I am not sure what arguments she is trying to make. Overpopulation isn’t a problem because birth rates have fallen? Okay, but in the countries with declining birth rates, people are typically wealthier and the carbon emissions per capita are dramatically higher. In less wealthy countries, the birth rate is higher but that’s okay because they barely use any resources? I thought that moving people out of poverty is a good thing. Since economic activity is tied to environmental disruption, at least currently, as people in these less wealthy countries increase their standard of living, this argument makes less sense. We need more people in their working age years to keep the economy moving forward? That is a problem of a population which has a rate of growth that is too low. It has nothing to do with population size. Also, how does she define “moving the economy forward”? She neglects to mention the absolute environmental destruction required to increase food production. People think the carbon cycle is a problem? Look at the nitrogen cycle. There is some population that is reasonable given a certain standard of living that falls within the constraints of what natural systems can provide. The rate at which you get there, on the decline, creates problems in how the society functions. That is the concern. The problem of overpopulation has not been “debunked”.
Exactly, spot on. She presents questions and then answers them with a fact that might not have any correlation with the problem. The SYSTEM we have for having a decent life (shelter, food, energy) at the moment is not sustainable. And also who’s quality of life improves with an increase of population? When now in the US for the first time parents had it better that their future generations. This video was simple-minded, the topic is a complex one where there might not be a one-fit-all answer.
I'm not sure this video answered the question that set out to answer in the beginning. The question: Is population causing enviromental problems? One answer prompted: We are able to feed the people. I have absolutely no idea how "We are able to feed the people" is an answer to the question "Is population causing environmental problems?"
Good point. Being able to feed more people means we will have a even higher population, means the wealthiest people are getting even richer, while our fauna and flora is dying. I think from the perspective of an endangered species, overpopulation is not a myth.
@@mafifa More people means more manmade constructions (homes etc) on the expense of nature. By covering more grounds and soils with constructions we get trouble with levelling energies (heat) etc beneath those (billions and more billions) constructions. Then we get rising temperatures and other extremes in a "shrinking" world with less remaining open spaces to level heat, moisture, wind... Cool, dry ground just below the constructions won't help anybody in hot or climate changing open spaces which we use daily.
Agreed - the video talked around the crux of the issue with very selective arguments and cherry picked facts - yes developing countries have a lower carbon footprint today and she states you could add billions more people with minimal carbon impact - that implies she's comfortable with people living in poverty and assuming they dont aspire to a life style the west takes for granted which is quite a blinkered and border line arrogant view point - because when developing nations become developed their carbon footprint will sky rocket. while the problems of population decline are starting to bite across many developed nations - its also a nonsense to suggest the only issue with more people on the planet is feeding everyone.
The real problem is that while you are all right - it's a system for billionaires, we need a critical mass of people sick of this to change it, and education is key (education in Marxist theory) - , there is an ideological veil over society that does net let Big Thinkers be that explicit: let us look at class antagonism, is that something that should exist?! People getting more money out of money without working for it just because they have (inherited) it? They can only do that on the back of others who have to work for that (material!) wealth but don't have the fruit of their own labour. Now in a system that works like this - some work hard but get nothing, others hardly work and get a lot (A LOT) - it is understandable that we become greedy (both those that work a lot and want to be rewarded and those that hardly work and want to maintain that). And then we say: "oh that's human nature, we are naturally greedy!". No, let's not have an economic system, capitalism, whose driving value is greed because it creates inequality and thus recreates classes, people who are high and low value, just because of how much currency they own. In the video, she showed well that the world can be fed and that we need to tackle environmental questions but she should have said clearly that the contradictions of the capitalist system do not allow us to address demographic and environmental issues adequately. That she doesn't say this although it's obvious and that this only shows up in the comments of videos is the ideological veil I'm speaking of.
The video argues that overpopulation is not a critical global issue, citing slowed population growth and agricultural advancements. However, this view overlooks the ongoing environmental pressures from a growing population, such as resource depletion and ecological degradation. It also fails to consider the cumulative local impacts of high population growth in low-income countries, which can exacerbate poverty and environmental damage. While concerns about aging populations in wealthier countries are valid, they do not negate the significant challenges posed by overpopulation.
It's also worth noting that the much of the damage our species is doing purely on the basis of habitat loss on other species as a result of our demand for resources is permanent. Anyone who tries to argue that overpopulation isn't a problem must focus on this or immediately their argument falls due to a complete lack of of compassion for others
But that has nothing to do with the population. We have more resources availability than we ever have as a planet. Technology advancements are exponentially faster than population growth. There's so much food that obesity is a major health crisis, yet people still starve. There's so much land that the wealthy have multiple homes, and entire skyscrapers are empty, yet people are still homeless. People not getting enough access to those resources is because of greed of the powerful, plain and simple.
What qualifies as quality of life? Would hot running water qualify? Would flush toilets qualify? Would heating and air conditioning qualify? Would ready-made meals qualify? Would access to all entertainment and education ever conceived qualify? All the people you think have a low quality of life have those things and much more. Most people in this country just a few decades ago didn't have those things. They got their water from hand pumps they bucketed into the house. Their toilet was outhouses. Their air conditioning was a shade tree. Their furnace was several layers of clothes. Their entertainment was humming songs and playing with rocks and sticks. They lived ignorant and died ignorant. So what qualifies as quality of life, in your view?
@@michelestidhamwhitmore8313 quality of life for an average human has improved over time. You're living in more comfort than 'kings' 400 years ago. Lately it seems like we're evening out the quality between people globally which feels like your quality of life is becoming worse... But overall it's still better.
@@user-if7vt2ni2z The way I see it there are 3 solutions: 1. we keep the population the same but everyone lives like an indian. 2. we cut the population in half but everyone left gets to live like an american. or 3. americans get to live like americans and everyone else can fight over the scraps.
Quite astonished by how poor this is. Ritchie is usually balanced and well-informed. As are Big Think videos. This is anything but. So many problems with her argument: 1. What about biodiversity loss? 2. What about deforestation? 3. What about plastic? 4. What about overfishing? 5. What about the fact millions are still starving? 6. What about the fact global population is still rising? Of course overpopulation is not the single root cause of all problems. But it is indeed a factor in many of the environmental and social problems we face. 6 out of 9 planetary boundaries have been crossed. The fact there are 8.2 billion people on the planet, twice as many as there were a mere 50 years ago, is clearly correlated! This videos shines a light on the limits of thinking through data and not through systems.
@@graemetunbridge1738exactly, if we shall "end with poverty", that means raising the standard of living for billions on a consume based capitalistic society which equals to an environmental point of no return disaster
Other comments have already pointed out a number of problems with this argument, but one I haven't seen is that most of the agricultural practices being used to reach such a high food output are very unsustainable and constantly depleting the soil. The idea that we can sustain billions more people is just ridiculous when many around the world are already starving and even in the US (supposed richest country in the world) people can barely afford groceries. There's a reason data scientist don't make these kinds of decisions, there's a hell of a lot more to consider than numbers and factors on a spread sheet.
This argument itself has been debunked, the reason for such starvation is a distribution issue, we also have technological fixes for agriculture such as vertical farming.
Wealth distribution is not exactly a problem that is dependent on population; it has existed for the entirety of human history. It is up to us to figure out how to make sure our abundant resources are abundant for everyone.
The UN predicts that in the next 50 years or so, the population will increase by another 2 Billion. Not sure I buy into her argument. It may not have the impact on climate change, but we already have a problem with the quality of life for much of the current population. Adding 2 Billion isn't going to help.
I have been working with population groups for 20 some years now. I don't know anyone that is thinking forced sterilization or putting sterilants in water is a good thing. That just seems like fear mongering the Big Thinks part. Education and a fair system on living has been our approach. Where you do not need to have 5 kids to have someone take care of you in your old age. The population has more than doubled in my life time and to say that we can just keep growing is straight up irresponsible.
An absolute masterclass in how to deceive with statistics. Bravo! The declining population growth argument is misleading because it forgets to mention that you are applying this growth rate to a base population that's 3x larger than it was in 1950. Global population grew by 44M from 1950-51 vs. a gain of 74M from 2023-24, a whopping 68% increase in people added annually versus 1950. For the CO2 emissions per capita argument: 1) no credible scientist would support the assumption that India and Africa could "add billions" with zero corresponding impact to their CO2 per capita rates 2) multiplying a small number BY BILLIONS still adds up to billions on a planet that should be decreasing its CO2 emissions, not increasing them.
As I tell my students--statistics can't lie to those who understand them, only to those who are ignorant of statistical analysis. Take a math class, folks!
It's easier to imagine the end of the world then the end of capitalism. They really demoized depopulation in this video. The real key to depopulation is educating women, giving them contraception and the right to choice and good health care
You need to read "what to expect when no one is expecting". What you aren't getting is that birth-rate results in GENERATIONAL growth/degrowth patterns. So what happens is, less children being born. So population keeps growing, and growing... until the old people start dying. Then suddenly population falls off a cliff...and because children are born slower than old people die, the population just keeps falling and falling for decades. Economic growth goes negative, and STAYS negative until the population falls back parity. This means complete economic collapse for the 1st world, pretty much worldwide. The middle east and Africa will look rosy but Asia, Europe, and America will be ghost towns.
Nope. Our food production systems are unsustainable. The degradation of the environment we are wreaking as a species is unsustainable. Our manipulation of global fauna now sees a concentration of biomass into just a few food species plus ourselves, this is catastrophic for biodiversity on which we rely in more ways than we even know!
The problem isn't the sheer number of humans, it's the damage to the environment exacted by each individual human. If we were 7 billion hunter gatherers the damage would be far less harmful. The problems arise due to the desire of billions to possess and consume at the level of the 1%. Multiple cars, multiple homes, massive carbon footprints and massive waste. If there were only a million humans the ecosystem could probably deal with it. The open question is which will happen first, reducing human materiel ambition or reducing human population?
The earth can’t sustain 7 billion hunter gatherers. The population per area that can be sustained in those societies is much lower. It’s about moving forward to new, more efficient systems, not going back to hunting and gathering.
@@AhmdHidayatIn a way, what you (and she) are saying that as long as a population is poor, then we can handle feeding us. But climate change makes it difficult to grow more food and makes living more difficult, particularly for poor people. Inflation, partially because of crop failures, makes it even more challenging for those people to live. This also doesn’t take decreasing resources, like potable water, into account.
I think it would be better to think of the human population as bacteria rather than cancer. No cancer is good, but a balanced amount of bacteria is, although too much bacteria is bad for our health.
Then all species are bacteria, because we are all part of the same ecosystem and evolved from the same source. We are just a highly successful bacteria!
The good environment and food don't improve the population in the developed world... Who would say that? That's was tricky true for the science. In other hand no food couldn't stop the África growth...but they growth not pressuring the food price. The life expectancy is low as 35 years. The environment eco problem is an industrial problem but since 80's the model has improved with recycling, renewable energy and ethanol for cars. We need think more to make verdicts.
Humans are the white blood cells of the organism of Earth. Right now there are too many of us and we are hurting the planet which is akin to an autoimmune disease where your immune system attacks you.
After living on the front range near Denver Colorado for 43 years, I've seen an alarming number of changes due to population increase. Traffic jams. Toll roads. Reservations required to go to Rocky Mountain National Park, Mount Blue Sky, Brainard Lake and many other venues. None of this is good.
@@v1kt0u5 The problem with the whole world is that we are a planet with an unsustainably high population density. We are responsible for the extinction of uncountable numbers of animal species because of our inability to control our over-breeding. The entire planet is at risk.
Thats weird because I know multiple people who are actual ecologists who deal with fixing population collapse for various species and they all say that humans are on course to either see our population drop like a rock when climate change makes a large portion of our usable farmland worthless or full extinction if our activities and pollution take out a few more keystone species or ecosystems. We don't have to worry about overpopulation because there won't be many of us left who live somewhere where food can still be grown or gathered. This is why you don't hire a data scientist to explain the complicated relationships between real world ecosystems and how human civilization will likely be affected by them. The real world doesn't work or organize itself into neat little categories where exact numbers rule the day and predict outcomes. The only people who don't mind overpopulation is the super rich, more slave labor to make sure when the collapse does come only those rich people will have the resources to survive.
@@LOGOS_Officialwho has the most to gain by increasing population? Multibillion dollar companies do! They depend on many poor people. The ones who gain from population decrease are the environment and future generations. If you learn more about the environment and how everything we do effects it you would not be able to deny this simple truth.
Compared to ten thousand years ago, humans have lowered wild mammal biomass to be only 1/5 what it was. 98% of all mammal biomass is now humans and livestock, and human and livestock biomass is 11 times what all mammal biomass was 10,00 years ago. Someone please tell me how this could possibly be workable for the longterm health of our living systems.
Totally agreed . . and we have stolen too much land from the animals etc., not allowing places where nature can thrive untouched by stupid human scientific manipulation. . .
She didn't mention energy, she didn't mention pollution, she didn't mention ecological collapse due to over farming, over fishing, over encroachment. This is easily the worst "Big Think" I've watched.
@@LukasBradley Pollution and ecological collapse are not due to overpopulation. Overpopulation is such a pervasive myth that people are not willing to even consider the possibility that it may not be the root cause of all the things they have been led to believe.
Statisticians often ignore or are ignorant of scientific facts. This subject is so complex that a base line of facts needs to be accepted first before any ideas formulated can move on and make real progress. Study both the Milankovitch Cycles in detail along with their most recent super computer modelings alongside accepting that we are not yet at the natural cycle bottom that is glacial minimum. Temperatures will rise as we approach GM and are unstoppable. Further more understand that CO2 levels are not the most urgent problem with the environment in so far as sustaining 8-10 billion people. Our loss of natural habitats, general bio-diversity and massive decline in numbers and species of insects is a huge problem looking forward in the case of food production. The earth will continue to warm even if we had zero CO2 emissions tomorrow. We must urgently stop the destruction of natural habitats, counter chemical and waste pollution, care for the oceans that regenerate 60-70% of our oxygen and are a huge food source. As the climate warms, populations need to adapt and some move geographically over the next 100-200 years, if mankind is capable of that vision and planning. Mother earth will recover as she has done over billions of years but mankind has a choice if it wants to survive here or not. The myopic approach of just looking at rising CO2 and temperature increases without firstly addressing the above points will spell the biggest problem for mankind's future and that of most other animal species.
Speak for yourself. We need to save the environment only because we don't want to set our own house on fire. But we don't care about the life of individual trees or critters.
before humans came, the world was as lawless as you can possibly imagine. Fringe, anthropomorphic people like you are used by the conservatives to ridicule and discredit ecology as a whole. But keep doing you.
It's not just food. It's plastic. Paper. Clothing. Lithium batteries. How much raw resources are consumed by the average person from an industrialized country? Also, look at tourism. If there's long lines to travel up Mt. Everest, there's probably too many people.
Pkastic our oil reserves have never before been as high as they are today so there is no risk of us running out of plastic any time soon, paper yes trees can grow, yes plants can also grow, lithium, we have barely even looked for it, because it was so easily found in old salt basins. Its also that those things are not exactly consumed, they are used once and then return back to more earth, they dont cease to exist, most of them end up in landfills, if we do run out of fresh resources those landfills will become worth quiet a bit of money. If we look at people wanting to climb mount everest that only tells us that people have grown a lot richer and they want to feel like they have accomplished something nothing else really. But a plus side of this is that people who live in that area have become wastly much better off as they can charge ludicrous amounts of money to help them up the mountain.
Tourism is one of the most pathetic forms of activity. I used to love the idea of traveling but looking at what people do, the donkeys and horses that are used up in the North Easten India because these tourists couldnt carry their own two nuts, the animals suffering and the crowded invasive behaviors destroying the local ecosystems. Hence, I dont travel because I am just invasive somewhere else.
She didn’t debunk overpopulation. She’s just saying it’s not the only problem. Her arguments about food make no sense. Those methods of producing food on massive scales are not good for the environment. Although they seemed to feed the population, the harms happen over a long term.
Exactly. And if we may reach a point where the population stops growing is because there was an alarm and countries like China took very strong actions. I am now saying that aging population cannot be a problem to. But if pollution can be a worse problem than food production. And CO2 is just one small type of environmental damage
No. She is trying to educate people to the fact that the problems that most people attribute to overpopulation are in fact not fundamentally due to overpopulation.
The fact that over 600 people in the space of one day have debunked this ridiculous twaddle is encouraging. Let us hope that another data scientist has the opportunity to give a counter argument that overpopulation is decimating the environment, climate and other species (who have as much 'right' as humans to occupy the space).
We have massively increased the amount of food we have produced and gotten there through deforestation. Additionally we have lost a lot of farm land for suburban housing sprawl.
@@shubhthepro well bruhh! Your response has nothing to do with what I said. I didn't mention urban housing and providing a percentage has nothing to do with farmland being converted to suburban housing. Less is less.
Very poor arguments. Estimates are that we need five times as many resources as we have for the level of consumption that's going on. In other words five earths are needed to maintain the current population and she saying let's have more. I've never heard the barbaric arguments that she says people are making for how to reduce population and I wouldn't agree with the ones she provided. But saying nobody's come up with a good solution for population problems is not a valid argument that there's not a population problem.
Her arguments shy around the real problem here. There are too many people, period. Not too many poor people, or rich, or in this country or that. Just 'too many people'. We are an overcrowded fish tank, where the filter systems are overwhelmed and the tank is slowly dying. We either need less population overall, or new miraculous technology to 'filter the tank'. We could get that, and we may be so far gone that it's the only way out for us, frankly. We innovated our way out with food supply, now we need to do it with environmental maintenance behavior and technology.
I come from Malawi. The country is in a crisis in every way. One crisis is deforestation because of wood fires for cooking like they've done for thousands of years. And then the resulting erosion and floods. All a direct result of there being way way too many people.
It's not as simple as people seem to want to make it. Yes, population growth is slowing. Yes, food production yields have skyrocketed over the past several decades. But these yields are not sustainable - due to overuse of fertilizer, industrial monoculture farming techniques, and climate change, we will see massive food shortages. In that respect, it's good that pop. growth has slowed, but there will still be massive deprivation.
Yes . . .Humans have been able to produce much much more crap unnatural, poisoned, unhealthy foods in order to feed a sick (over)-population . . Great solution!!!
Interestingly this modern prediction has always been false. The reason is that with larger population comes more collective problem solving ability. People simply figured to solutions faster than problems could cause devastation. It could go differently this time, but yields are so massive now the most I would expect are price shocks.
We aren't making enough cheap laborers for the bourgeoisie. 😅 How could I even think about having kids when I can barely afford to survive... why would I drag another life into this miserable existence?
@@micahgmirandathat depends on how you measure quality of life. Because I don’t eat many foods anymore because they’re toxic. And even healthier foods don’t taste the same & are proven to have less nutritional value due to factory farming. Our water supply is full of toxins too. So yeah, maybe some things have improved for our comfort & safety but other things that we need to sustain a healthy lifestyle have gotten worse.
@@coolbreeze3 What does any of that have to do with overpopulation? Factory farming is not a function of overpopulation, that has to do with regulation of the industry. I would argue that as the population grows it allows for niche industries that grow organic produce to be more viable. Toxins in the water supply has nothing to do with overpopulation, again that has to do with manufacturing malpractice not overpopulation.
@@coolbreeze3 that doesn't make sense. If you'd research sustainability you'll see it's about using sustainable energy sources like wind and solar or using sustainable practices like crop rotation. The real problem here is that a lack of education is unsustainable.
Unfortunately, she has a rather narrow view that does not consider a deeper analysis of variables including wealth distribution, quality of life factors and economic inequalities. I’d rather pay attention ecologists who are in general very clear about the overpopulation problem. For starters we live in a finite ecosystem but believe and try to operate an infinite growth model in economics. Very disturbing.
Of course there can be too many people. Too much pollution. Not enough food. Let's add 8 billion people to Africa and see what happens to the chimps, gorillas, rhinos, and elephants. Let's let millions of bison and horses roam the steppes, great plains, and pampas and see how many people we can feed. Living on a planet where nobody has seen the wild spaces or animals in eons is not living.
it doesnt matter if the population is declining, but the rate at which the resources are declining and also species extinctions is surpassing the population decline so we wouldn't reach the stabilising rate probably the climate change will be irreversible before the population stabilisation
Just because you can crunch numbers and deny it doesn't make sense when urban sprawl is impacting wildlife habitat and isn't slowing down in any way whatsoever.
Exactly. It just says that the population isn’t growing as fast as the original addicted, but it doesn’t at all address still the problems of overpopulation that genuinely would be fixed if those people weren’t there. Mainly also the fact that we produced so much food, but it’s at the expense of the environment and so much of that said food is wasted, and we predict your climate change that we won’t be able to produce it in the same way for much longer if things keep going the way they are.
@@danielwhyatt3278 The video commentary is actually worse... She's basically claiming that natural remedies are already addressing the issue, and suggesting that means we don't have to worry about it. The thing is we all KNOW that nature will address the issue, but those remedies, such as starvation, and sterilization, are EXACTLY what we should want to avoid. But yes, as you say, where we've increased production, it's largely unsustainable, most especially where meat products are concerned. Anyway, the whole point in pointing out the population issue, has always been more about improving quality of life, not about what kind of numbers we're capable of sustaining in theory, but what kind of numbers we can sustain in comfort... And, thing is, on that metric we've already been grossly overpopulated for some time now...
No. What she's saying is that "overpopulation" is not the reason for climate change, nor is the reason for hunger, or overpopulated cities, or i don't know what else. "Overpopulation" is not even a term that describes the current situation, as it refers to a World with too many people, which is not the case (what is "too many" supposed to mean?). Thus, this current "overpopulation" is not a problem per se, and it doesn't make sense to address it. What we need to address is problems such as climate change, hunger, etc., but those problems would also be there with smaller World populations, and are for sure not gonna be solved by addressing this "overpopulation", they need to be addressed in other ways. She's just pointing to that fact, claiming besides that those "overpopulation" policies typically point towards the weakest people in the World, which are also the least responsible for all those problems (a message that is also quite convenient for certain people, especially in power, by the way).
Human chauvinism is the problem. Overshoot is the problem. More humans living in unsustainable ways is the problem for all life that enables us to exist. The human ego is insultingly pompous to the very life event that allowed us to figure out how to use a thumb.
Eventhough food production has increased, Many study suggests that the nutritional value of the food is at the all time lowest. We are just eating to fill us and not to make us healthy !
Let's refute each of these points one by one: The world population growth rate has slowed down significantly and is expected to peak before the end of the century. This is because the average number of children that an average woman has globally has fallen. Refutation: While it's true that global fertility rates have fallen, the sheer number of people reaching reproductive age in densely populated regions still results in significant population growth. Moreover, the momentum of population growth due to high fertility rates in previous decades means that even with lower fertility rates, the population will continue to grow for some time. Additionally, population momentum in regions with high fertility rates can lead to continued growth and strain on resources. Technological advancements in agriculture have allowed us to produce more food than ever before, despite the fact that the global population has grown. Refutation: Although agricultural advancements have increased food production, they have also led to significant environmental degradation, including soil depletion, water scarcity, and loss of biodiversity. These advancements often rely heavily on fossil fuels, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides, which can have long-term negative impacts on the environment. Furthermore, food distribution remains unequal, and many regions still suffer from food insecurity and malnutrition. Even in countries where fertility rates are still high, the per capita CO2 emissions are very low. This means that adding more people in those countries would have almost no impact on global CO2 emissions. Refutation: While current per capita CO2 emissions might be low in high-fertility countries, as these countries develop economically, their emissions are likely to increase. Rapid population growth in these regions can lead to greater demand for energy, transportation, and industry, all of which contribute to higher CO2 emissions. Additionally, deforestation and land use changes driven by population pressures can significantly impact global carbon cycles. An aging population can cause problems for some countries because it means that there won't be a large enough group of people in the working age category to prop up the economy. Refutation: An aging population presents challenges, but it can also create opportunities for innovation and shifts in economic structures. Countries with aging populations can invest in automation, technology, and policies to support older workers and increase productivity. Additionally, immigration policies can help balance demographic shifts. The assumption that a larger population automatically ensures economic stability overlooks the complexities of sustainable development and resource management. The video argues that comparing humans to cancer is a dire prediction and a damaging message. Refutation: While the comparison of humans to cancer may be extreme, it highlights the urgent need for sustainable practices and responsible resource management. Ignoring the potential negative impacts of unchecked population growth can lead to complacency and a lack of action in addressing critical issues like environmental degradation, resource depletion, and climate change. The analogy, although harsh, serves as a wake-up call to rethink our approach to growth and development.
Yes! To say "Humans are a cancer" does not automatically mean WE want to kill other people called THEM . . .it is a recognition that each and everyone of us is responsible, is part of the problem, and needs to be part of the solution. It does not imply war and genocide!!!
Exactly. Food quality. Why are so many people so unhealthy? Also, she neglects to mention what has been done to the environment to increase food production so dramatically.
800 million people are starving, at this very moment . More people will just add more suffering and even bigger demands on the environment. Saying we need more people is just absurd.
The climate change argument of "The poors don't count in emissions, so more poors is fine" is highly suspect. The problem is that the world is developing, and everyone likes cars, AC, etc. The West has reduced emissions, but it has been more than offset by the developing world, especially China. In the mid 1970s, China could have been considered poor but now has emissions per capita of Europe and is the largest single emitter. Global emissions continue to climb year after year.
What you call developing world are the countries with the lowest fertility rate: China, S. Corea... So, fighting climate change with demography is not realistic. It should have been done like two centuries ago to work. And the reduction of emissions in the West may just be an illusion, as most of the production for the West is made in other countries. We can blame Chinese for getting richer, but they are still way below Americans regarding their consumption. So, can we ask them to stop getting richer, so that Westerners can keep getting richer? How could the accept? The only way forward, I'm afraid, is to reduce one's consumption to a sustainable level, especially in rich countries and among upper classes all over the world.
@@scivolanto China is now developed by most standards. I don't expect the developing countries, like India, to not do it, but if they use fossil fuels as the West did, then we will get a hot planet. We need sustainable emissions, but billions moving to increased emissions is not sustainable. China now emits more than the USA and Europe combined, so what the West does is not even determinant now. USA is the second largest emitter, but India will probably overtake it by the end of the century.
I'm not trying to dump on African countries... But they do not produce as much Co2 emissions because they are less industrialized. You can't argue that's it's fine to increase the population there by BILLIONS (yes, she said BILLIONS) without considering poverty, unemployment, war, terrorism, and illegal mass migration. I think we need to hear more arguments from this lady because I'm not sure she has explained herself very well.
With this bad reasoning skills it is possible to get a PhD? Listing some random dystopian measures and declining growth rates are no arguments against the damaging impacts on ecosystems of large scale farming. Just because the soil is still able to produce food today does not refute that we are potentially doing irreversible damage and depleting resources, which wouldn't have occurred in a more sparsely populated and less "advanced" society.
I grew up in the sixties and seventies, UK population estimated 50 million, UK population today (2024) estimated 70 + million and still growing. That's an extra 20 million people. Today there's a severe housing shortage, an NHS that's at breaking point , overcrowded prisons, shortage of school places for children not enough doctors or dentists to cope with the number of people, infrastructure break down etc etc It's obvious to me that the UK is vastly overpopulated.
If capitalism renders the poor worse off--then there are too many people. The have-nots way outnumber the greedy upper class. Pay attention to the starving thoussnds in the world who are suffering, and while the rich get richer. No one needs billions of dollars to live. Until there is a more equal distribution of wealth and equality--we have too many people.
@Thrasalt tax the wealthy, big time. No one needs millions or billions of dollars to live. Provide healthcare for all and affordable housing. Free education.
Where do you not stand in line? Where do you get immediate service, or how long do you have to wait to see a dr? The food is horrific because it has been mass grown void of nutrients and health benefits, our water is polluted because we treat our water with poison in order to provide enough "clean" water to the masses. We are depleting our resources faster than the Earth can regenerate. We are OVERPOPULATED. It will take decades for the planet to recover. If ever.
In the shadow of unprecedented wealth inequality, a climate crisis, 6th Mass Extinction, our life sustaining topsoil and coral reefs being wiped out and multiple genocides, the richest man in the world wants us to breed like rabbits 🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇 Doesn’t anybody else think that’s weird? Apparently not this channel 👋🫠
I dont understand the video at all. She kept giving stats but nowhere she pointed evidence to say its a myth. I mean her idea is to consume till the last drop of water and last piece of fruit and the last chicken and egg. Then she may start thinking okay there's not enough. The idea of overpopulation is its not there's not enough to go around. Its that we have to destroy more forests and ecosystems to cater to the population. The idea that its harder to educate a million than how hard it is to educate 100K. We are already seeing heatwaves and temperatures killing thousands and air becoming unbreathable. Ofcourse the planet will recover but not before we go extinct cos of our own doing.
She must not live in an overcrowded polluted city where human decency and society is breaking down. Just because you can fit 100 rats in a box doesn’t mean you should
Hannah Ritchie must live in a sparsely populated rural area. And she's just debunking Thomas Malthus's predictions about overpopulation. She failed to mention the psychological problems created by living in densely populated urban areas where the housing is predominately vertical. I hate living in high-rise apt buildings; I hate crowded streets & sidewalks; I hate the incessant noise & constant delays in overcrowded cities (NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, Shanghai, Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, Taipei, London, Paris, e.g., all places I've spent much time in). Too many rats in an overcrowded cage leads to violence.
I think instead of saying that overpopulation is not an issue, which is very hard to argue because of a lack of baseline (how many humans should be in earth?), it’s better to say that it is an unactionable issue. Decreasing the number of people is a contentious ethical issue. Pollution and environmental impact are a function of population, technology efficiency, and lifestyle, and because of the above, we can only work on the latter two. Consider population numbers a given, and work on the less ethically problematic issues such as making more efficient technologies that uses less resources, and promote lifestyles which need less technology.
Population is an issue of equality and distribution. That's to say blaming any single issue isn't relevant in the complexity of human society. Let alone the environment. The environment is dying due to greedy 1%s. Just saying
No man. That is such a human centric point of view. From a biodiversity and conservation point of view, the major damage has already been done 50+ years ago. The human population was already way too big then. The fact that we now have technology that can feed billions more people doesn't make a difference to the fact that there are already too many people on this planet. It is actually a moot point now what is going to happen to the human population, except in places like Africa and South America where the populations are still exploding. There are, for instance, huge areas of Africa where there are no more large birds of prey outside of protected areas. Majorily because their prey base has been eaten by humans and they get persecuted for e.g. killing lambs. The damage is globally already irreversible in terms of habitat and biodiversity loss, at least in human time frames. Just don't be disillusioned that the human population is or was never an issue.
It's not a myth. There are limits to natural resources, such as land to grow food, and all the items around you that have been mined from the ground. With more people, prices will rise as these items become more expensive to obtain, resulting in more conflict and an overall lower quality of life due to scarcity. Overpopulation was a real concern worldwide and is still an issue in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa's overpopulation problem will become the world's problem in another generation, as they are unable to take care of themselves. If the world had continued the 5 child average from 70 years ago, the resulting problems from scarcity and pollution would be exponentially worse today. Imagine if we currently had an extra 3 billion people. How much extra oil and gas would have to burnt to support them? How much more CO2 would be in the air? How much worse off would our oceans be with the overfishing? The list of negatives is long with very few benefits. Currently, there are 2 billion people living who don't have air conditioning or a car. Imagine the extra stress on our resources and the pollution this will cause once they do get these simple items? The answer is to stabilize the population and slowly reduce it to match the resources that we have. Show me a country with 4 children per mother, that doesn't have extreme poverty, lack of education and oppression of women?
Yes. The only problem with high populations is food. No other concerns or considerations. The value of labor isn't a concern, housing prices with a lot of people creating a high demand isn't a factor, to say nothing about the fact that humans evolved to live in low pop tribes not massive fucking colonies leading to massive mental health problems we already see.
No valid arguments presented. Fact is we are over populated as of today, irrespective of whether or not growth rate is rising or falling. Carbon emissions case is also not well argued. Bottomline is, we need to fall back to a world population level of about 4 billion.
this is rubbish. centring on food when there are many other aspects of the population such as energy, housing, education, medical, finances plus all the ephemera people do and use. like holidays, hobbies, furniture, white goods, shampoo, televisions and so on. the total "bill" for a population isn't simply food it's everything that makes a typical life.
The majority of those things aren't daily necessities and/or are luxuries. There are plenty of cultures/lifestyles that don't require 1st world country quality of life. You're just framing those things in due to your own understanding of how (your) society works. You even equated those things to a "typical life", which is obviously ignorant. You should think deeper and with a more open mind before calling something rubbish...
Her PhD / general background appears to be in geosciences. Never take a data scientist seriously unless their background is statistics or mathematics straight up.
So, why the hell do people move to the city to be around a lot of people and find “jobs”? Why do they need a large population to find jobs? Why aren’t people moving to the country where there’s no competition and less people?? 🤔
@@willinthearea6318that’s a great point but it’s not exactly analogous to the original comment, because the humans are going to be around other humans, while in an ecosystem there are thousands of species competing for the same resources. And I would disagree with both comments to some extent because nature is much more complex than just species vying for resources against each other, it has a very specific order and balance that is maintained by the _cooperation_ of all species
@@bradleythebuilder8743 Humans aren’t competing for food with other animals. We can grow food, other animals can’t. There’s no shortage of water…. The earth is 71% water. 85% of drinking water in Israel comes from desalination. Humans are smart, we can turn salt water into drinking water if we wanted to. Only 10% of the earth is populated by human cities”. The problem is, the vast majority of our population want to consume and not produce. They want an easy life working at an office in a big city with “jobs” and spend their money on plastic. An economy is like a pyramid, it needs a working population feeding that pyramid otherwise everything falls apart. A shrinking population means death to the economy. That’s why rural areas like West Virginia and Mississippi are the poorest states in the US. If there’s no economy, that means you have to be self-sufficient and grow your own food otherwise you will starve to death. Also, our population is shrinking in many parts of the world….. Japan, Korea, white Europeans, White Australians, White Americans, White Uruguayans, white Brazilians, Sierra Leone etc…..Birth rates are going down in many places.
I can actually detect to important errors in the argument. Confusion of population growth (a rate) with overpopulation (the state where the system is no longer sustainable). Though the rate has slowed down, it is still exponential growth if couples have more than two kids on average.
The movement towards renewable energy is because its less efficient than fossil fuels so it cant support as many people on the planet and will cause a massive one time reset on the world population and take care of any overpopulation
.... that's the whole point of the argument, it's that overshoot limits DO apply to humans. The fear of overpopulation is precisely that those limits (disease, famine, war, etc) will kick in. If you think species have some magic intrinsic way of reducing their own population sizes, you're just mistaken.
But they dont, because we are among the only species that actually cultivates our own food. While most creatures live off of what the land can give them. We create farms, then we irrigate them, and use fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides to increase yield. You dont see wolfs raising livestock do you?
Just like she argues 1950’s didn’t account for variables changing from then to today, birth rates, food production. She doesn’t account for todays variables changing in the future. Super virus. Plant species extinction. Consumption of resources per capita. There may not be to many people but those people are definitely doing to much.
It’s not just a question of resources - in countries like England, mass migration is straining All of our public institutions, has destroyed the housing market, and is culturally replacing the native people . Our sewage pipes literally burst because the system is overloaded! Maybe the planet as a whole isn’t overpopulated but there are enormous issues with population changes in many countries
Why though? Why are those stretched? Why isn't the increase in population viable? Because when we truly examine such things... we see the influence of major polluters preventing the ability of communities to incorporate such increases in population because the resulting strife underwrites their ability to pollute and increases their power and profits. We're being lied to at every turn... and at every turn... is a pollution companies representative stoking the fires of division to protect their profits so we don't understand the most viable course of action is to end their operations and utilize our resources more efficiently and effectively.
As an old guy, it is refreshing to see some perspective on these issues. Humanity tends to address issues once they are identified and understood. It is the problems that are not identified that cause the most disruption. IMO.
Yes we need 500 billion people playing video games and creating software and buying plastic so the people who keep saying it's not over-populated can make money.
"Oxford data scientist Hannah Ritchie debunks the overpopulation myth." - I don't think so. A large and growing population can exist at a rate that exceeds the planets sustainable capacity for a time. Solutions to yesterdays food problems shown in the video - use of fossil fuels and ground water reserves will eventually be depleted and new solutions will need to be found. The graph using percentage population growth was misleading since in the base year the word population was 2.5 billion and over 3 times that in 2020... so halving of the % growth rate over the period means the number of people born today is 150% of the number in 1950. People who see the reality of the future for their children will tend to chose to have fewer children. If there is a downside to a actual world human population decline - will it be any easier for the population in 2083 than those of us alive today ?
The comments section gives me hope for humanity. More and more people are realising that overpopulation IS a huge problem. This video leaves out too many important elements. If we take a holistic look, not just a humans first look, we are clearly behaving like a virus on this planet. Either we consciously take control of it, or mother nature will do it for us.
WATER. Life can not exist without it, and Ms. Ritchie neglected to plug that data into her calculations. Or, perhaps, she isn't aware that the supply is finite and dwindling rapidly. Accelerating climate change and growing demand is only exacerbating the problem. Keep thinking!
Our planet is pretty capable of preservation. I mean it did survive that cataclysmic event a while back. If it starts to tip too far on the scale, we're saddled w plagues, poor soil quality, dying oceans and climate change. We're in the throws of it already. A winnowing fork.
This video doesn't factor in that people in developing countries won't be in that state forever, so their CO2 per capita will also shoot upwards. When Africa industrializes like India or China has, the impact on the environment will be exponential. It is vital to start that continent on greener fuels and energy sources, despite dirty fuels being far cheaper. The planet may be technically able to support more people, but without global cooperation and green logistics of transporting food supplies across the world, we need to keep population under control.
No, we don't need to keep population under control. The world can sustain far greater number of people than current levels, while reducing CO2 emissions. Renewable sources of energy are far cheaper than anything else and will replace fossil fuel use far sooner than anyone realises.
You really can't blame people way back when for not anticipating the technological advancements that allowed for much greater food production. As much as many of us have faith in steadily improving technology, we can't know for sure what technological improvements will actually pan out and which won't until they're atcually tested and tried, a process that can take many years or decades. So many people that try to project future trends tend to be very conservative on the impact of new technologies, as that's one of the biggest variables no one can really foresee.
Even though the birth rate is decreasing the population is still increasing. We are also losing massive amounts of arable land, as the sea level rises it pushes salt up which destroys low lying land. Those farming practices are also resource depleting and damaging to the ground. What we can do however is optimise and streamline our food production, transport and sales practices. We waste a lot of food that could have been consumed.
Really things like this are the only reason I follow this channel. To see how far you can move away from actual thinking and discourse. 90% of the Videos published here are left wing, woke bullshit from the first to the last second.
For sure no problem. with large resources needed to feed so many people, and of course it is very humane to kill another species to feed a large number of new consumers for new iPhones, etc. and giant dumpsters are also the norm. so new consumers are definitely needed in even greater numbers.
Who decided that number and by what means did they decide it? I'd argue that there's not enough people in some areas already. China and Japan can't sustain themselves and there's a massive worker shortage in the US. Some will say that's due to laziness. I don't think so. People are working harder than ever to keep up w prices of inflation and there's still not enough workers.
True if taken to the extreme, for example if all the worlds farms were as efficient as american corn farms, we could produce twice the food on half the area. Another problem is that there is no lack of land at all, and its people who grow food so as the population grows you also end up with more farmers. Then the major major problem is that you have fallen for propaganda that isnt based on reality, there are no valid studies at all that can say how many people can live on earth they are all way too simplistic, they dont take technology into account, they think that cities will only be able to grow higher and not wider, they dont take into account that we can actually make house boats or dig into the ground. We cant say if the world is overpopulated at all, are people starving, yes there are people starving today. But we can also go back in time to early 1900s when over half of the population of earth was starving and today its very few people in comparison. If we go with that alone more people is equall to less starving people, of course i dont hold that view at all. But that is the view most people take when they say we are overpopulated, they look at a few things and draw conclusions based on that.
if you visit countries like India, Indonesia, South America...human rights are being violated on daily basis. it is not just food etc. Quality of life is huge factor that the speaker doesn't cover. if i believe over population is a problem, my concern is not because i hate other humans but the opposite. I am concerned that lopsided population growth give unethical agents an opportunity to exploit them. Every human life is valuable but we are not commodity to be traded and unmanaged over population facilitates that.
What about energy? I am certain that in poor country like india people use similar or more air conditioner than any other developed countries - they have to due to climate change. 2. They also have to use cars only for travel. At this point of extreme heat they just really can't think about money or environment anymore. Its a necessity nowdays 3. The amount the plastic use per person is tremendous, which is a huge problem in itself. And literally there are a hundred more reasons.
The problem is you’re not asking the right question. A better question is what is the optimal population? clearly given the shortage of housing, and the number of humans, we are past the optimum population just because there’s no population bomb doesn’t mean anything. you’re asking the wrong question and getting the wrong answer as a result.
The housing shortage is in the metropolitan area not in literally anywhere else🤦♂, the earth is bigger than you think. and it's true that earth at some points have its limit, but why not expand out to mars and other planet.
Interplanetary Exploration Is On a completely different timescale. Yes, the housing shortage is predominantly in metropolitan areas, but these are often the optimal areas to live. Plus constant expansion, given the labour resources required and the environmental Impact is below optimum. Expansion is possible, and there is still room, but this is still a subpar alternative.
@@freckrpeckr from you question for what is optimal population? I think you agree that it is not yet been reach. I found an article said we can be net zero on global emissions in 2060 with exiting technology, I think its reasonable for thinking we will not dooming our planet any time soon, and for Interplanetary Exploration will probably even happen sooner than 2060 imo, look up Artemis project by NASA aimed having station on moon within this decade and other spacex project about mars.
Garvage video and thinking. There are too many people on earth. We are in overshoot. The ecology is doomed and we rely on the ecology to live. You say it yourself, "the world population is still growing." And the ecology is in decline over the years and continues to decline. So you still have growing population and increased damage to the ecology. And it is proven that all human activity contributes to greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, no matter how wealthy they are.
Sorry; Not convinced; SOME indicators may show a slow down in birth rates but real problem is an increase in average CONSUMPTION. That’s of all resources across the board!! Too many people, consuming too much. It’s ok though, in the end nature will sort it all out.
@@agwarden it's not just about food. it's about the amount of resource used by people. for example if everyone lived like the average american then we would need five earths. You do the maths.
there is an average level of consumerism per society but obviously there are many orders of magnitude between them, even in the same culture. the op's view is still valid.
I am not sure what arguments she is trying to make. Overpopulation isn’t a problem because birth rates have fallen? Okay, but in the countries with declining birth rates, people are typically wealthier and the carbon emissions per capita are dramatically higher. In less wealthy countries, the birth rate is higher but that’s okay because they barely use any resources? I thought that moving people out of poverty is a good thing. Since economic activity is tied to environmental disruption, at least currently, as people in these less wealthy countries increase their standard of living, this argument makes less sense.
We need more people in their working age years to keep the economy moving forward? That is a problem of a population which has a rate of growth that is too low. It has nothing to do with population size. Also, how does she define “moving the economy forward”?
She neglects to mention the absolute environmental destruction required to increase food production. People think the carbon cycle is a problem? Look at the nitrogen cycle.
There is some population that is reasonable given a certain standard of living that falls within the constraints of what natural systems can provide. The rate at which you get there, on the decline, creates problems in how the society functions. That is the concern. The problem of overpopulation has not been “debunked”.
SPOT ON !!
Except in SOME countries in Africa, population growth is declining, even in India for example. Check the data in any media. 😅
There is no problem of overpopulation. There never was. It's a myth. Population can continue to grow without any environmental consequences.
@@user-gh3wt2uf2pthe existing population is too much in india
Exactly, spot on.
She presents questions and then answers them with a fact that might not have any correlation with the problem. The SYSTEM we have for having a decent life (shelter, food, energy) at the moment is not sustainable.
And also who’s quality of life improves with an increase of population? When now in the US for the first time parents had it better that their future generations.
This video was simple-minded, the topic is a complex one where there might not be a one-fit-all answer.
I'm not sure this video answered the question that set out to answer in the beginning.
The question: Is population causing enviromental problems?
One answer prompted: We are able to feed the people.
I have absolutely no idea how "We are able to feed the people" is an answer to the question "Is population causing environmental problems?"
Good point. Being able to feed more people means we will have a even higher population, means the wealthiest people are getting even richer, while our fauna and flora is dying.
I think from the perspective of an endangered species, overpopulation is not a myth.
@@mafifa More people means more manmade constructions (homes etc) on the expense of nature. By covering more grounds and soils with constructions we get trouble with levelling energies (heat) etc beneath those (billions and more billions) constructions. Then we get rising temperatures and other extremes in a "shrinking" world with less remaining open spaces to level heat, moisture, wind... Cool, dry ground just below the constructions won't help anybody in hot or climate changing open spaces which we use daily.
Agreed - the video talked around the crux of the issue with very selective arguments and cherry picked facts - yes developing countries have a lower carbon footprint today and she states you could add billions more people with minimal carbon impact - that implies she's comfortable with people living in poverty and assuming they dont aspire to a life style the west takes for granted which is quite a blinkered and border line arrogant view point - because when developing nations become developed their carbon footprint will sky rocket.
while the problems of population decline are starting to bite across many developed nations - its also a nonsense to suggest the only issue with more people on the planet is feeding everyone.
Agree 100 %. A very narrow point of view.
The real problem is the system works for the benefit of a handful of billionaires in detriment of the planet itself.
I agree wholeheartedly, but if a critical mass of people decided that they were sick of that then it could be changed, nonviolently even.
& that is why we need education
The real problem is that while you are all right - it's a system for billionaires, we need a critical mass of people sick of this to change it, and education is key (education in Marxist theory) - , there is an ideological veil over society that does net let Big Thinkers be that explicit: let us look at class antagonism, is that something that should exist?! People getting more money out of money without working for it just because they have (inherited) it? They can only do that on the back of others who have to work for that (material!) wealth but don't have the fruit of their own labour. Now in a system that works like this - some work hard but get nothing, others hardly work and get a lot (A LOT) - it is understandable that we become greedy (both those that work a lot and want to be rewarded and those that hardly work and want to maintain that). And then we say: "oh that's human nature, we are naturally greedy!". No, let's not have an economic system, capitalism, whose driving value is greed because it creates inequality and thus recreates classes, people who are high and low value, just because of how much currency they own. In the video, she showed well that the world can be fed and that we need to tackle environmental questions but she should have said clearly that the contradictions of the capitalist system do not allow us to address demographic and environmental issues adequately. That she doesn't say this although it's obvious and that this only shows up in the comments of videos is the ideological veil I'm speaking of.
How dumb can you be not to see the over population problem? Have you seen India, Nigeria and Bangladesh filth? How are billionaires involved?
Greed should be a crim punishable by law.
The video argues that overpopulation is not a critical global issue, citing slowed population growth and agricultural advancements. However, this view overlooks the ongoing environmental pressures from a growing population, such as resource depletion and ecological degradation. It also fails to consider the cumulative local impacts of high population growth in low-income countries, which can exacerbate poverty and environmental damage. While concerns about aging populations in wealthier countries are valid, they do not negate the significant challenges posed by overpopulation.
Most low income countries also has a decreasing birth rate. Check the data. 😅
@@user-gh3wt2uf2p not india / pakistan
Needed to be said. Thank you. Complexity is the hobgoblin of many a youtube video.
It's also worth noting that the much of the damage our species is doing purely on the basis of habitat loss on other species as a result of our demand for resources is permanent. Anyone who tries to argue that overpopulation isn't a problem must focus on this or immediately their argument falls due to a complete lack of of compassion for others
@@KrispKiwi even with no compassion for other species, biodiversity is essential to our survivial.
I hate these quantity over quality people. We cannot provide the people we have a quality of life but lets add more.
But that has nothing to do with the population. We have more resources availability than we ever have as a planet. Technology advancements are exponentially faster than population growth. There's so much food that obesity is a major health crisis, yet people still starve. There's so much land that the wealthy have multiple homes, and entire skyscrapers are empty, yet people are still homeless.
People not getting enough access to those resources is because of greed of the powerful, plain and simple.
What qualifies as quality of life? Would hot running water qualify? Would flush toilets qualify? Would heating and air conditioning qualify? Would ready-made meals qualify? Would access to all entertainment and education ever conceived qualify?
All the people you think have a low quality of life have those things and much more. Most people in this country just a few decades ago didn't have those things.
They got their water from hand pumps they bucketed into the house. Their toilet was outhouses. Their air conditioning was a shade tree. Their furnace was several layers of clothes. Their entertainment was humming songs and playing with rocks and sticks. They lived ignorant and died ignorant.
So what qualifies as quality of life, in your view?
@@michelestidhamwhitmore8313 quality of life for an average human has improved over time. You're living in more comfort than 'kings' 400 years ago. Lately it seems like we're evening out the quality between people globally which feels like your quality of life is becoming worse... But overall it's still better.
no it's just the rich countries my guy@@user-if7vt2ni2z
@@user-if7vt2ni2z The way I see it there are 3 solutions: 1. we keep the population the same but everyone lives like an indian. 2. we cut the population in half but everyone left gets to live like an american. or 3. americans get to live like americans and everyone else can fight over the scraps.
Quite astonished by how poor this is. Ritchie is usually balanced and well-informed. As are Big Think videos. This is anything but.
So many problems with her argument:
1. What about biodiversity loss?
2. What about deforestation?
3. What about plastic?
4. What about overfishing?
5. What about the fact millions are still starving?
6. What about the fact global population is still rising?
Of course overpopulation is not the single root cause of all problems. But it is indeed a factor in many of the environmental and social problems we face.
6 out of 9 planetary boundaries have been crossed. The fact there are 8.2 billion people on the planet, twice as many as there were a mere 50 years ago, is clearly correlated!
This videos shines a light on the limits of thinking through data and not through systems.
Maybe put the focus on our extreme over-consumption/waste, not simply population count.
Thank you
@@graemetunbridge1738exactly, if we shall "end with poverty", that means raising the standard of living for billions on a consume based capitalistic society which equals to an environmental point of no return disaster
Other comments have already pointed out a number of problems with this argument, but one I haven't seen is that most of the agricultural practices being used to reach such a high food output are very unsustainable and constantly depleting the soil.
The idea that we can sustain billions more people is just ridiculous when many around the world are already starving and even in the US (supposed richest country in the world) people can barely afford groceries. There's a reason data scientist don't make these kinds of decisions, there's a hell of a lot more to consider than numbers and factors on a spread sheet.
That plus the dead zones from overfishing & algae plumes from chemicals we’re spilling into the oceans. We are very behind in sustaining anything.
This argument itself has been debunked, the reason for such starvation is a distribution issue, we also have technological fixes for agriculture such as vertical farming.
Wealth distribution is not exactly a problem that is dependent on population; it has existed for the entirety of human history. It is up to us to figure out how to make sure our abundant resources are abundant for everyone.
The UN predicts that in the next 50 years or so, the population will increase by another 2 Billion. Not sure I buy into her argument. It may not have the impact on climate change, but we already have a problem with the quality of life for much of the current population. Adding 2 Billion isn't going to help.
I have been working with population groups for 20 some years now. I don't know anyone that is thinking forced sterilization or putting sterilants in water is a good thing. That just seems like fear mongering the Big Thinks part. Education and a fair system on living has been our approach. Where you do not need to have 5 kids to have someone take care of you in your old age.
The population has more than doubled in my life time and to say that we can just keep growing is straight up irresponsible.
Yes, that argument was crazy! Who has ever promoted putting sterilants in water... Yisus this was bad. How does she get this platform?
An absolute masterclass in how to deceive with statistics. Bravo! The declining population growth argument is misleading because it forgets to mention that you are applying this growth rate to a base population that's 3x larger than it was in 1950. Global population grew by 44M from 1950-51 vs. a gain of 74M from 2023-24, a whopping 68% increase in people added annually versus 1950. For the CO2 emissions per capita argument: 1) no credible scientist would support the assumption that India and Africa could "add billions" with zero corresponding impact to their CO2 per capita rates 2) multiplying a small number BY BILLIONS still adds up to billions on a planet that should be decreasing its CO2 emissions, not increasing them.
As I tell my students--statistics can't lie to those who understand them, only to those who are ignorant of statistical analysis. Take a math class, folks!
It's easier to imagine the end of the world then the end of capitalism.
They really demoized depopulation in this video. The real key to depopulation is educating women, giving them contraception and the right to choice and good health care
hey genius.. learn how to use paragraphs.. I think thats taught in grade 3
CO2 is Not the danger some claim. Right now the Sahel is greening because CO2 has increased. The excess will be absorbed in plant growth.
You need to read "what to expect when no one is expecting". What you aren't getting is that birth-rate results in GENERATIONAL growth/degrowth patterns.
So what happens is, less children being born. So population keeps growing, and growing... until the old people start dying. Then suddenly population falls off a cliff...and because children are born slower than old people die, the population just keeps falling and falling for decades.
Economic growth goes negative, and STAYS negative until the population falls back parity.
This means complete economic collapse for the 1st world, pretty much worldwide. The middle east and Africa will look rosy but Asia, Europe, and America will be ghost towns.
Nope. Our food production systems are unsustainable. The degradation of the environment we are wreaking as a species is unsustainable. Our manipulation of global fauna now sees a concentration of biomass into just a few food species plus ourselves, this is catastrophic for biodiversity on which we rely in more ways than we even know!
The problem isn't the sheer number of humans, it's the damage to the environment exacted by each individual human. If we were 7 billion hunter gatherers the damage would be far less harmful. The problems arise due to the desire of billions to possess and consume at the level of the 1%. Multiple cars, multiple homes, massive carbon footprints and massive waste. If there were only a million humans the ecosystem could probably deal with it. The open question is which will happen first, reducing human materiel ambition or reducing human population?
Agreed. And what do you think is the cause of the desire to possess and consume?
The earth can’t sustain 7 billion hunter gatherers. The population per area that can be sustained in those societies is much lower. It’s about moving forward to new, more efficient systems, not going back to hunting and gathering.
@@AhmdHidayatIn a way, what you (and she) are saying that as long as a population is poor, then we can handle feeding us.
But climate change makes it difficult to grow more food and makes living more difficult, particularly for poor people.
Inflation, partially because of crop failures, makes it even more challenging for those people to live.
This also doesn’t take decreasing resources, like potable water, into account.
The truth is true!!!
There is no climate problem.
I think it would be better to think of the human population as bacteria rather than cancer. No cancer is good, but a balanced amount of bacteria is, although too much bacteria is bad for our health.
Then all species are bacteria, because we are all part of the same ecosystem and evolved from the same source. We are just a highly successful bacteria!
The good environment and food don't improve the population in the developed world... Who would say that? That's was tricky true for the science.
In other hand no food couldn't stop the África growth...but they growth not pressuring the food price. The life expectancy is low as 35 years.
The environment eco problem is an industrial problem but since 80's the model has improved with recycling, renewable energy and ethanol for cars.
We need think more to make verdicts.
There are more bacteria cells in your body than human cells. That is a fact.
Humans are the white blood cells of the organism of Earth. Right now there are too many of us and we are hurting the planet which is akin to an autoimmune disease where your immune system attacks you.
After living on the front range near Denver Colorado for 43 years, I've seen an alarming number of changes due to population increase. Traffic jams. Toll roads. Reservations required to go to Rocky Mountain National Park, Mount Blue Sky, Brainard Lake and many other venues. None of this is good.
You're problem with more people is that they inconvenience you?
well, that doesn't represent most of the rest of the world...
... in that case the issue is high population density
@@v1kt0u5 The problem with the whole world is that we are a planet with an unsustainably high population density. We are responsible for the extinction of uncountable numbers of animal species because of our inability to control our over-breeding. The entire planet is at risk.
ah yes those pesky traffic and other first world problems while a good portion of the world starves and struggles.
Thats weird because I know multiple people who are actual ecologists who deal with fixing population collapse for various species and they all say that humans are on course to either see our population drop like a rock when climate change makes a large portion of our usable farmland worthless or full extinction if our activities and pollution take out a few more keystone species or ecosystems.
We don't have to worry about overpopulation because there won't be many of us left who live somewhere where food can still be grown or gathered.
This is why you don't hire a data scientist to explain the complicated relationships between real world ecosystems and how human civilization will likely be affected by them. The real world doesn't work or organize itself into neat little categories where exact numbers rule the day and predict outcomes. The only people who don't mind overpopulation is the super rich, more slave labor to make sure when the collapse does come only those rich people will have the resources to survive.
Propaganda has poisoned your mind
@@LOGOS_Officialwho has the most to gain by increasing population? Multibillion dollar companies do! They depend on many poor people. The ones who gain from population decrease are the environment and future generations. If you learn more about the environment and how everything we do effects it you would not be able to deny this simple truth.
"when the collapse does come" 😂 but you can't trust the data.
@@billygauthier9512Poor people don't consume so much. 😅😅😅
“[Hannah Ritchie] earned her undergraduate degree in environmental geoscience and a master's degree in carbon management.”
How does that foot taste?
Compared to ten thousand years ago, humans have lowered wild mammal biomass to be only 1/5 what it was. 98% of all mammal biomass is now humans and livestock, and human and livestock biomass is 11 times what all mammal biomass was 10,00 years ago. Someone please tell me how this could possibly be workable for the longterm health of our living systems.
It most certainly isn’t workable for the long-term.
@@user-gt2cp7oz4c I don't think they're ready for this.
Totally agreed . . and we have stolen too much land from the animals etc., not allowing places where nature can thrive untouched by stupid human scientific manipulation. . .
I follow teacher Aurelien Barrau e Hubert Reeves. We are at sixth mass extinction...
Interesting stats, nice one
Not ONCE did she even mention energy. Big Think….really?
She didn't mention energy, she didn't mention pollution, she didn't mention ecological collapse due to over farming, over fishing, over encroachment.
This is easily the worst "Big Think" I've watched.
@@LukasBradley Thank you, I straight away came to the comments section after seeing the title. And now I know I don't have to watch to this Sh**
@@LukasBradley Pollution and ecological collapse are not due to overpopulation. Overpopulation is such a pervasive myth that people are not willing to even consider the possibility that it may not be the root cause of all the things they have been led to believe.
Usually these are snippets from a longer conversation. Hopefully they'll post the full video soon.
@@FekuEntertainmentLtd same here. Thank goodness for thoughtful educated commenters.
This woman said about as much as an average college kid could say on the topic. Rather disappointing.
Statisticians often ignore or are ignorant of scientific facts. This subject is so complex that a base line of facts needs to be accepted first before any ideas formulated can move on and make real progress. Study both the Milankovitch Cycles in detail along with their most recent super computer modelings alongside accepting that we are not yet at the natural cycle bottom that is glacial minimum. Temperatures will rise as we approach GM and are unstoppable. Further more understand that CO2 levels are not the most urgent problem with the environment in so far as sustaining 8-10 billion people. Our loss of natural habitats, general bio-diversity and massive decline in numbers and species of insects is a huge problem looking forward in the case of food production. The earth will continue to warm even if we had zero CO2 emissions tomorrow. We must urgently stop the destruction of natural habitats, counter chemical and waste pollution, care for the oceans that regenerate 60-70% of our oxygen and are a huge food source. As the climate warms, populations need to adapt and some move geographically over the next 100-200 years, if mankind is capable of that vision and planning. Mother earth will recover as she has done over billions of years but mankind has a choice if it wants to survive here or not. The myopic approach of just looking at rising CO2 and temperature increases without firstly addressing the above points will spell the biggest problem for mankind's future and that of most other animal species.
The truth is true!
Apparently, habitat and biodiversity loss are the most important topics in which, apparently, nobody is really interested.
I couldn't agree more! This is true.
Well said!
We don't want to be here, if we did, we'd act differently.
The planet doesnt belong to humanity. We have to give space to the rest of life on Earth. Its called "ecosystem" not "humansystem."
Humans are part of the ecosystem, we just choose to ignore this fact!
Speak for yourself. We need to save the environment only because we don't want to set our own house on fire. But we don't care about the life of individual trees or critters.
@@M69392 if you dont care about trees or critters, thats on you. i watch where i walk so i dont walk on snails or frogs or ants.
before humans came, the world was as lawless as you can possibly imagine. Fringe, anthropomorphic people like you are used by the conservatives to ridicule and discredit ecology as a whole. But keep doing you.
@@M69392 that's the exact mentality why Earth Is going downhill
It's not just food. It's plastic. Paper. Clothing. Lithium batteries. How much raw resources are consumed by the average person from an industrialized country?
Also, look at tourism. If there's long lines to travel up Mt. Everest, there's probably too many people.
Yes.
@@karmicbreath if there’s too many people in a line , there’s too many people 😂😂
Pkastic our oil reserves have never before been as high as they are today so there is no risk of us running out of plastic any time soon, paper yes trees can grow, yes plants can also grow, lithium, we have barely even looked for it, because it was so easily found in old salt basins.
Its also that those things are not exactly consumed, they are used once and then return back to more earth, they dont cease to exist, most of them end up in landfills, if we do run out of fresh resources those landfills will become worth quiet a bit of money.
If we look at people wanting to climb mount everest that only tells us that people have grown a lot richer and they want to feel like they have accomplished something nothing else really. But a plus side of this is that people who live in that area have become wastly much better off as they can charge ludicrous amounts of money to help them up the mountain.
from what you're saying consumption is our problem... Not overpopulation
Tourism is one of the most pathetic forms of activity. I used to love the idea of traveling but looking at what people do, the donkeys and horses that are used up in the North Easten India because these tourists couldnt carry their own two nuts, the animals suffering and the crowded invasive behaviors destroying the local ecosystems. Hence, I dont travel because I am just invasive somewhere else.
She didn’t debunk overpopulation. She’s just saying it’s not the only problem.
Her arguments about food make no sense. Those methods of producing food on massive scales are not good for the environment. Although they seemed to feed the population, the harms happen over a long term.
Exactly. And if we may reach a point where the population stops growing is because there was an alarm and countries like China took very strong actions.
I am now saying that aging population cannot be a problem to. But if pollution can be a worse problem than food production. And CO2 is just one small type of environmental damage
Exactly. This is what I came to say.
Food waste and starvation (extreme poverty, inequality) haven't been mentioned either.
No. She is trying to educate people to the fact that the problems that most people attribute to overpopulation are in fact not fundamentally due to overpopulation.
@@aliciauxso go feed them.
The fact that over 600 people in the space of one day have debunked this ridiculous twaddle is encouraging. Let us hope that another data scientist has the opportunity to give a counter argument that overpopulation is decimating the environment, climate and other species (who have as much 'right' as humans to occupy the space).
We have massively increased the amount of food we have produced and gotten there through deforestation. Additionally we have lost a lot of farm land for suburban housing sprawl.
no urban housing is 10 perecent compared to farm land or forests in world . i think you never saw world map bruhh
@@shubhthepro well bruhh! Your response has nothing to do with what I said. I didn't mention urban housing and providing a percentage has nothing to do with farmland being converted to suburban housing. Less is less.
@@shubhthepro 10 percent is still huge, though. Suburban housing is clearly an issue.
Also destroyed local ecology
Very poor arguments. Estimates are that we need five times as many resources as we have for the level of consumption that's going on. In other words five earths are needed to maintain the current population and she saying let's have more.
I've never heard the barbaric arguments that she says people are making for how to reduce population and I wouldn't agree with the ones she provided. But saying nobody's come up with a good solution for population problems is not a valid argument that there's not a population problem.
Her arguments shy around the real problem here. There are too many people, period. Not too many poor people, or rich, or in this country or that. Just 'too many people'. We are an overcrowded fish tank, where the filter systems are overwhelmed and the tank is slowly dying. We either need less population overall, or new miraculous technology to 'filter the tank'. We could get that, and we may be so far gone that it's the only way out for us, frankly. We innovated our way out with food supply, now we need to do it with environmental maintenance behavior and technology.
I come from Malawi. The country is in a crisis in every way. One crisis is deforestation because of wood fires for cooking like they've done for thousands of years. And then the resulting erosion and floods. All a direct result of there being way way too many people.
It's not as simple as people seem to want to make it. Yes, population growth is slowing. Yes, food production yields have skyrocketed over the past several decades. But these yields are not sustainable - due to overuse of fertilizer, industrial monoculture farming techniques, and climate change, we will see massive food shortages. In that respect, it's good that pop. growth has slowed, but there will still be massive deprivation.
Not to mention the shift to the far right in reaction to mass migration.
Yes . . .Humans have been able to produce much much more crap unnatural, poisoned, unhealthy foods in order to feed a sick (over)-population . . Great solution!!!
Interestingly this modern prediction has always been false. The reason is that with larger population comes more collective problem solving ability. People simply figured to solutions faster than problems could cause devastation.
It could go differently this time, but yields are so massive now the most I would expect are price shocks.
We aren't making enough cheap laborers for the bourgeoisie. 😅 How could I even think about having kids when I can barely afford to survive... why would I drag another life into this miserable existence?
Why not? our parents did the same with us... misery loves company I suppose...
Population vs quality of life … that is the question
That's not a question. Clearly quality of life has increased with population increase.
@@micahgmirandathat depends on how you measure quality of life. Because I don’t eat many foods anymore because they’re toxic. And even healthier foods don’t taste the same & are proven to have less nutritional value due to factory farming. Our water supply is full of toxins too. So yeah, maybe some things have improved for our comfort & safety but other things that we need to sustain a healthy lifestyle have gotten worse.
@@coolbreeze3 What does any of that have to do with overpopulation? Factory farming is not a function of overpopulation, that has to do with regulation of the industry. I would argue that as the population grows it allows for niche industries that grow organic produce to be more viable. Toxins in the water supply has nothing to do with overpopulation, again that has to do with manufacturing malpractice not overpopulation.
@@micahgmiranda because it everything I mentioned supports larger populations. It’s unsustainable.
@@coolbreeze3 that doesn't make sense. If you'd research sustainability you'll see it's about using sustainable energy sources like wind and solar or using sustainable practices like crop rotation. The real problem here is that a lack of education is unsustainable.
Unfortunately, she has a rather narrow view that does not consider a deeper analysis of variables including wealth distribution, quality of life factors and economic inequalities. I’d rather pay attention ecologists who are in general very clear about the overpopulation problem. For starters we live in a finite ecosystem but believe and try to operate an infinite growth model in economics. Very disturbing.
And she is being promoted by rich Elon Musk and bill gates
The main issue is the billionaires running the show that are polluting so much more than all of us combined: private space travels, jets, yachts...
Of course there can be too many people. Too much pollution. Not enough food. Let's add 8 billion people to Africa and see what happens to the chimps, gorillas, rhinos, and elephants. Let's let millions of bison and horses roam the steppes, great plains, and pampas and see how many people we can feed. Living on a planet where nobody has seen the wild spaces or animals in eons is not living.
I suggest you watch the video.
@@scivolanto I did. I suggest you improve your reading comprehension.
That food is less nutritional. Weak argument.
it doesnt matter if the population is declining, but the rate at which the resources are declining and also species extinctions is surpassing the population decline so we wouldn't reach the stabilising rate probably the climate change will be irreversible before the population stabilisation
Just because you can crunch numbers and deny it doesn't make sense when urban sprawl is impacting wildlife habitat and isn't slowing down in any way whatsoever.
This completely fails to address overpopulation concerns. All it debunks are slightly insane overpopulation remedies from the '60s and '70s...
Exactly. It just says that the population isn’t growing as fast as the original addicted, but it doesn’t at all address still the problems of overpopulation that genuinely would be fixed if those people weren’t there. Mainly also the fact that we produced so much food, but it’s at the expense of the environment and so much of that said food is wasted, and we predict your climate change that we won’t be able to produce it in the same way for much longer if things keep going the way they are.
@@danielwhyatt3278 The video commentary is actually worse...
She's basically claiming that natural remedies are already addressing the issue, and suggesting that means we don't have to worry about it.
The thing is we all KNOW that nature will address the issue, but those remedies, such as starvation, and sterilization, are EXACTLY what we should want to avoid.
But yes, as you say, where we've increased production, it's largely unsustainable, most especially where meat products are concerned.
Anyway, the whole point in pointing out the population issue, has always been more about improving quality of life, not about what kind of numbers we're capable of sustaining in theory, but what kind of numbers we can sustain in comfort...
And, thing is, on that metric we've already been grossly overpopulated for some time now...
No. What she's saying is that "overpopulation" is not the reason for climate change, nor is the reason for hunger, or overpopulated cities, or i don't know what else. "Overpopulation" is not even a term that describes the current situation, as it refers to a World with too many people, which is not the case (what is "too many" supposed to mean?). Thus, this current "overpopulation" is not a problem per se, and it doesn't make sense to address it.
What we need to address is problems such as climate change, hunger, etc., but those problems would also be there with smaller World populations, and are for sure not gonna be solved by addressing this "overpopulation", they need to be addressed in other ways. She's just pointing to that fact, claiming besides that those "overpopulation" policies typically point towards the weakest people in the World, which are also the least responsible for all those problems (a message that is also quite convenient for certain people, especially in power, by the way).
@@FranzVonZeta Exactly, scary how 90% of the people in the comments couldn't comprehend such a basic thing
Human chauvinism is the problem.
Overshoot is the problem.
More humans living in unsustainable ways is the problem for all life that enables us to exist.
The human ego is insultingly pompous to the very life event that allowed us to figure out how to use a thumb.
Eventhough food production has increased, Many study suggests that the nutritional value of the food is at the all time lowest. We are just eating to fill us and not to make us healthy !
Unless things change fast, the worst thing you can do for your carbon footprint is have another kid.
Let's refute each of these points one by one:
The world population growth rate has slowed down significantly and is expected to peak before the end of the century. This is because the average number of children that an average woman has globally has fallen.
Refutation: While it's true that global fertility rates have fallen, the sheer number of people reaching reproductive age in densely populated regions still results in significant population growth. Moreover, the momentum of population growth due to high fertility rates in previous decades means that even with lower fertility rates, the population will continue to grow for some time. Additionally, population momentum in regions with high fertility rates can lead to continued growth and strain on resources.
Technological advancements in agriculture have allowed us to produce more food than ever before, despite the fact that the global population has grown.
Refutation: Although agricultural advancements have increased food production, they have also led to significant environmental degradation, including soil depletion, water scarcity, and loss of biodiversity. These advancements often rely heavily on fossil fuels, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides, which can have long-term negative impacts on the environment. Furthermore, food distribution remains unequal, and many regions still suffer from food insecurity and malnutrition.
Even in countries where fertility rates are still high, the per capita CO2 emissions are very low. This means that adding more people in those countries would have almost no impact on global CO2 emissions.
Refutation: While current per capita CO2 emissions might be low in high-fertility countries, as these countries develop economically, their emissions are likely to increase. Rapid population growth in these regions can lead to greater demand for energy, transportation, and industry, all of which contribute to higher CO2 emissions. Additionally, deforestation and land use changes driven by population pressures can significantly impact global carbon cycles.
An aging population can cause problems for some countries because it means that there won't be a large enough group of people in the working age category to prop up the economy.
Refutation: An aging population presents challenges, but it can also create opportunities for innovation and shifts in economic structures. Countries with aging populations can invest in automation, technology, and policies to support older workers and increase productivity. Additionally, immigration policies can help balance demographic shifts. The assumption that a larger population automatically ensures economic stability overlooks the complexities of sustainable development and resource management.
The video argues that comparing humans to cancer is a dire prediction and a damaging message.
Refutation: While the comparison of humans to cancer may be extreme, it highlights the urgent need for sustainable practices and responsible resource management. Ignoring the potential negative impacts of unchecked population growth can lead to complacency and a lack of action in addressing critical issues like environmental degradation, resource depletion, and climate change. The analogy, although harsh, serves as a wake-up call to rethink our approach to growth and development.
Yes! To say "Humans are a cancer" does not automatically mean WE want to kill other people called THEM . . .it is a recognition that each and everyone of us is responsible, is part of the problem, and needs to be part of the solution. It does not imply war and genocide!!!
Food production has increased, but food nutrition has plummeted. It'd be nice to compare nutrition , because it's not about eating kilos of carbon.
I was surprised there was also no mention of food waste, either.
Exactly. Food quality. Why are so many people so unhealthy? Also, she neglects to mention what has been done to the environment to increase food production so dramatically.
Learned absolutely nothing. Big Think usually a very reliable & interesting information source
800 million people are starving, at this very moment . More people will just add more suffering and even bigger demands on the environment. Saying we need more people is just absurd.
Nature knows best, and when nature said that this earth is can't hold much longer, there will be catastrophic consequences.
The climate change argument of "The poors don't count in emissions, so more poors is fine" is highly suspect. The problem is that the world is developing, and everyone likes cars, AC, etc. The West has reduced emissions, but it has been more than offset by the developing world, especially China. In the mid 1970s, China could have been considered poor but now has emissions per capita of Europe and is the largest single emitter. Global emissions continue to climb year after year.
What you call developing world are the countries with the lowest fertility rate: China, S. Corea... So, fighting climate change with demography is not realistic. It should have been done like two centuries ago to work.
And the reduction of emissions in the West may just be an illusion, as most of the production for the West is made in other countries. We can blame Chinese for getting richer, but they are still way below Americans regarding their consumption. So, can we ask them to stop getting richer, so that Westerners can keep getting richer? How could the accept?
The only way forward, I'm afraid, is to reduce one's consumption to a sustainable level, especially in rich countries and among upper classes all over the world.
@@scivolanto China is now developed by most standards. I don't expect the developing countries, like India, to not do it, but if they use fossil fuels as the West did, then we will get a hot planet. We need sustainable emissions, but billions moving to increased emissions is not sustainable. China now emits more than the USA and Europe combined, so what the West does is not even determinant now. USA is the second largest emitter, but India will probably overtake it by the end of the century.
I'm not trying to dump on African countries... But they do not produce as much Co2 emissions because they are less industrialized. You can't argue that's it's fine to increase the population there by BILLIONS (yes, she said BILLIONS) without considering poverty, unemployment, war, terrorism, and illegal mass migration.
I think we need to hear more arguments from this lady because I'm not sure she has explained herself very well.
Nothing that she has said has really convinced me of the contrary.
With this bad reasoning skills it is possible to get a PhD? Listing some random dystopian measures and declining growth rates are no arguments against the damaging impacts on ecosystems of large scale farming. Just because the soil is still able to produce food today does not refute that we are potentially doing irreversible damage and depleting resources, which wouldn't have occurred in a more sparsely populated and less "advanced" society.
I grew up in the sixties and seventies, UK population estimated 50 million, UK population today (2024) estimated 70 + million and still growing.
That's an extra 20 million people.
Today there's a severe housing shortage, an NHS that's at breaking point , overcrowded prisons, shortage of school places for children not enough doctors or dentists to cope with the number of people, infrastructure break down etc etc
It's obvious to me that the UK is vastly overpopulated.
You are highlighting huge systemic issues but then, for some reason, point to population instead. The problem isn't families, it's policy.
you uk people are foolish to allow certain groups of non grateful immigrants in galore. (condolences from your Indian wellwisher.)
Yes and why? Mass immigration? Could be.
"Infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide." Michael Moore
Not his quote
"Infinite growth on a infinite universe is literally in all of the sci-fi movie" I guess, Dream big.
@@YoavHillel Then who's is it?
If capitalism renders the poor worse off--then there are too many people. The have-nots way outnumber the greedy upper class. Pay attention to the starving thoussnds in the world who are suffering, and while the rich get richer. No one needs billions of dollars to live. Until there is a more equal distribution of wealth and equality--we have too many people.
What’s your solution to capitalism? Failed command economies that have been tried dozens of times?
@Thrasalt tax the wealthy, big time. No one needs millions or billions of dollars to live. Provide healthcare for all and affordable housing. Free education.
Where do you not stand in line? Where do you get immediate service, or how long do you have to wait to see a dr? The food is horrific because it has been mass grown void of nutrients and health benefits, our water is polluted because we treat our water with poison in order to provide enough "clean" water to the masses. We are depleting our resources faster than the Earth can regenerate. We are OVERPOPULATED. It will take decades for the planet to recover. If ever.
In the shadow of unprecedented wealth inequality, a climate crisis, 6th Mass Extinction, our life sustaining topsoil and coral reefs being wiped out and multiple genocides, the richest man in the world wants us to breed like rabbits 🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇🐇 Doesn’t anybody else think that’s weird? Apparently not this channel 👋🫠
I dont understand the video at all. She kept giving stats but nowhere she pointed evidence to say its a myth. I mean her idea is to consume till the last drop of water and last piece of fruit and the last chicken and egg. Then she may start thinking okay there's not enough.
The idea of overpopulation is its not there's not enough to go around. Its that we have to destroy more forests and ecosystems to cater to the population. The idea that its harder to educate a million than how hard it is to educate 100K. We are already seeing heatwaves and temperatures killing thousands and air becoming unbreathable. Ofcourse the planet will recover but not before we go extinct cos of our own doing.
Not a myth "debunked", just a shameful misrepresentation of a far more complex and nuanced debate.
She must not live in an overcrowded polluted city where human decency and society is breaking down. Just because you can fit 100 rats in a box doesn’t mean you should
Agreed, she lives in a first world. Let her live in slums of Kenya, India, Bangladesh and let her see what we are talking about.
Hannah Ritchie must live in a sparsely populated rural area. And she's just debunking Thomas Malthus's predictions about overpopulation. She failed to mention the psychological problems created by living in densely populated urban areas where the housing is predominately vertical. I hate living in high-rise apt buildings; I hate crowded streets & sidewalks; I hate the incessant noise & constant delays in overcrowded cities (NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, Shanghai, Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, Taipei, London, Paris, e.g., all places I've spent much time in). Too many rats in an overcrowded cage leads to violence.
This has nothing to do with the purpose of the video. 😅
Anecdotal
I think I found one of the neanderthals that would turn violent...
I think instead of saying that overpopulation is not an issue, which is very hard to argue because of a lack of baseline (how many humans should be in earth?), it’s better to say that it is an unactionable issue. Decreasing the number of people is a contentious ethical issue.
Pollution and environmental impact are a function of population, technology efficiency, and lifestyle, and because of the above, we can only work on the latter two. Consider population numbers a given, and work on the less ethically problematic issues such as making more efficient technologies that uses less resources, and promote lifestyles which need less technology.
Population is an issue of equality and distribution. That's to say blaming any single issue isn't relevant in the complexity of human society. Let alone the environment.
The environment is dying due to greedy 1%s.
Just saying
Most folks look at what wealthier people have and want more for themselves and their families.
This completely fails to address overpopulation concerns. All it debunks are slightly insane overpopulation remedies from the '60s and '70s...
No man. That is such a human centric point of view. From a biodiversity and conservation point of view, the major damage has already been done 50+ years ago. The human population was already way too big then. The fact that we now have technology that can feed billions more people doesn't make a difference to the fact that there are already too many people on this planet. It is actually a moot point now what is going to happen to the human population, except in places like Africa and South America where the populations are still exploding. There are, for instance, huge areas of Africa where there are no more large birds of prey outside of protected areas. Majorily because their prey base has been eaten by humans and they get persecuted for e.g. killing lambs. The damage is globally already irreversible in terms of habitat and biodiversity loss, at least in human time frames. Just don't be disillusioned that the human population is or was never an issue.
We consume more resources than the earth can provide. Therefore we are too numerous as a specie.
It's not a myth. There are limits to natural resources, such as land to grow food, and all the items around you that have been mined from the ground. With more people, prices will rise as these items become more expensive to obtain, resulting in more conflict and an overall lower quality of life due to scarcity. Overpopulation was a real concern worldwide and is still an issue in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa's overpopulation problem will become the world's problem in another generation, as they are unable to take care of themselves. If the world had continued the 5 child average from 70 years ago, the resulting problems from scarcity and pollution would be exponentially worse today. Imagine if we currently had an extra 3 billion people. How much extra oil and gas would have to burnt to support them? How much more CO2 would be in the air? How much worse off would our oceans be with the overfishing? The list of negatives is long with very few benefits. Currently, there are 2 billion people living who don't have air conditioning or a car. Imagine the extra stress on our resources and the pollution this will cause once they do get these simple items? The answer is to stabilize the population and slowly reduce it to match the resources that we have. Show me a country with 4 children per mother, that doesn't have extreme poverty, lack of education and oppression of women?
Yes. The only problem with high populations is food.
No other concerns or considerations.
The value of labor isn't a concern, housing prices with a lot of people creating a high demand isn't a factor, to say nothing about the fact that humans evolved to live in low pop tribes not massive fucking colonies leading to massive mental health problems we already see.
No valid arguments presented. Fact is we are over populated as of today, irrespective of whether or not growth rate is rising or falling. Carbon emissions case is also not well argued. Bottomline is, we need to fall back to a world population level of about 4 billion.
this is rubbish. centring on food when there are many other aspects of the population such as energy, housing, education, medical, finances plus all the ephemera people do and use. like holidays, hobbies, furniture, white goods, shampoo, televisions and so on. the total "bill" for a population isn't simply food it's everything that makes a typical life.
Bingo!
and nearly all of it is created by other human beings working.
The majority of those things aren't daily necessities and/or are luxuries. There are plenty of cultures/lifestyles that don't require 1st world country quality of life. You're just framing those things in due to your own understanding of how (your) society works. You even equated those things to a "typical life", which is obviously ignorant. You should think deeper and with a more open mind before calling something rubbish...
@@djackson4605They don't think they repeat outdated slogans like parrots. 😅
@@daniellassander which means that you're putting consumerism first before the environment
Her PhD / general background appears to be in geosciences.
Never take a data scientist seriously unless their background is statistics or mathematics straight up.
No matter what she says...its already the sixth mass extinction...
Sand ,water , soil,air, forest everything is carrying the burden and lack of resources!! Insane competition to survive
So, why the hell do people move to the city to be around a lot of people and find “jobs”? Why do they need a large population to find jobs? Why aren’t people moving to the country where there’s no competition and less people?? 🤔
@@willinthearea6318that’s a great point but it’s not exactly analogous to the original comment, because the humans are going to be around other humans, while in an ecosystem there are thousands of species competing for the same resources. And I would disagree with both comments to some extent because nature is much more complex than just species vying for resources against each other, it has a very specific order and balance that is maintained by the _cooperation_ of all species
@@bradleythebuilder8743 Humans aren’t competing for food with other animals. We can grow food,
other animals can’t. There’s no shortage of water…. The earth is 71% water. 85% of drinking water in Israel comes from desalination. Humans are smart, we can turn salt water into drinking water if we wanted to. Only 10% of the earth is populated by human cities”. The problem is, the vast majority of our population want to consume and not produce. They want an easy life working at an office in a big city with “jobs” and spend their money on plastic. An economy is like a pyramid, it needs a working population feeding that pyramid otherwise everything falls apart. A shrinking population means death to the economy. That’s why rural areas like West Virginia and Mississippi are the poorest states in the US. If there’s no economy, that means you have to be self-sufficient and grow your own food otherwise you will starve to death. Also, our population is shrinking in many parts of the world….. Japan, Korea, white Europeans, White Australians, White Americans, White Uruguayans, white Brazilians, Sierra Leone etc…..Birth rates are going down in many places.
The hubris of thinking that the ecological understanding of all species population overshoot limits does not apply to humans!
I can actually detect to important errors in the argument. Confusion of population growth (a rate) with overpopulation (the state where the system is no longer sustainable). Though the rate has slowed down, it is still exponential growth if couples have more than two kids on average.
The movement towards renewable energy is because its less efficient than fossil fuels so it cant support as many people on the planet and will cause a massive one time reset on the world population and take care of any overpopulation
.... that's the whole point of the argument, it's that overshoot limits DO apply to humans. The fear of overpopulation is precisely that those limits (disease, famine, war, etc) will kick in.
If you think species have some magic intrinsic way of reducing their own population sizes, you're just mistaken.
But they dont, because we are among the only species that actually cultivates our own food. While most creatures live off of what the land can give them. We create farms, then we irrigate them, and use fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides to increase yield.
You dont see wolfs raising livestock do you?
Ants do and Your near sighted view of human exceptionalism is tragic entirely depending on to much technical future magic.
Just like she argues 1950’s didn’t account for variables changing from then to today, birth rates, food production. She doesn’t account for todays variables changing in the future. Super virus. Plant species extinction. Consumption of resources per capita. There may not be to many people but those people are definitely doing to much.
I like that video editor used corn almond and coffee as the food examples. All in danger of extinction or depletion.
Human overpopulation is indeed a big problem for all the other living species.
"A much slower rate" added another billion people in just 11 years, but who's counting?
It’s not just a question of resources - in countries like England, mass migration is straining All of our public institutions, has destroyed the housing market, and is culturally replacing the native people . Our sewage pipes literally burst because the system is overloaded! Maybe the planet as a whole isn’t overpopulated but there are enormous issues with population changes in many countries
Why though? Why are those stretched? Why isn't the increase in population viable?
Because when we truly examine such things... we see the influence of major polluters preventing the ability of communities to incorporate such increases in population because the resulting strife underwrites their ability to pollute and increases their power and profits. We're being lied to at every turn... and at every turn... is a pollution companies representative stoking the fires of division to protect their profits so we don't understand the most viable course of action is to end their operations and utilize our resources more efficiently and effectively.
The problem is a big population who aspire to live at western world standard …and it will not happen .
As an old guy, it is refreshing to see some perspective on these issues. Humanity tends to address issues once they are identified and understood. It is the problems that are not identified that cause the most disruption. IMO.
Yes we need 500 billion people playing video games and creating software and buying plastic so the people who keep saying it's not over-populated can make money.
Overpopulation in Europe and America.
@@sanguiniuswarhammer4669 All over the world. I will not stop until I am the only one left. Have a good day.
500billion is over 6000% more than our current population! You're over reacting a tad bit!
YES THIS. We need the population to grow indefinetely so the economy does not collapse and the stocks keep going up up!
Wow those 500 billion people are living their best life. Based
"Oxford data scientist Hannah Ritchie debunks the overpopulation myth." - I don't think so. A large and growing population can exist at a rate that exceeds the planets sustainable capacity for a time. Solutions to yesterdays food problems shown in the video - use of fossil fuels and ground water reserves will eventually be depleted and new solutions will need to be found. The graph using percentage population growth was misleading since in the base year the word population was 2.5 billion and over 3 times that in 2020... so halving of the % growth rate over the period means the number of people born today is 150% of the number in 1950. People who see the reality of the future for their children will tend to chose to have fewer children. If there is a downside to a actual world human population decline - will it be any easier for the population in 2083 than those of us alive today ?
The comments section gives me hope for humanity. More and more people are realising that overpopulation IS a huge problem. This video leaves out too many important elements. If we take a holistic look, not just a humans first look, we are clearly behaving like a virus on this planet. Either we consciously take control of it, or mother nature will do it for us.
WATER.
Life can not exist without it, and Ms. Ritchie neglected to plug that data into her calculations. Or, perhaps, she isn't aware that the supply is finite and dwindling rapidly. Accelerating climate change and growing demand is only exacerbating the problem.
Keep thinking!
Our planet is pretty capable of preservation. I mean it did survive that cataclysmic event a while back. If it starts to tip too far on the scale, we're saddled w plagues, poor soil quality, dying oceans and climate change. We're in the throws of it already. A winnowing fork.
This video doesn't factor in that people in developing countries won't be in that state forever, so their CO2 per capita will also shoot upwards. When Africa industrializes like India or China has, the impact on the environment will be exponential. It is vital to start that continent on greener fuels and energy sources, despite dirty fuels being far cheaper. The planet may be technically able to support more people, but without global cooperation and green logistics of transporting food supplies across the world, we need to keep population under control.
No, we don't need to keep population under control. The world can sustain far greater number of people than current levels, while reducing CO2 emissions. Renewable sources of energy are far cheaper than anything else and will replace fossil fuel use far sooner than anyone realises.
What an odd, incomplete and skewed approach to a complex and sensitive problem.
In the far distant future, alien archaeologists will find this video on a ssd and say: hey look how stupid these people were.
By far your worst video Big Think
Thanks for the informative critique. For sure, you aren't part of the excess population group.
@@micahgmiranda Yes I am.
@@wooooooooooodsy11 thank you for proving my point
@@micahgmiranda We all are...
@@wooooooooooodsy11 if you're not part of the solution, you're the problem.
You really can't blame people way back when for not anticipating the technological advancements that allowed for much greater food production. As much as many of us have faith in steadily improving technology, we can't know for sure what technological improvements will actually pan out and which won't until they're atcually tested and tried, a process that can take many years or decades. So many people that try to project future trends tend to be very conservative on the impact of new technologies, as that's one of the biggest variables no one can really foresee.
Well, I certainly hope she has lots of kids, the world needs more of her!
Even though the birth rate is decreasing the population is still increasing.
We are also losing massive amounts of arable land, as the sea level rises it pushes salt up which destroys low lying land.
Those farming practices are also resource depleting and damaging to the ground.
What we can do however is optimise and streamline our food production, transport and sales practices. We waste a lot of food that could have been consumed.
I can't take serious about video which slanders the opposing view with talk of forced sterilizations and secret birth control conspiracies!
Really things like this are the only reason I follow this channel. To see how far you can move away from actual thinking and discourse. 90% of the Videos published here are left wing, woke bullshit from the first to the last second.
You can't take the video seriously because it shared facts with you.
I was genuinely ready to have my view changed, disappointed that there was no substantive argument made
For me things are simple, we live on a island in space , resources are limited , so yeah i really believe in the "myth".
That is an excellent way of putting our predicament !
For sure no problem. with large resources needed to feed so many people, and of course it is very humane to kill another species to feed a large number of new consumers for new iPhones, etc. and giant dumpsters are also the norm. so new consumers are definitely needed in even greater numbers.
Optimum global population is 0.5 to 2 billion people. & we're fast approaching 9 billion. Infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide.
So will you be the first to help reduce our population?
According to what? Lol
Who decided that number and by what means did they decide it? I'd argue that there's not enough people in some areas already. China and Japan can't sustain themselves and there's a massive worker shortage in the US. Some will say that's due to laziness. I don't think so. People are working harder than ever to keep up w prices of inflation and there's still not enough workers.
True if taken to the extreme, for example if all the worlds farms were as efficient as american corn farms, we could produce twice the food on half the area.
Another problem is that there is no lack of land at all, and its people who grow food so as the population grows you also end up with more farmers.
Then the major major problem is that you have fallen for propaganda that isnt based on reality, there are no valid studies at all that can say how many people can live on earth they are all way too simplistic, they dont take technology into account, they think that cities will only be able to grow higher and not wider, they dont take into account that we can actually make house boats or dig into the ground.
We cant say if the world is overpopulated at all, are people starving, yes there are people starving today. But we can also go back in time to early 1900s when over half of the population of earth was starving and today its very few people in comparison. If we go with that alone more people is equall to less starving people, of course i dont hold that view at all. But that is the view most people take when they say we are overpopulated, they look at a few things and draw conclusions based on that.
The world population should decrease to less than half a billion people
if you visit countries like India, Indonesia, South America...human rights are being violated on daily basis. it is not just food etc. Quality of life is huge factor that the speaker doesn't cover. if i believe over population is a problem, my concern is not because i hate other humans but the opposite. I am concerned that lopsided population growth give unethical agents an opportunity to exploit them. Every human life is valuable but we are not commodity to be traded and unmanaged over population facilitates that.
What about energy?
I am certain that in poor country like india people use similar or more air conditioner than any other developed countries - they have to due to climate change.
2. They also have to use cars only for travel. At this point of extreme heat they just really can't think about money or environment anymore. Its a necessity nowdays
3. The amount the plastic use per person is tremendous, which is a huge problem in itself.
And literally there are a hundred more reasons.
When they say overpopulation, what they are saying is big business doesn't need as many workers.
You are the carbon they want to reduce
I'd say big business wants more customers to consume their products
The problem is you’re not asking the right question. A better question is what is the optimal population? clearly given the shortage of housing, and the number of humans, we are past the optimum population just because there’s no population bomb doesn’t mean anything. you’re asking the wrong question and getting the wrong answer as a result.
The housing shortage is in the metropolitan area not in literally anywhere else🤦♂, the earth is bigger than you think.
and it's true that earth at some points have its limit, but why not expand out to mars and other planet.
Interplanetary Exploration Is On a completely different timescale. Yes, the housing shortage is predominantly in metropolitan areas, but these are often the optimal areas to live. Plus constant expansion, given the labour resources required and the environmental Impact is below optimum. Expansion is possible, and there is still room, but this is still a subpar alternative.
@@freckrpeckr from you question for what is optimal population? I think you agree that it is not yet been reach.
I found an article said we can be net zero on global emissions in 2060 with exiting technology, I think its reasonable for thinking we will not dooming our planet any time soon, and for Interplanetary Exploration will probably even happen sooner than 2060 imo, look up Artemis project by NASA aimed having station on moon within this decade and other spacex project about mars.
Garvage video and thinking. There are too many people on earth. We are in overshoot. The ecology is doomed and we rely on the ecology to live. You say it yourself, "the world population is still growing." And the ecology is in decline over the years and continues to decline. So you still have growing population and increased damage to the ecology. And it is proven that all human activity contributes to greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, no matter how wealthy they are.
Sorry; Not convinced; SOME indicators may show a slow down in birth rates but real problem is an increase in average CONSUMPTION. That’s of all resources across the board!! Too many people, consuming too much. It’s ok though, in the end nature will sort it all out.
There's plenty for everyone. There are people starving, and people who are morbidly obese. Do the math.
Consumerism is not even correlated to population 😅
@@agwarden it's not just about food. it's about the amount of resource used by people. for example if everyone lived like the average american then we would need five earths. You do the maths.
there is an average level of consumerism per society but obviously there are many orders of magnitude between them, even in the same culture.
the op's view is still valid.
@@aethellstan that's because America is a consumer based society, which is the problem, not population.
The problem is mainly in the allocation of resources rather than their shortage.
Disagrre. We have too many people on the planet.
No, we have to many people on the internet 😀