23 to the USA’s 43.

Americans are paying more than anyone else in the world and receiving third world quality health care. Clearly they are being ripped off, but Americans are too proud to admit it. They live under the delusion their health care must be the best in the world simply because it is the most expensive and has the most TV ads touting it.

Infant Mortality Rates
Rank	Country	IMR	Notes
1	Singapore	2.29	Best in the world
2	Sweden	2.76	So much for the canard that socialised medicine does not work.
3	Hong Kong	2.95	Not quite what you would expect.
4	Japan	3.24
5	Iceland	3.29
6	Finland	3.55
7	Norway	3.67
8	Malta	3.86
9	Czech Republic	3.89
10	Andorra	4.04
11	Germany	4.12
12	France	4.21
13	Switzerland	4.34
14	Macau	4.35
15	Spain	4.37
16	Slovenia	4.40
17	Denmark	4.51
18	Austria	4.60
19	Belgium	4.62
20	Australia	4.63
21	Liechtenstein	4.64
22	Guernsey	4.65
23	Canada	4.69
24	Luxembourg	4.74
25	Netherlands	4.96
26	Portugal	4.98
27	Gibraltar	5.06
28	United Kingdom	5.08
29	European Union	5.10
30	Jersey	5.16
31	Ireland	5.31
32	Monaco	5.35
33	Greece	5.43
34	San Marino	5.63
35	New Zealand	5.76
36	Aruba	5.79
37	Isle of Man	5.82
38	Italy	5.83
39	Faroe Islands	6.12
40	outh Korea	6.16
41	Cuba	6.22
42	Taiwan	6.29
43	United States	6.43
44	Croatia	6.72
45	Lithuania	6.78
46	Guam	6.81
47	Israel	6.89
48	Martinique	6.95
49	Northern Mariana Islands	6.98
50	Cyprus	7.04
51	Montserrat	7.19
52	Poland	7.22
53	Slovakia	7.26
54	Saint Pierre and Miquelon	7.38
55	New Caledonia	7.57
56	Reunion	7.63
57	Estonia	7.73
58	Virgin Islands	7.86
59	Cayman Islands	8.00
60	French Polynesia	8.29
61	Bermuda	8.30
62	Hungary	8.39
63	Guadeloupe	8.41
64	Chile	8.58
65	American Samoa	9.07
66	Puerto Rico	9.14
67	Latvia	9.35
68	Costa Rica	9.70
69	Kuwait	9.71
70	Netherlands Antilles	9.76
71	Nauru	9.78
72	Macedonia	9.81
73	Bosnia and Herzegovina	9.82
74	Ukraine	9.90
75	Uruguay	11.61
76	French Guiana	11.76
77	Barbados	11.77
78	Brunei	12.25
79	Fiji	12.30
80	Tonga	12.30
81	Serbia and Montenegro	12.52
82	Saudi Arabia	12.81
83	Belarus	13.00
84	Saint Lucia	13.17
85	Dominica	13.71
86	Sri Lanka	13.97
87	United Arab Emirates	14.09
88	Saint Kitts and Nevis	14.12
89	Grenada	14.27
90	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	14.40
91	Palau	14.46
92	Mauritius	14.59
93	Argentina	14.73
94	Russia	15.13
95	Seychelles	15.14
96	Turks and Caicos Islands	15.18
97	Greenland	15.40
98	Jamaica	15.98
99	Panama	16.37
100	British Virgin Islands	16.72
101	Jordan	16.76
102	Bahrain	16.80
103	Malaysia	17.16
104	Georgia	17.97
105	Qatar	18.04
106	Saint Helena	18.34
107	Antigua and Barbuda	18.86
108	Oman	18.89
109	West Bank	19.15
110	Tuvalu	19.47
111	Thailand	19.49
112	Bulgaria	19.85
113	Mexico	20.26
114	Anguilla	20.32
115	Colombia	20.35
116	Solomon Islands	20.63
117	Albania	20.75
118	Venezuela	21.54
119	Gaza Strip	22.40
120	Armenia	22.47
121	Philippines	22.81
122	Ecuador	22.87
123	Suriname	23.02
124	China	23.12
125	North Korea	23.29
126	Libya	23.71
127	Lebanon	23.72
128	Tunisia	23.84
129	El Salvador	24.39
130	Bahamas, The	24.68
131	Paraguay	24.78
132	Belize	24.89
133	Trinidad and Tobago	25.05
134	Vietnam	25.14
135	Romania	25.50
136	Honduras	25.82
137	Samoa	26.85
138	Nicaragua	28.11
139	Dominican Republic	28.25
140	Kazakhstan	28.30
141	Marshall Islands	28.43
142	Brazil	28.60
143	Syria	28.61
144	Federated States of Micronesia	29.16
145	Algeria	29.87
146	Guatemala	30.94
147	Peru	30.94
148	Egypt	31.33
149	Guyana	32.19
150	Indonesia	34.39
151	Kyrgyzstan	34.49
152	Moldova	38.38
153	Turkey	39.69
154	Morocco	40.24
155	Iran	40.30
156	Sao Tome and Principe	41.83
157	East Timor	45.89
158	Eritrea	46.30
159	Cape Verde	46.52
160	Kiribati	47.27
161	Namibia	48.10
162	Iraq	48.64	Under American occupation
163	World	48.87
164	Papua New Guinea	49.96
165	Zimbabwe	51.71
166	Bolivia	51.77
167	Mongolia	52.12
168	Senegal	52.94
169	Botswana	53.70
170	Vanuatu	53.80
171	Gabon	54.51
172	India	54.63
173	Maldives	54.89
174	Ghana	55.02
175	Kenya	59.26
176	Yemen	59.88
177	Togo	60.63
178	South Africa	60.66
179	Mayotte	60.76
180	Bangladesh	60.83
181	Sudan	61.05
182	Burma	61.85
183	Burundi	63.13
184	Cameroon	63.52
185	Nepal	65.32
186	Uganda	66.15
187	Cambodia	68.78
188	Mauritania	69.48
189	Uzbekistan	69.99
190	Pakistan	70.45
191	Gambia The	71.58
192	Haiti	71.65
193	Swaziland	71.85
194	Turkmenistan	72.56
195	Comoros	72.85
196	Madagascar	75.21
197	Azerbaijan	79.00
198	Benin	79.56
199	Laos	83.31
200	Republic of the Congo	85.29
201	Central African Republic	85.63
202	Zambia	86.84
203	Lesotho	87.24
204	Democratic Republic of the Congo	88.62
205	Cote d’Ivoire	89.11
206	Equatorial Guinea	89.21
207	Rwanda	89.61
208	Guinea	90.00
209	Burkina Faso	91.35
210	Chad	91.45
211	Ethiopia	93.62
212	Malawi	94.37
213	Tanzania	96.48
214	Nigeria	97.14
215	Bhutan	98.41
216	Djibouti	102.44
217	Guinea-Bissau	105.21
218	Tajikistan	106.49
219	Mali	107.58
220	Somalia	114.89
221	Niger	118.25
222	Mozambique	129.24
223	Liberia	155.76
224	Afghanistan	160.23	Under American occupation
225	Sierra Leone	160.39
226	Angola	185.36	Worst in the world

Ironically, where IMR is lowest, population growth is slowest, so it pays to improve infant mortality to reduce population.

“Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.”
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 83) on overpopulation.

Links

reader feedback on this essay.
New York Times article: Demographic ‘Bomb’ May Only Go ‘Pop’!
Population clock.
abortion

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