Global warming is important, but only one environmental problem, so important to consider here, but not the only environmental issue.
Contributing to every environmental issue, including this one, is overpopulation. Humans have altered every continent, reducing biodiversity, introducing species that don't handle local climates as well, or too well and displace existing ones, making extinct species, and so on. I'm no expert, but the situation in Australia looks related to huge cities and lots of farms supporting a much larger human population than had ever lived there reducing biodiversity and resilience to fire, exacerbated by global warming.
People fear discussing overpopulation because they only know of China's policy and eugenics, as did I until I learned of the successful, non-coercive policies of Thailand, Iran, Mexico, etc that increased peace, prosperity, and stability.
Those examples show that we can peacefully and stably lower birth rate to increase peace and prosperity and ease all other environmental problems. Steady-state following de-growth works more successfully on a full finite planet than pushing economic and population growth forever, which exacerbates problems like these and increases their impact on humans and other wildlife.
I completely agree. It’s taboo to even discuss it, and we have a developed a “technology will come save us” cult around solving these problems that I don’t think is healthy. The infrastructure we have doesn’t scale well to this many people.
I get sad when I’m in a parking lot and I see a flock of Geese walking around the empty parking lot trying to dodge traffic. To me it really encapsulates the overall issue. Nobody thinks twice about it.
> the situation in Australia looks related to huge cities and lots of farms supporting a much larger human population than had ever lived there reducing biodiversity and resilience to fire,
Australia is one of the most sparsely populated countries on the planet. And the land that is burning is (relatively undisturbed) native forest, not farmland or ‘huge’ (?) cities.
With zero net overseas migration, the population would stabilise at 27 million then fall slightly. This is the most important change that could be made to assist the Australian environment, but sadly discussing immigration is completely disallowed in mainstream Australian media.
There is no need to limit birthrates - they are already sub-replacement in Australia. Just cut immigration.
I think the thing that you’re not addressing though is that this isn’t a national problem, it’s global. Australia isn’t on fire just because there are too many people within the borders of Australia, it’s on fire because of global changes caused by growing populations that don’t care about being sustainable.
Immigration puts a greater demand on land for that purpose. Plus, a greater population in Australia means a net increase in global emissions - since the vast majority of migrants are from three poorer countries: India, China, Nepal.
> Contributing to every environmental issue, including this one, is overpopulation.
Citation needed. Why is 7.7 billion people a problem? IMHO earth as it is today can accommodate 9 or 10 billion people without problems. (And like you, I have no citation as well.)
We currently utilise 50% -- the best, most fertile, productive 50% -- of the earth's landmass. What remains is marginal land, scrub, forests, permafrost, mountains, savannah, deserts etc, or is simply too hot or too cold for us to live comfortably. We're mistreating land with over fertilisation and suffering steady soil loss everywhere that's adopted post-war industrial agriculture. Many of those bits of rubbish land, forests and wildlife preserves we're not using are chopped up by pipelines, roads, rail affecting viability of the species broken up and interfering with natural migration and regrowth. Wildlife and wilderness has no chance.
We're clear cutting forest to make monoculture grazing land, or to plant thousands of acres of uninterrupted soya, palm oil and other major crops. As environmental awareness grows we're doing that at accelerated rate. Europe was clearcut in liveable areas in the Middle Ages, yet we've shown little to no sign of most noticing our colossal destructive impact. We just started importing big trees and colonising.
Borneo has gone from essentially untouched in the 1980s to 50% cleared now. Earth overshoot day puts us as needing 1.7 earths to sustain the current rate of regrowable use (it only considers replaceable resources, not mining and minerals). 10bn would push that up to over 2.
A sustainable population would probably be 1 or 2bn, if we want to allow a little room for the unforeseen.
Most of these billions of people have a much lower material quality of life than you or I, which is demonstrably unsustainable re: global warming etc. Nobody wants their quality of life to decline-- Austerity is always proposed as a solution for Other People. And technological solutions are a matter of faith at this point. So it seems reasonable to consider overpopulation a problem.
Global warming is important, but only one environmental problem, so important to consider here, but not the only environmental issue.
Contributing to every environmental issue, including this one, is overpopulation. Humans have altered every continent, reducing biodiversity, introducing species that don't handle local climates as well, or too well and displace existing ones, making extinct species, and so on. I'm no expert, but the situation in Australia looks related to huge cities and lots of farms supporting a much larger human population than had ever lived there reducing biodiversity and resilience to fire, exacerbated by global warming.
People fear discussing overpopulation because they only know of China's policy and eugenics, as did I until I learned of the successful, non-coercive policies of Thailand, Iran, Mexico, etc that increased peace, prosperity, and stability.
I first learned of successful noncoercive birthrate reducing policies through Alan Weisman's excellent Countdown https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Last-Best-Future-Earth/dp/0..., and of the critical importance of population through Limits to Growth https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/19....
Those examples show that we can peacefully and stably lower birth rate to increase peace and prosperity and ease all other environmental problems. Steady-state following de-growth works more successfully on a full finite planet than pushing economic and population growth forever, which exacerbates problems like these and increases their impact on humans and other wildlife.