Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Sy Borg]

I pointed out your poor use and interpretation of data and now you have retreated into pure ad hominem.

Actually, no. Your "pointing out" has never been about data. Data has been your greatest enemy in the threads about this subject.

When you claimed that humans have not overpopulated because there is much more microbial and plant biomass than human biomass, you made clear that you know nothing about biology, Thus, you are unqualified to comment usefully on this thread. So you throw figures around without understanding what they mean and claim you have "facts".

Since you know nothing about biology and care nothing for the welfare of other species, it's hardly a surprise that you're okay with billions more humans being born to consume the rest of nature. It is that very lack of knowledge of, and care for, other species that brought us to this Holocene Extinction Event.

[Count Lucanor]

Actually, no. Your "pointing out" has never been about data. Data has been your greatest enemy in the threads about this subject.

When you claimed that humans have not overpopulated because there is much more microbial and plant biomass than human biomass, you made clear that you know nothing about biology, Thus, you are unqualified to comment usefully on this thread. So you throw figures around without understanding what they mean and claim you have "facts".

So, here we can see the nonsensical connections that you make between statements, most likely the origin of your confusions and why you keep peddling a myth. I never claimed that the argument that proves that overpopulation is a myth is that there is more microbial and plant biomass. Against that myth I already gave you tons of sound arguments and evidence. But it was you who tried to present as an argument for the evidence of overpopulation that "a single species has taken over the planet" by overbreeding. And the facts of biomass simply destroy your argument. It reaffirms that human overwhelming power over nature has very little to do with the reproduction numbers of the species.

Since you know nothing about biology and care nothing for the welfare of other species, it's hardly a surprise that you're okay with billions more humans being born to consume the rest of nature. It is that very lack of knowledge of, and care for, other species that brought us to this Holocene Extinction Event.

It's obvious that for you this is all about your feelings, not biology, neither demography or any science, so your last resort is to throw the usual ad hominems and nonsensical claims such as "you're OK with this bad thing or the other". But I'm not here to debate my feelings or yours, or about what you or me care for or ignore. Suffice to say that I have advocated for a sustainable way of living of human society, with all that this implicates. But the issue at stake is clear: is there such thing as human overpopulation? The evidence is compelling that the answer is NO, there isn't.

[Sy Borg]

If you cared about other species then you would care about human overpopulation. It's that simple. Your weasel words don't hide your indifference towards other species. All you provide are statistics that in no way dampen the reality that humans and their domesticated animals make up 96% of mammal biomass. That was not always the case. It has happened very quickly. Humans overpopulating, with their high consumption needs, are the direct reason for the Holocene Extinction Event. Try wriggling out of that one.

Still, you might accept extinction events as natural, in which case, overpopulation is not possible, just destructive population levels. So we may just accept that means humans are transforming the biosphere, as some species do at times. However, on a practical level, our burgeoning numbers are a nightmare for both humans and other species.

I personally think the human demolition of the rest of the biosphere is as natural as the Permian Extinction Event, when blue-green algae eliminated most existent life forms but made the evolution of multicellular beings possible. However, it's in the interests of most living beings not to drive such changes but to slow them.

Giving the green light to more human infestation is simply wilful blindness to current events. You bet this is emotional. At this stage, extra humans equals a worse life for the rest of us ... at least most.

Who benefits from higher human populations? Not the people, who are already struggling to get by due to overcrowding/overpopulation. Certainly other species won't benefit from more humans. Only corporations, who "milk" us for our productivity and consumption. Corporations did a great number on humanitarians, managing to con natural leftists into championing capitalist causes (more consumers). It reminds me of how drug cartels played and benefitted from religious wowsers. Wide-eyed idealists are easy to manipulate once you find their hot buttons.

Exxon, the Rothschildren and Morgan & Stanley stand firmly behind you, Count. Keep fighting the good fight on their behalf.

[Sculptor1]

If you cared about other species then you would care about human overpopulation. It's that simple. Your weasel words don't hide your indifference towards other species. All you provide are statistics that in no way dampen the reality that humans and their domesticated animals make up 96% of mammal biomass. That was not always the case. It has happened very quickly. Humans overpopulating, with their high consumption needs, are the direct reason for the Holocene Extinction Event. Try wriggling out of that one.

Still, you might accept extinction events as natural, in which case, overpopulation is not possible, just destructive population levels. So we may just accept that means humans are transforming the biosphere, as some species do at times. However, on a practical level, our burgeoning numbers are a nightmare for both humans and other species.

I personally think the human demolition of the rest of the biosphere is as natural as the Permian Extinction Event, when blue-green algae eliminated most existent life forms but made the evolution of multicellular beings possible. However, it's in the interests of most living beings not to drive such changes but to slow them.

Giving the green light to more human infestation is simply wilful blindness to current events. You bet this is emotional. At this stage, extra humans equals a worse life for the rest of us ... at least most.

Who benefits from higher human populations? Not the people, who are already struggling to get by due to overcrowding/overpopulation. Certainly other species won't benefit from more humans. Only corporations, who "milk" us for our productivity and consumption. Corporations did a great number on humanitarians, managing to con natural leftists into championing capitalist causes (more consumers). It reminds me of how drug cartels played and benefitted from religious wowsers. Wide-eyed idealists are easy to manipulate once you find their hot buttons.

Exxon, the Rothschildren and Morgan & Stanley stand firmly behind you, Count. Keep fighting the good fight on their behalf.

His avatar is propping himself up by his elbows - that is because he has no legs to stand on.

[Jklint]

I personally think the human demolition of the rest of the biosphere is as natural as the Permian Extinction Event, when blue-green algae eliminated most existent life forms but made the evolution of multicellular beings possible.

This makes no sense at all as does most of this thread.

[Steve3007]

I personally think the human demolition of the rest of the biosphere is as natural as the Permian Extinction Event, when blue-green algae eliminated most existent life forms but made the evolution of multicellular beings possible.

This makes no sense at all as does most of this thread.

Because you've never heard of the Permian Extinction Event or because you don't buy the parallel between that and the Anthropocene extinction?

[Count Lucanor]

If you cared about other species then you would care about human overpopulation. It's that simple. Your weasel words don't hide your indifference towards other species.

Another one of you red herring fallacies, violating the distinction between fact and value. Equivalent to the fallacious argument: "If you had morals, you would accept the existence of God". I can point to human overpopulation being a fabricated myth and it will have nothing to do with what I care for. Also, deviating attention from the real causes of human impact on the environment, ultimately becomes detrimental to other species, not to mention to the humans that are being scorned as an infectious plague.

All you provide are statistics that in no way dampen the reality that humans and their domesticated animals make up 96% of mammal biomass. That was not always the case. It has happened very quickly. Humans overpopulating, with their high consumption needs, are the direct reason for the Holocene Extinction Event. Try wriggling out of that one.

Among all the stats I provided, the mammal biomass was included. It is a reality, but no one has ever shown that there's any relation between the distribution of mammals and their reproduction rates. The current distribution is actually caused by the type of human activities that came along with agrarian and industrial societies, and the technical advances that allowed a more extensive exploitation of resources. This fact means nothing to you because you're stuck with an ecological social theory which seeks to inscribe human culture and its history into the mold of natural processes. So you only look at species competing one against each other, in typical Social Darwinism fashion, as described in your next paragraph:

Still, you might accept extinction events as natural, in which case, overpopulation is not possible, just destructive population levels. So we may just accept that means humans are transforming the biosphere, as some species do at times. However, on a practical level, our burgeoning numbers are a nightmare for both humans and other species.

I personally think the human demolition of the rest of the biosphere is as natural as the Permian Extinction Event, when blue-green algae eliminated most existent life forms but made the evolution of multicellular beings possible. However, it's in the interests of most living beings not to drive such changes but to slow them.

Giving the green light to more human infestation is simply wilful blindness to current events. You bet this is emotional. At this stage, extra humans equals a worse life for the rest of us ... at least most.

So there it is, your ideology as I just explained above. Fine, except that you cannot help but fall in a weird contradiction: while positing the human relation with the environment as necessarily driven by supposedly "natural" forces, exempt from the influence of socially-constructed cultural institutions, you then bring in back, smuggled as an emotional response, your particular socially-constructed ideology. It wouldn't make sense a lion embracing the law of the jungle and then complaining to his fellows about the immoral behavior of another pride of lions. And so you actually end up saying something like the "interests of most living beings". Really? Have you already talked to algae and groundhogs and they told you about their interests?

Exxon, the Rothschildren and Morgan & Stanley stand firmly behind you, Count. Keep fighting the good fight on their behalf.

Since you seem to be quite immersed in conspiracy theory, you failed to mention that I'm an agent of the Illuminati and the Reptilians. But also, since you are so fond of attributing obscure motivations to my factual arguments, why stop there and not mention that the overpopulation narrative, ever since its Malthusian beginnings, has been associated to the eugenics movement, and thus its urgent demand for controlling the "disquieting presence" of population deemed as unfit to reproduce. So, while I supposedly keep fighting for Rothschild and Exxon, the Paris Hiltons of the world can keep fighting for their pets as more important than those disturbing Africans.

[Sy Borg]

I can see why JKlint thinks this thread makes no sense. Here you are, furiously trying to distract from the fact that you are essentially arguing that black is white. That we are overpopulated with humans is simply indisputable.

As we see the high rises, the pollution, the extinctions, climate change, habitat destruction, crowds, pandemics, gridlocks and a key sign of overpopulation - widespread misanthropy - one has to wonder what it would take for you to admit what is very, very obvious to all but demographers, theists, multinational companies and the politicians in their thrall.

Meanwhile, the errors in your last post are too many to bother with. You mistake observation for ideology. You fail to see the connection between overpopulation and extinctions. You fail to understand, or display any interest in, the seriousness of the situation for large mammals, most of which are now endangered. Then you make shallow claims about my "ideals". The fact is that I have no ideals because I am an analyst by training and occupation. So I simply observe situations and comment. I observe the current situation and see that it's bleeding obvious that 1) there are too many people and 2) inequality is extreme. When fewer than a hundred people have about the same amount of assets that the poorest four billion people, and the former have access to the best lethal automated technology, the power imbalance is such that it is difficult to imagine what the masses can do but watch it all unfold

The fact is that giant investment firms and other multinationals - and their owned politicians - benefit from growing populations. Theists who see humans as divine also want more humans and fewer other species. Do you deny this? Do you deny that such organisations lobby to achieve their ends, even if the majority of people oppose those ends?

[Count Lucanor]

That we are overpopulated with humans is simply indisputable.

Repeating a lie a thousand times will not make it true.
Dismissing the tons of data and research on the subject does not make it disappear.
Ignoring the disputes doesn't make something indisputable.


How racist myths built the population growth bogey-man
Overpopulation – The Human Explosion Explained
Sierra Club -The Overpopulation Myth and its Dangerous Connotations
7 Billion People: Everybody Relax!
The Overpopulation Myth
https://www.worldometers.info/world-pop ... n-by-year/
https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth
Guess who is destroying the environment

[Pattern-chaser]

That we are overpopulated with humans is simply indisputable.

Repeating a lie a thousand times will not make it true.

[...]

The Overpopulation Myth

The sub-heading of one of the items you link to - The Overpopulation Myth - says what I have been saying, that it's not our numbers that are the direct problem, but our consumption:

The idea that growing human numbers will destroy the planet is nonsense. But over-consumption will.

But population certainly affects and exacerbates consumption, so (over)population is a problem, but perhaps not the problem.

[Sculptor1]

Repeating a lie a thousand times will not make it true.

[...]

The Overpopulation Myth

The sub-heading of one of the items you link to - The Overpopulation Myth - says what I have been saying, that it's not our numbers that are the direct problem, but our consumption:

The idea that growing human numbers will destroy the planet is nonsense. But over-consumption will.

But population certainly affects and exacerbates consumption, so (over)population is a problem, but perhaps not the problem.

Since I assert that I should not be privileged to have more than any other person, then the current population is an over-population.

If I should claim that I should act only as if the maxims of my action were to become through my will a universal law of morality, then the world is overpopulated.

If I should want to justify my existence on the planet and the use of the resources that I, and my kin take for granted, and as a right, then the world is over populated.

I suggest that each of us here on this Forum, given our level of consumption, would have to assert that the world is over populated or accept that slavery and exploitation of our fellow humans is an acceptable price to pay for our pleasure and comfort.

[Steve3007]

Re: The Overpopulation Myth.

My main issue with that article, and similar in other articles, is this:

True, some of those extra poor people might one day become rich. And if they do—and I hope they do—their impact on the planet will be greater. But it is the height of arrogance for us in the rich world to downplay the importance of our own environmental footprint because future generations of poor people might one day have the temerity to get as rich and destructive as us. How dare we?

I hope they do too. That's the whole point. That's the straw man that these kinds of articles attack - the idea that people who argue for lower population growth, or population shrinkage, do so in order to arrogantly keep the poor in their place. The opposite is true.

We already know that 7+ billion people living the lifestyles of people like us, with current technology and consumption habits, is unsustainable. And we also know that we don't want to respond to that fact by keeping the current level of global inequality as it is so that we don't have to change our habits. I wouldn't want a world in which we say "global human population growth is not a problem as long as everyone except me stays poor". If we aspire to a genuine global free market in goods and labour, then we aspire to the leveling up that that brings. The best way to do that sustainably is a combination of a leveling off or dropping of human population and improvements in technology and changes to consumption habits which allow the newly equalized global population to have a much smaller environmental footprint per person than currently exists in the richest countries.

A lot of the rest of the article is about how global population growth is slowing. Great. Glad to hear it. But obviously stating that as a good thing hardly supports the argument that continued population growth in no problem.

[Steve3007]

Since I assert that I should not be privileged to have more than any other person, then the current population is an over-population.

Precisely.

[Sculptor1]

That we are overpopulated with humans is simply indisputable.

Repeating a lie a thousand times will not make it true.
Dismissing the tons of data and research on the subject does not make it disappear.
Ignoring the disputes doesn't make something indisputable.


How racist myths built the population growth bogey-man
Overpopulation – The Human Explosion Explained
Sierra Club -The Overpopulation Myth and its Dangerous Connotations
7 Billion People: Everybody Relax!
The Overpopulation Myth
https://www.worldometers.info/world-pop ... n-by-year/
https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth
Guess who is destroying the environment

Despite the drop in the rate of growth..

Extra number of human this year. 42.2 MILLION, so far.

Population growth TODAY 146,000.

There are only 7000 cheatahs in the world.
There are only 40,000 elephants left in the world.

[Sculptor1]

But population certainly affects and exacerbates consumption, so (over)population is a problem, but perhaps not the problem.

Not the ONLY problem.
But until the rate of growth goes below ONE, then it will continue to be a problem, a problem that increases all other problems by this factor every day...
147,000 more people so far today.