I was going to get my degree in History
I dropped out and now I study Environmental Sciences
When environmental writers talk about "Overpopulation" I realize they have not studied History and I am afraid
I urge everyone to challenge and criticize the notion of "Overpopulation" whenever and wherever it appears.
As the video in the above link simply and elegantly illustrates, human population increased dramatically in the 20th century simply because fewer people were dying at young ages. For most of human history, half of humans died in childhood, and many humans died much younger than the modern life expectancy. In order to keep the population steady, human families had to have enough children so that on average, a pair of two humans would have two children (enough to replace themselves) survive long enough to successfully have their own kids.
Without modern medicine, half of children will die in childhood, so if you want 2 kids to grow up and have kids of their own, better have at least four. And in a world where an infected cut or a bad illness can easily kill you, even people who survive to adulthood might not live to become parents themselves, so better make it five. But as with the modern world, not everybody will have children, so six is a better number, given that a certain share of people may be infertile or run off and become a monk. And you might of course be particularly unlucky with any of the above, so better make it seven.
Of course, people weren't consciously thinking about the replacement rate thing, but I reckon cultural ideas about family size have this kind of math going on under the hood.
The exponential population increase of the 20th century happened because of an unavoidable lag in cultural changes after the change in death rate. People didn't know their kids would survive childhood at higher rates until the kids did survive childhood.
There is no possible way we can significantly decrease the human population within the next 50 or even 100 years without killing people. Why? Because most people who are 20 right now will still be alive in 50 years, assuming life expectancy follows current trends. Birth rates have already declined very dramatically in most areas of the world. This shows that humans are actually pretty damn good at self-regulating their population. It's just that the decline in death rate was relatively sudden and unprecedented, and humans couldn't respond to it until it had already occurred.
Areas that still have high birth rates, have little access to birth control and relatively high childhood death rates. The simple solution is to make health care and family planning safely and easily available for all people.
I think the video illustrates something that is particularly important to notice: WHICH populations are expected to grow. Africa grows the most. The countries that benefited first from lowered death rates—wealthy colonizing countries—have already re-adjusted their birth rates, so they don't grow. White skinned folks will soon be far outnumbered. Hmmmmm...why would we be concerned about this?
To illustrate why the overpopulation argument is so terrifying, here is a little excerpt from the book "Every Living Thing: The Politics of Life in Common" by Jenell Johnson. Trigger warning for genocide and discussion of Nazi ideology (what a surprise...not)
This very blatant and disgusting display of ecofascism being quoted and discussed is obvious, but I fear the concept of "Overpopulation" makes ecofascism acceptable in ways that are perhaps not so obvious.
I believe that every time we say: "Humans' impact on the earth is so terrible!" "Nature would be better off without humans destroying it." "Our species has had a devastating impact on this planet!" "Maybe nature will heal when humans go extinct." "Humans do nothing but kill and destroy everything." We are softening our world slightly more to the evil and abhorrent ideologies in these pages.
What would it look like, if "humans" were held accountable for the damage to the Earth? Do you think every human would be "held accountable" equally? Who do you think would be "held accountable" first? Who most likely dies when there are heat waves, floods, and tornadoes? Who cannot evacuate? Who loses everything, having no external store of capital outside of their home?
And if you think Earth would be better without humans, are you going to volunteer to go first?...or do you expect someone else to...? ...or do you say this to make yourself feel bad about being human as a form of self-punishment, disregarding that your contempt punishes others too?...
