There are many problems in the world but contrary to common wisdom overpopulation need not be one. However, there are many, some of them sincere socialists or environmentalists who consider that there are too many people on the planet to make the future sustainable. This month’s Socialist Standard carried an article that went a little way to allay such fears. This is the first of series of posts also addressing the issue of population numbers.
Although there are now more people in the world than ever before, by any meaningful measure the world is actually becoming relatively less populated. Overpopulation describes a situation where there are too many people for the amount of resources available. It puts the blame for the environmental crisis on the sheer number of people on the planet. Natural scientist David Attenborough sums up this sentiment when he said, “We are a plague on the Earth. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us…” Not only is this idea of overpopulation oversimplified and inaccurate, it upholds a paradigm of scarcity and fear that goes against the core teachings of socialists. Overpopulation, as a topic, distracts from looking at the ways our current economic system fail us. The root cause of human suffering is not overpopulation per se.
7 billion is a big number but most serious demographers, economists and population specialists rarely use the term “overpopulation” — because there is no clear demographic definition. If population density is the correct yardstick, then Monaco, with more than 16,000 people per square kilometer, has a far greater problem than, say, Bangladesh and its 1,000 people per square kilometer. There are plenty of densely populated regions that are prosperous. The Earth is a planet. It has a finite volume, mass, and surface area. Its surface area is 510,065,600 square kilometers—148,939,100 square kilometers of land. We draw resources like water, oil, and coal from that tiny surface to feed ourselves and fuel our economy. There’s only so much of the stuff to go around. The more people there are, the more they consume and the less they leave for everyone else. This line of reasoning seems plausible. But it rests on a false assumption, namely, that humans are mere consumers rather than creators. Of course, we don’t create from nothing. Our labour is enhanced by technology.
“What most frequently meets our view (and occasions complaint) is our teeming population. Our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly support us . . . . In very deed, pestilence, and famine, and wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race.” This was not written by Paul Ehrlich. It did not even come from Thomas Malthus. It comes from Tertullian, a resident of the city of Carthage in the second century when the population of the world was about 190 million, or only three to four percent of what it is today. The catastrophists have been predicting doom and gloom for centuries. Perhaps the single significant thing about this is that the catastrophists seem never to have stopped quite long enough to notice that their predictions have never materialised
Mankind has always been worried about overpopulation. On an almost daily basis, we are fed a barrage of stories in the newspapers and on television—complete with such appropriately lurid headlines as “Earth Near the Breaking Point” and “Population Explosion Continues Unabated”—predicting the imminent starvation of millions because the population is outstripping the food supply. We regularly hear that because of population growth we are rapidly depleting our resource base with catastrophic consequences looming in our immediate future. We are constantly told that we are running out of living space and that unless something is done, and done immediately, to curb population growth, the world will be covered by a mass of humanity, with people jammed elbow to elbow and condemned to fight for each inch of space. But isn’t the world overpopulated? Aren’t we headed toward catastrophe? Don’t more people mean less food, fewer resources, a lower standard of living, and less living space for everyone?
The world has and is experiencing a population explosion that began in the eighteenth century. World population rose sixfold in the next 200 years. But this explosion was accompanied, and in large part made possible, by a productivity explosion, a resource explosion, a food explosion, an information explosion, a communications explosion, a science explosion, and a medical explosion. People are able to live healthier lives. Infant mortality rates plummeted and life expectancies soared.
Overpopulation must be overpopulation relative to something, usually food, resources, and living space. There has been a sixfold increase in world population dwarfed by the eighty-fold increase in world output. There is currently enough food to feed everyone in the world. And there is a consensus among experts that global food production could be increased dramatically if needed. The major problem for the developed countries of the world is food surpluses. In the United States, for example, millions of acres of good cropland lie unused each year. Many experts believe that even with no advances in science or technology, we currently have the capacity to feed adequately, on a sustainable basis, 40 to 50 billion people, or about eight to ten times the current world population. And we are currently at the dawn of a new agricultural revolution, biotechnology, which has the potential to increase agricultural productivity dramatically.
If the entire population of the world was placed in the state of Alaska, every individual would receive nearly 3,500 square feet of space or about one-half the size of the average American family homestead with front and back yards. Alaska is a big state, but it is a mere one percent of the earth’s land mass. Less than one-half of one percent of the world’s ice-free land area is used for human settlements.
Except in extreme famine and other natural disasters such as blight and crop failures, scarcity is a culturally mediated reality; it is largely created by industrial economics and power, rather than actual physical limits to growth. Overpopulation justifies the scapegoating and human rights violations of poor people, women, people of colour and immigrant communities. The subtext of “too many people” translates to too many poor people, people of colour and immigrants. In the 1970’s Puerto Rico, under the control of and with funding from the US government, forced the sterilization of 35% of women of child-bearing age . This is a human and reproductive rights violation. It also prevents us from dealing with the real social, political and economic origins of our ecological problems and places the blame on communities with less institutional power. This perpetuates a fear mindset, keeps people divided and blaming each other rather than being able to come together to organize for true self-determination and security. Overpopulation points the finger at individuals, not systems: This lets the real culprits off the hook. When we look at the true causes of environmental destruction and poverty it is often social, political and economic systems, not individuals. We see militaries and the toxic legacy of war, corrupt governments, and a capitalist economic system that puts profit over people and the environment. The founder of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin said, “If we live in a grow or die capitalistic society in which accumulation is literally the law of economic survival and competition is the motor of progress, anything we have to say about population being the cause of ecological crisis is meaningless." Focusing on overpopulation prevents us from creating effective solutions and building movements for collective self-determination. The more we blame fellow humans and think we are bad and evil, it is harder to believe in ourselves, count on each other, and build a collective movement for social justice. Scholar, scientist, and activist, Vandana Shiva said, “Hunger and malnutrition are man-made. They are hardwired in the design of the industrial, chemical model of agriculture. But just as hunger is created by design, healthy and nutritious food for all can also be designed, through food democracy.”
