For ten years, I lived amongst the suburban hilltops of a small city named San Dimas located about thirty miles east of Downtown Los Angeles. Each morning on the way to school, I’d peer at the distant skyline and gaze at the buildings of Downtown. On most days of the year, especially during times of hot and humid weather, they seemed to be encompassed by a dark cloud of haze that rested atop the city. I thought, ‘This is the result of condensing too many people and cars into a single area.’
The debate surrounding overpopulation has existed for over two hundred years. Thomas Malthus was one of the first to propose the dangers of overpopulation in the early 19th century. Today, there is still great controversy regarding this topic. There have been numerous studies that try to pinpoint the carrying capacity of the earth, with estimates ranging from 5.9 billion to 40 billion to 157 billion.
I recently read an essay entitled “The Unjust War Against Population” by economist Jacqueline Kasun, in which she argues that population growth poses no threat to our society and that the earth has the potential to support population sizes several times larger than its current one. She backs this claim with the assertion that the general standard of living across the globe has only improved with the continuous growing population and that new technological advancements will lead to greater productivity of both food and resources in the future.
Kasun elaborates how currently, there is enough food produced every year to feed the entire world’s population, and that if all farmers were to use the “best methods,” the earth could sustain 35.1 billion people. In addition, she points out that the entire world’s population covers only about 1% of the earth’s sphere and could fit within the borders of Texas alone. Based on these statistics, she defies overpopulation as myth.
Another anonymous blogger, in sync with Kasun’s ideas, opposes the idea that a continuously growing population is a problem. He states the following:
“…if 5% of the United States were converted into urban area with a population density of 6,000/km², and 45% were converted into suburban area with a population density of 2,000/km², with the remaining 50% left for rural area, parks, and farms, there would be enough room and food for 3 billion in the urban areas, and 9 billion in the suburban areas, for a total population of 12 billion. This is in the US alone.”
Yet, Kasun and this blogger overlook some of the most essential factors important to the debate on population growth. The primary fault I see in their argument is that they credit only two elements as responsible for sustaining the human race: food and space.
While these two elements are important, Kasun and other population growth advocates are turning a blind eye to what is really holding back the human race with regards to expansion: resource scarcity and pollution, which are the results of overconsumption and industrial byproducts.
In the 21st century and for the past couple of centuries (specifically since the industrial revolution), people have been avid consumers of not only food, but also of resources such as electricity, oil, wood, metals, and fabrics, clearly increasing the amount of capital that must go into supporting each individual.
As environmentalist Bill McKibben states in his essay “A Special Moment in History: The Challenge of Overpopulation and Overconsumption,” the average human being uses approximately 31,000 calories of energy per day, a number exponentially greater than the 2,500 used by hunter gatherers in the past, when people were consumers of only food and water.
In relation to this, Cornell biologist David Pimentel estimates that the earth in its current state can only support “two billion people at a middle class standard living” due to a lack of resources that include but aren’t limited to food. This estimate may provide an explanation for why a great portion of the world’s population lives in poverty and hunger.
Also, studies estimating the carrying capacity of the earth vary significantly. Yet, as McKibben points out, none of the studies could ever examine every variable. He notes, however, that the median low value for these studies was 7.7 billion people, and that the median high value was 12 billion. The fact that the average range for these estimates gives a number very close to our current population size is unsettling and enforces the idea that perhaps we are not too far from reaching the earth’s limits of sustainability.
Even if we are not running out of space to fit people, we are certainly running out of space to dump “the by-products of our large appetites” (McKibben). Population growth advocates such as Kasun fail to address the issue of pollution and merely state that technology will be able to “offset the bad effects of industrial pollution”.
In contrast, it is technology that has actually caused a steady increase in pollution. The magnitude of coal smoke emitted into the air combined with other forms of pollution from industrial processes has changed the composition of the earth’s atmosphere. Nitrous oxide is an industrial byproduct that upon entering the atmosphere traps solar heat, and carbon dioxide emissions from cars and fossil fuel combustion worsen this effect.
As McKibben states, before humans started burning fossil fuels, carbon made up 280 parts per million in the atmosphere. That number has increased to 360 up to date, and various effects include not only global warming but also increased incidences of asthma and other lung-related problems. So contrary to a blogger opinion that, “A future of overpopulation is one of a number of hoary old objections to progress and longer, healthier lives,” the consequences of overpopulation may actually begin to lead to shorter and unhealthier lives.
Additionally, one of the biggest threats we face as a result of overpopulation and overconsumption is climate change. Since 1900, total winter precipitation in the US has increased by 10 percent and ‘extreme precipitation events’ have increased by 20 percent. Increased amounts of carbon in the atmosphere trap greater amounts of heat, and warmer air holds more water vapor. As a result, more water evaporates and higher amounts of precipitation fall. In addition, hurricane speeds have increased by 50% over the past 50 years, and the combination of stormier weather and increased temperature has lead to drier landscapes (McKibben).
McKibben elaborates on how the freezing level has been gaining altitude at fifteen feet per year since 1970 while the steady melting of tropical glaciers has caused ocean levels to rise. He provides evidence that average summer temperatures in the poles have risen by seven degrees in the past two decades and that temperature in the Greenland Icesheet rose eighteen degrees “in one three-year stretch.” The Artic tundra is in such a warm state that now “it gives off more carbon dioxide than it absorbs, making warming ever worse.” McKibben proves that the evidence for global warming and climate change is there; something just needs to be done about it.
It isn’t entirely fair to say that Jacqueline Kasun is ‘wrong’ in her assertion that “People Aren’t the Problem”. While the number of people inhabiting the earth may not pose a problem, it is the way in which people live their lives that puts pressure on the earth. Yes, the earth may have the capacity to support 7 times its current population if “all the best farming methods are used”, if people do not over-consume, and if “technology is able to offset the bad effects of industrial pollution.” But the reality is that even if we have all the resources necessary to sustain a larger population, we do not posses the societal or economic infrastructure to distribute those resources efficiently without destroying the earth.
