Though climate change is a crisis, the population threat is even worse

[Ghost Dog]

... Demand for food is set to double by 2050 as a result of increasing population and consumption per capita – especially as more people move to an increasingly meat-based diet. So-called “rational optimists” are quick to claim that this demand will be easily met without significant further appropriation of land for agricultural use thanks to the ongoing “miracle” of the green revolution.

This ignores the fact that soil degradation and erosion are increasing rapidly in many parts of the world; that many of the world’s crops are increasingly at risk from novel (primarily) fungal pathogens; and that climate and crop models showing the number of extreme weather events associated with predicted future climate change are projected to have potentially devastating effects on crops in significant parts of the world.

Indeed, there are ample reasons to be concerned that we may be heading towards unprecedented food crises over the coming decades, with consequent extremely deleterious risks to the health of hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of people. Furthermore, in many parts of the world where population is increasing rapidly, there is a rise in the number of people living in close quarters with pigs and poultry (not to mention the increasing consumption of “bush meat”). And as a consequence we are greatly increasing the risk of a novel pathogen crossing the species barrier and creating a truly terrifying global pandemic.

Remarkably, collectively, we seem to want to deny all of this: that we are the drivers of the main problems facing us this century; and that, as we continue to grow, these problems are set to get worse. Climate change, extreme weather events, pollution, ecosystem degradation – the fundamental alteration of every component of the complex system we rely upon for our survival – are due to the activities of the rising human population...

/... http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/04/climate-change-population-crisis-paris-summit

[pscot]

1. Two sides of the same coin, really

[dumbcat]

2. The climate change crisis will solve the population problem

It's Nature's feedback loop. Talk or action about population control is verboten. But the problem is self-correcting, as it is and has been for over-populations throughout history.

[LouisvilleDem]

3. How many years have to go by without the world ending...

...before Malthusians will admit that their theory of population growth is flawed?

This is a serious question. Four and a half decades have passed since Paul Ehrlich first told us we only had a few years before catastrophe would hit. Just how long do you wait before admitting you were wrong? What empirical evidence would make you take a step back and reconsider your stance? Is this a science, or a religion?

[whitefordmd]

4. The problem would be fixed if

Malthusians did the right thing and decreased the population one at a time.

[NickB79]

6. Until society does come crashing down, of course.

It's like a guy playing Russian Roulette. Every time he spins the chamber, pulls the trigger and DOESN'T blow his brains out, he asks "how many times do I have to pull the trigger before anyone admits your theory of death by gunshot is flawed?"

And then BOOM.

Those who question Malthusians have to be right every time, for centuries and centuries to come. Malthusians only have to be right once to validate their hypothesis.

[LouisvilleDem]

7. That argument can be made for any apocalyptic theory

Let's say I describe a theory that claims the planet is going to be invaded by pink unicorns that will kill billions of people within the next year. A year passes and no invasion occurs. When you tell me that I was wrong, I say hey, "those that question my theory have to be right every time, for centuries and centuries to come. But I only have to be right once to validate my hypothesis."

Would you accept my response as valid and embrace my pink unicorns of destruction theory? I think not.

The point is that claims about WHEN an event will occur matter. You don't get to say 'my timing may have been a little off, but I'm still right'. The bottom line is that if you say the world is going to start having food scarcity problems within ten years, and that hundreds of millions of people will die as a result, and 40 years later neither of those things have happened, YOU WERE WRONG.

[GliderGuider]

8. Normalcy bias

The normalcy bias is a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster and its possible effects. This may result in situations where people fail to adequately prepare and, on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations.

The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred, it never will occur. It can result in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.

Normalcy bias results in cognitive dissonance as more contradictory evidence is presented:

In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who ... is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.

Cognitive dissonance in turn prompts motivated reasoning to reduce the resulting psychological distress:

The processes of motivated reasoning are a type of inferred justification strategy which is used to mitigate cognitive dissonance. When people form and cling to false beliefs despite overwhelming evidence, the phenomenon is labeled "motivated reasoning". In other words, "rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe." This is "a form of implicit emotion regulation in which the brain converges on judgments that minimize negative and maximize positive affect states associated with threat to or attainment of motives."

Your thinking appears to embody this entire suite of dysfunctions. It's too bad that you are unable to question the fundamental assumptions on which your apparent logic is based. The fact that you had to reach for pink unicorns to try and discredit what is little more than a well-accepted ecological predator/prey/overshoot/undershoot argument makes the emotional bias of your thinking quite clear.

[LouisvilleDem]

19. Normalcy Bias is only evident in hindsight

Normalcy Bias can only occur when you are genuinely facing a disaster. Despite the fact that a Malthusian disaster has been predicted to be imminent for over 40 years now, it has not yet occurred and we therefore cannot say for certain that a person who does not agree with Malthusian theory suffers from Normalcy Bias.

The fact that you associate Normalcy Bias to my views therefore means that your entire post is based upon the assumption, without any justification whatsoever, that a Malthusian disaster is in fact imminent. I am asserting that my view is correct because of the large number of times Malthusian predictions have failed to materialize. In contrast, you are asserting that your view is correct because...you are correct. Assuming the truth of the very thing that is being debated is called 'begging the question', which is a form of Circular Reasoning.

Furthermore, one of the qualities of a scientific theory is that of Falsifiability. To claim that there is no set of observations that would invalidate Malthusian theory is to say that Malthusian theory is not a scientific theory, but pseudoscience. As the Wikipedia entry on Falsifiability describes:

Popper stresses the problem of demarcation—distinguishing the scientific from the unscientific—and makes falsifiability the demarcation criterion, such that what is unfalsifiable is classified as unscientific, and the practice of declaring an unfalsifiable theory to be scientifically true is pseudoscience.

Ultimately the belief that a Malthusian disaster will occur at some point in the near future is a form of Apocalypticism. Apocalypticism is the religious belief that there will be an apocalypse, a term which originally referred to a revelation of God's will, but now usually refers to the belief that the world will come to an end very soon, even within one's own lifetime. This belief is usually accompanied by the idea that civilization will soon come to a tumultuous end due to some sort of catastrophic global event.

Apocalypticism is often closely tied to Narcissism. Often described as Dystopian Narcissism, it is the conviction that "our anxieties are uniquely awful; that the crises of our age will be the ones that finally do civilization in; that we are privileged to witness the beginning of the end". For the Narcissist, it is a short mental step from "my end is imminent" to "the end of everything is imminent." They flatter themselves with the idea of a world that is incapable of lasting without them in it—a world that, having ceased to exist, cannot forget them, discard them, or pave over their graves. Even if the earth no longer sits at the center of creation, they persuade themselves that their life span sat at the center of time, that their age and no other was history's fulcrum.

[GliderGuider]

21. Ain't nuttin' wrong with your deflector shields, though.

Is there?

[LouisvilleDem]

24. Interesting comment

...from the guy who initiated the shift away from talking about Malthusian theory and its failed predictions to speculation about people's mental states and psychological dysfunctions.

[GliderGuider]

9. Malthusians...

[cprise]

14. That is Perfect. Cornucopians = Pod People!

LOL!

It also fits with the classic SNL sketch.

[cprise]

12. Biggest factor in GHG output was the Western population explosion

Look at how closely emissions correlate to the postwar 'Green Revolution', which has only postponed an agricultural crisis (and not by that much...)

In the third world, they are "developing" differently... getting the effects (more population) of increased agricultural output before their other industries mechanize and expand.

And even looking at agriculture itself, it has stressed the land to the point where it is only a take-and-take process -- an extractive industry. Intensive tilling alone is causing immense carbon emissions, and those emissions are now biting into agricultural productivity; prices are rising and blight is spreading.

[cprise]

15. Half of the animal populations on land & sea have disappeared

in the last 45 years. That is another clear sign that we are about to run into a wall.

This concept of man being totally separate from nature is an article of faith on which consumerism is based.

[ffr]

16. +1

IMO, the first question becomes what is the carrying capacity of Earth to handle humans? It's hard to say. Actually, only time will tell, I suppose. People who've looked into it say between 2 - 3 billion humans, without population growth.

The more pressing question becomes, what becomes of the human mental condition in 2050 watching 2/3rd of everyone they know to die off in less than a lifetime, simply to stave off ecological catastrophe. And if we cannot do that and it's left up to nature to bottleneck more humans out of the way, in order to restore a natural balance, those who remain will probably be very different than 'most of us' today.

[GliderGuider]

17. Carrying capacity depends on how strict your definition of "sustainable" is.

Using my quite strict definition, that requires indefinite survival of the species while not damaging the biosphere, I estimate the long-term human carrying capacity at under 50 million - provided they are hunter-foragers. Perhaps as low as 10 million.

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Sustainability.html

[NickB79]

22. You're talking to a brick wall, I'm afraid

LouisvilleDem has made it clear here on DU that he is at best a "light" AWG denier, in his belief that any significant effects of climate change won't be felt for a very long time, and when they are they'll either be manageable or even beneficial (where have we heard that before?).

After all, this is someone who thinks the near-collapse of the Arctic ice cap doesn't rank as a significant, globally altering event

[Binkie The Clown]

5. A process that can't possibly continue, won't.

We are already beyond the carrying capacity of this planet, and the inevitable consequence will be as drastic reduction in population.

However, that does not mean millions of people will drop dead. It simply means that the death rate will begin to outpace the birth rate. Think of it this way. If the birth rate dropped to zero the entire human race would be extinct in 100 years from now. And most of those people will have died natural deaths of old age related causes. If the birth rate simply declines by a modest amount, the population will begin to drop, without any dramatic "die-off". If infants can't be fed, infant mortality will increase, and the population will drop. If the elderly can't be fed adequately then they will die somewhat earlier, increasing the death rate and the population will drop.

It will not, as some imagine, be the result of some single, sudden cataclysm that cuts the population in half, but rather by a "slow" process of attrition as those who die of natural causes will not be replaced quite fast enough to keep the population at its peak.

That is, of course, unless the death of the oceans prevents the replenishment of oxygen and the whole planet suffocates to death.

[GliderGuider]

10. Population growth is indeed the bigger culprit.

Last edited Mon Dec 7, 2015, 10:48 AM - Edit history (3)

Since 1965:

The world's per capita CO2 emissions have increased by 41%.
The world's per capita energy use has increased by 60%.

The world's population increased by 117%.

Population has been growing twice as fast as personal energy consumption, and three times faster than per capita CO2 emissions.

[cprise]

13. Yes, I mentioned in #12 also

that the third world experienced population booms ahead of non-agricultural development. People who deny the population factor ignore how postwar Western technology was used around the world, causing populations to grow. Now those populations want full-blown consumerism...

[LouisvilleDem]

20. The reason this is possible is improvements in energy efficiency

It takes less energy to produce things than it used to:

[GliderGuider]

23. GDP is a shit-poor measure of production, given how its components keep being jiggered.

By your chart, the world's energy efficiency is at the same level it was in the late 1800s. Are you sure the chart supports your speculation?

[LouisvilleDem]

25. Yes it does

The period in question is derived from your chart which runs from 1965-2014. During that time period energy efficiency has consistently improved. As for the energy efficiency of the late 1800's, you are welcome to return to that standard of living if you want to...

[ffr]

11. I don't see how the U.N. can forecast 9.2 - 9.4b humans in 2050

...when fresh water supplies will be depleted by 2045. Life depends on fresh clean reliable water. Without it, life parishes and humans cannot go more than a few days without it. How are over nine billion humans going to survive then? I don't see it. Something's got to give.

Seems like there's a trifecta coming fast down the pike and right at us.

[Ghost Dog]

18. "Something's got to give..."

Right, ffr...

Stay tuned for more from our sponsers.

[AuntPatsy]

26. Nature shows us everyday the only way life can continue, the majority of humans cannot

seem to comprehend how of little importance we truly are here on this planet, what a waste so many make of thier time on earth.....

[4139]

27. They didn't mention groundwater depletion.... In wet years California get 40% of it water from... Bu

groundwater; 60%+ during drought ... Big part of Cali will run out of water, likewise many other part of the world
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4626

[rainy]

28. Capitalism turns abundance into scarcity

so that we don't have enough recourses. If we change the economic method we may not have a population problem.

[GliderGuider]

29. How does overpopulation manifest itself in the non-human world?

Last edited Wed Dec 9, 2015, 09:47 AM - Edit history (1)

Habitat loss
Extinctions
Soil fertility loss
Fresh water loss
Loss of phytoplankton
The death of most ocean species
Appropriation of much of the planet's net primary productivity

It's not just about human economics and politics. It's about the utilitarian view that the world is just a bag of resources for human consumption.

By my estimate, humans are currently overpopulated by between 100x and 1000x. From that point of view it doesn't matter what political or economic system we follow.