This fascinating series of cartoons makes an interesting case against common beliefs regarding overpopulation. To be fair, some of the narrator’s points are contentious at best, but overall the video seems informative. For example, he states that every person with a yard could be relocated to an area of land the size of Texas. While this may be true, he forgets to mention the fact that this mass of people would require several times that number of Texas’es to feed and produce for that number (though considering the fact that most people live in more-densely populated cities with high-rise apartments, perhaps this is an overestimation).
This additional landmass would depend on how much these people consumed… A point I’ll return to later… but suffice to say that five or six Texas’s does not seem to be a terribly large area regardless.
He makes the good point that people often mistake correlation for causation: did the mother who produces fewer kids attain prosperity, or was prosperity the key driver for her decision to have fewer kids. In fact, both factors tend to have some effect on the other in a kind of a feedback loop that results in a spiral of child births below the replacement rate and better standards overall- a point that both the video AND people who blame population growth seems to forget; although the majority of the developed world does in fact show that development leads to lower birthrates, the reverse was also seen in China’s push to reduce birthrates with its One Child Policy.
Personally, I tend to think that the problem is not overpopulation, but over-consumption. Although linked to rising standards of living, consumption on its own is ONLY one factor that measures better standards; education, health and happiness are factors that do not depend very much on consumption. This problem can be seen with recent studies that have shown that the to 1% of the world own 48% of the world’s wealth (which can be seen as the “control” over, if not immediate usage of, 48% of the world’s resources). Now, before you go running around chanting ” down with the 1%”, it should be noted that the average person in a developed country does fall into this category (we’re talking about the richest 1% in the word, and not just the USA btw)… If you’re reading this in an air-conditioned apartment, with three square meals a day and drive a car, that means you.
A better comparison would be the 0.000001% of people who skew the measure so much: the 85 richest people on the planet have the same wealth as the poorest 50% (3.5 billion people). Or, these 85 people or about 0.000001% of the world own 1% of its resources ( yes, the poorer half, or 50%, owns about 1%).
And guess who consumes the most, who would be happiest not having to compete with or share the Earth’s resources with another 6.999 billion people ?…. Of course, wealth is a theoretical measure, energy usage is actually much more evenly distributed, as with other modes of consumption… So perhaps we can’t blame em for everything… just yet. Instead, perhaps we should try to use less ourselves… And if the under-0.01% insist on over-consuming AND culling the rest of us, you know what to do. For the rich to blame the world’s problems on the poor… Isn’t that hilarious, when the rich are best-positioned to help the world, even by consuming less themselves?
Statistics is a tricky thing, but I’ve tried not to bias my stats too much….But, if you don’t believe me when I say consumption is the real problem, why not check out this study by Yale?
They show that sustaining the lifestyle of the average American takes 9.5 hectares, while Australians and Canadians require 7.8 and 7.1 hectares respectively; Britons, 5.3 hectares; Germans, 4.2; and the Japanese, 4.9. The world average is 2.7 hectares. China is still below that figure at 2.1, while India and most of Africa (where the majority of future world population growth will take place) are at or below 1.0.
By almost any measure, a small proportion of the world’s people take the majority of the world’s resources and produce the majority of its pollution.
The world’s richest half-billion people are responsible for 50 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Take carbon dioxide emissions — a measure of our impact on climate but also a surrogate for fossil fuel consumption. Stephen Pacala, director of the Princeton Environment Institute, calculates that the world’s richest half-billion people — that’s about 7 percent of the global population — are responsible for 50 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile the poorest 50 percent are responsible for just 7 percent of emissions.
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In 1970 an extremely thorough study of population growth world-wide was published, “Why Growth Rates Differ” (Author – Edward Denison). It demonstrated that population growth is directly connected to urbanization. As populations urbanize growth rates fall, period. The global population problem is already solving itself as we urbanize. The problem we now actually have to be concerned about is how an economy in which there is negative population growth will function. This is already a problem for older urbanized economies like the countries of Europe.
I don’t get why we need to have a constantly growing population. Our nature is to overexploit until there is a collapse. If we used our brains rather than our instincts we could create a nice world.
Funny– you say the life-style of the average American uses 9.5 hectares.. That’s 95000 square meters or approximately one million square feet…. I don’t live in one million square feet, and don’t know anyone else who does. I agree with Mr. Michaels, but frankly the author of this doesn’t know what he’s talking about. How about citing the study from Yale.. Anyone can say that anything is anything from anywhere.
I now see the article.. I’m guessing it’s referring to the near one million square feet of product for consumption throughout an average American’s entire lifetime. Sorry!
No offense to the video maker, but good luck sustaining those 2.1 kids. Most kids are stuck with shit lives living in terrible conditions if you look at the globe in general. Sure that might be tipped on the scale due to a few certain countries…But as the need for work in any area but healthcare decreases over time ( lets face it it’s just not a fitting career for everyone or most people for that matter ) I would love too see how those kids you spawned to replace you will be able to survive with anything more than the bare bones of keeping alive and dry.