Uncomfortable question: Is the world overpopulated?

[Lord Halifax]

no, there is plenty of food and room.  People in the 70s said the same sh**t then as you are now, and here we are 40 years later with WAY more people and WAY fewer people starving (never mind that we have MORE oil reserves now than then, never mind that there are more trees now than then).  Weird right?  The air was horrible, rivers were catching on fire, the number of active wars was crazy, terrorism was a several times worse...of course we should stop whomever is dumping plastic into the ocean (it's not from straws in the US or Europe), of course we should do what we can to clean up the messes we've made, but this "oh, it's so much worse now than it's ever been, whoa is us"  is bull sh**t.

Depends how you want to live.

[Lord Halifax]

The question is more complex than our resident negationists believe. It depends on several factors like resource availability, technology development, wealth distribution or the carrying capacity of ecosistems. World population is estimated to be 10 billion by 2050, while the productivity of farming land in many regions across the globe will be reduced as the climate crisis gets worse. Draw your own conclusions.

The new UN projections were released recently and they have revised downward slightly their projections to 9.7bn by 2050 and stabilizing at 10.8bn in 2100, but with steady decline after that.

The reality is that the UN has not captured the rapidity of fertility drops in Latin America, Africa, or east Asia.  Nations with rapidly dropping fertility suddenly see huge slowdowns or even reversals in the fertility rate declines as soon as the UN projections start with all nations averaging toward 1.9 by 2100.  But while we might be at 1.9 in 2100, we’re bound to go lower in between....rates are falling too quickly everywhere.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see the next projections down to 9.5bn in 2050 and 9.5bn in 2100 (with a peak in between)


My answer is:  no, not overpopulated.  China’s pollution problem has likely peaked and India’s will likely in the next several years.  There will be big issues in Africa.  But keep in mind the African nations with the highest fertility and growth pains are some of the least densely populated in the world.  Many countries can and will triple their populations and they’ll still be far less dense than Europe or South/East Asia.

Africa doesn’t have declining fertility or population growth rates.

In fact, Africa is growing faster than ever before, also in real terms - not just in absolute numbers.

Several censuses (or censi ?) have shown from Egypt to Malawi and Madagascar, that their population growth rates in the past decade increased compared with the decade before.

Which is expected. That doesnt negate what Snowguy is saying. UN population growth estimates are far too simplistic when it comes to measuring fertility. Its why they keep having to adjust their estimates down.

They have often adjusted them upwards.