I do think we have too many people, which is one reason I limited myself to two children. The world population doubled in my lifetime. We needn’t grow and a slow, moderate, natural decrease would be ideal.
People who think we can fill every nook and cranny with humans must not see how we are encroaching upon animal habitats. The deer have no choice but to enter our developed spaces. We can see the deer; we don’t see what’s happening to the smaller animals. And people shrug off the population drop of birds and insects, but that is NOT a good sign.
Why on earth does anyone want MORE people?
Btw, there’s plenty of cheap housing in many smaller towns. People mostly overlook that, but it’s how I manage to own a house in a safe, quiet, walkable neighborhood.
The perspective laid out here is, in my opinion, far too optimistic. Strict Malthusianism has been debunked, certainly. Yet when in the course of known human history have we faced a potential catastrophe like climate change? We are seeing vast areas of the globe becoming more and more uninhabitable, with no quick, effective or cost friendly way of stopping it. When the billions of displaced peoples from Subsaharan and MENA start to migrate to Europe, are we going to say that is was bad or good that attempts to limit population in those regions failed?
I understand that Christians, serious Christians that is, do not believe that problems will ever become existential outside of the End of Days. But for those of us less confident of divine intervention, can there not be some grace given for our dissent from a maximalist pro-human and pro-natalist position?
Climate change isn't a result of too many people but too much over consumption, which tends to happen in places with the sparsest populations. People just fill in the gap with unsustainable living practices.
People are the solution to climate change because they can create new and better technologies. It's the anti-people stagnation that has caused the can to be kicked too far down the road that are the problem.
This too - the overpopulation panic was premised on the idea that the fundamental variable in environmental degradation was the raw number of people, not the consumption or efficiency of resource use of a given number of people. That's really the point of my piece: that rejecting Malthusianism and avoiding environmental crisis (though that part wasn't really part of my argument here) may require some giving up of conveniences or excesses that we are used to in rich countries. Especially the enshrining of the single-family house with a lawn in an automobile-oriented land-use pattern.
The problem with this kind of thinking is that it is moralist, rather than practical. If you want people to take their medicine, you have to sugar coat it.
Overconsumption has never been and never will be a saleable position. The Savonarola/Carter impulse never gets very far for very long. The best way to get people to consume less is to make consuming less seem like consuming more. For example, selling bike riding not as a downgrade from luxurious car driving but as a signal of higher status.
As for the point on technology, here we just have to face some hard truths. The technologies that will reverse climate change will be discovered in a lab in the West or possible in Asia. They will not come out of the regions with the highest birth rates. They just won’t. It would be lovely if they did, but they won’t. The only thing being produced in Chad and Niger and Nigeria etc, is misery, corruption and overall human degradation.
"They will not come out of the regions with the highest birth rates. They just won’t. It would be lovely if they did, but they won’t. The only thing being produced in Chad and Niger and Nigeria etc, is misery, corruption and overall human degradation."
Ok, but that's what was said about much of Asia up until a few decades ago! Look, it seems as though economic development does imply lower birth rates, but again, that kind of *happens*, it doesn't require an ideology.
Fair enough. None of us know the future but I’d be willing to make a bet, up into the several thousands, that in 50 years the situation will be unimproved or worse. Almighty Providence, prove me wrong! 🙏
Aren't _desired_ fertility rates in many African countries considerably lower than actual fertility rates? Supplying those countries with free contraception sounds like a win-win, which would be opposed only for religious reasons (our host's own faith may be a problem there!) or by sadism-motivated racists.
I think human populations and birth rates will probably adjust to those things, absent a Western and explicitly anti-population growth ideology. And I don't believe in declaring preemptive defeat on climate change. Yes, I am a Christian, maybe that makes me too hopeful. But even discounting that, human ingenuity remains unmatched.
Tell me how you dissent from a "maximalist pro-human" position?
I tend to think, as a realist, that people are fundamentally selfish or better put, clannish. It takes a huge amount of ideological pressure to change attitudes towards a more broadly pro-social viewpoint. So I am deeply understanding of those who see density and migration, even within a single nation, as bad. I happen to believe that such things are unavoidable and thus we should do everything we can to make density human-scale and beautiful; gentle density. Where we do not indulge, even pander to natural human selfishness, the result will be blanket hostility, as we see today.
I'm curious as to whether Paul Ehrlich only became a misanthrope _after_ moving to California.
I do think we have too many people, which is one reason I limited myself to two children. The world population doubled in my lifetime. We needn’t grow and a slow, moderate, natural decrease would be ideal.
People who think we can fill every nook and cranny with humans must not see how we are encroaching upon animal habitats. The deer have no choice but to enter our developed spaces. We can see the deer; we don’t see what’s happening to the smaller animals. And people shrug off the population drop of birds and insects, but that is NOT a good sign.
Why on earth does anyone want MORE people?
Btw, there’s plenty of cheap housing in many smaller towns. People mostly overlook that, but it’s how I manage to own a house in a safe, quiet, walkable neighborhood.
The perspective laid out here is, in my opinion, far too optimistic. Strict Malthusianism has been debunked, certainly. Yet when in the course of known human history have we faced a potential catastrophe like climate change? We are seeing vast areas of the globe becoming more and more uninhabitable, with no quick, effective or cost friendly way of stopping it. When the billions of displaced peoples from Subsaharan and MENA start to migrate to Europe, are we going to say that is was bad or good that attempts to limit population in those regions failed?
I understand that Christians, serious Christians that is, do not believe that problems will ever become existential outside of the End of Days. But for those of us less confident of divine intervention, can there not be some grace given for our dissent from a maximalist pro-human and pro-natalist position?
Climate change isn't a result of too many people but too much over consumption, which tends to happen in places with the sparsest populations. People just fill in the gap with unsustainable living practices.
People are the solution to climate change because they can create new and better technologies. It's the anti-people stagnation that has caused the can to be kicked too far down the road that are the problem.
This too - the overpopulation panic was premised on the idea that the fundamental variable in environmental degradation was the raw number of people, not the consumption or efficiency of resource use of a given number of people. That's really the point of my piece: that rejecting Malthusianism and avoiding environmental crisis (though that part wasn't really part of my argument here) may require some giving up of conveniences or excesses that we are used to in rich countries. Especially the enshrining of the single-family house with a lawn in an automobile-oriented land-use pattern.
The problem with this kind of thinking is that it is moralist, rather than practical. If you want people to take their medicine, you have to sugar coat it.
Overconsumption has never been and never will be a saleable position. The Savonarola/Carter impulse never gets very far for very long. The best way to get people to consume less is to make consuming less seem like consuming more. For example, selling bike riding not as a downgrade from luxurious car driving but as a signal of higher status.
As for the point on technology, here we just have to face some hard truths. The technologies that will reverse climate change will be discovered in a lab in the West or possible in Asia. They will not come out of the regions with the highest birth rates. They just won’t. It would be lovely if they did, but they won’t. The only thing being produced in Chad and Niger and Nigeria etc, is misery, corruption and overall human degradation.
"They will not come out of the regions with the highest birth rates. They just won’t. It would be lovely if they did, but they won’t. The only thing being produced in Chad and Niger and Nigeria etc, is misery, corruption and overall human degradation."
Ok, but that's what was said about much of Asia up until a few decades ago! Look, it seems as though economic development does imply lower birth rates, but again, that kind of *happens*, it doesn't require an ideology.
Fair enough. None of us know the future but I’d be willing to make a bet, up into the several thousands, that in 50 years the situation will be unimproved or worse. Almighty Providence, prove me wrong! 🙏
Aren't _desired_ fertility rates in many African countries considerably lower than actual fertility rates? Supplying those countries with free contraception sounds like a win-win, which would be opposed only for religious reasons (our host's own faith may be a problem there!) or by sadism-motivated racists.
I think human populations and birth rates will probably adjust to those things, absent a Western and explicitly anti-population growth ideology. And I don't believe in declaring preemptive defeat on climate change. Yes, I am a Christian, maybe that makes me too hopeful. But even discounting that, human ingenuity remains unmatched.
Tell me how you dissent from a "maximalist pro-human" position?
I tend to think, as a realist, that people are fundamentally selfish or better put, clannish. It takes a huge amount of ideological pressure to change attitudes towards a more broadly pro-social viewpoint. So I am deeply understanding of those who see density and migration, even within a single nation, as bad. I happen to believe that such things are unavoidable and thus we should do everything we can to make density human-scale and beautiful; gentle density. Where we do not indulge, even pander to natural human selfishness, the result will be blanket hostility, as we see today.