We have a fucken efficiency problem. All of these resources, and especially water, are wasted to the nth degree. We could definitely provide for all of these people if providing for people was the goal of our governments, it is not. Everything sucks because everyone is playing their own little game of Settlers of Catarn instead of trying to work together to equally and equitably share the world's resources. There is always the same amount of water on Earth, and we have decided to use it in incredibly wasteful ways.
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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There was 1.5B when my great-grandparents were born (1898), 3.7B for me (1971). Now there are 8.1B souls, better off economically and consuming to match.
Don't tell me we have enough food, "if it wasn't for evil peoples!". Don't care, we don't have enough water. We're draining aquifers that took 1,000s of years to fill, major cities are basically out of water all over the globe. And that was before AI!
Immigrant hate? Overpopulation. As a kid, most folks looked like you. By middle age, the world is clearly shittier, but the economy was on an upward trajectory for great-grandad, grandad and dad, but not for you. You look around today. Suddenly there are shitloads of poor people who don't look like you! See how that works? (I don't think the haters understand this.)
Global warming? Did I mention people are far better off and wanting their share? Global poverty rates dropped through the floor. The newly "rich" want to enjoy the life the rest of us had. Can't blame 'em. Look at China, still building coal plants to get "caught up". Remember the crazy smog in their major cities? LA was like that when I was a kid.
Hell, even the billionaires wouldn't be so rich and have so much influence if there were half the people to get rich off and influence. Orgs like FB and AWS could not exist as they do now with half the customers, scale wouldn't be there. If I could get one penny off every human, once a year, I'd be making $81,000.
Best part? Depopulation and deflation are economic disasters. Don't know of a time in history where we successfully navigated depopulation in the short to midterm.
EDIT: Forgot to add! We've lost 74% of the animals on Earth since I was born. That's on human activity, and lately, global warming. Our ecosystems are crashing, and unrecoverable in some cases. As one example: There are too many humans who don't want bugs around. If you're 40-50+, you knew a very different world. Hell, if you're 30, I can show you ways the local ecosystem has crashed out, ways you'll remember. "Oh shit! I forgot it was like that!"
Guess I'm wrong. We just need to allocate food, water and wealth fairly (which has rarely if ever happened). Stop pollution in the form of CO2, plastics, herbicides, pesticides etc. All while elevating the way of life for 8B, soon to be 9B, humans. Oh, and every tribe, counter to our entire history and evolution, should suddenly love one another. And somehow, we magically stomp out the wealthy. Super simple stuff! Easier than saying, "Maybe there's too many of us?"
Yep! No reason we can't quintuple the world population in a 100-years, along with unprecedented wealth, technology and prosperity. If we were just smarter about it, all be fine!
I factually did not say that. I said "we could support everyone equally if we tried" I did not say that it would equal a life of wealth or even equate to the standard of living we are used to today. I don't know what it would be like exactly, but it definitely can be done. There are people consuming quintuple the amount of resources they would need during their entire lives.
Fact: We have quintupled the human population.
Fact: Poverty rates have cratered.
Messy writing: Didn't mean we could quintuple the standard of living. But 2 billion people were living in mud huts when I was a child. I'm arguing we can't support 8B+ souls in a Western middle-class fashion. And more are rising out of poverty every day!
Forgot a major point I'll add to the OP: We've lost 74% of the animals on Earth since I was born. That's on human activity. Well, and now global warming.
If we go on like we are you are right, we will crash and burn. But if we gave it an honest try, said fuck billionaires, we could do it. Its not hard to house everyone the people with power just dont want to. Its not hard to feed everyone, just once again the people with power dont want to solve that problem. The problem is inefficiencies in beauracracy that govern our material conditions. Our governments were never formed to care for anyone, not even their citizens. Our governments were formed to excerpt someone's will over a population and control it. This might have been useful in the distant past, but as societies become more educated and mature it turns negative as less people actually need to be governed. But in reality we did not give human permanence an honest try so yeah maybe you are right. It might be too late now, its probably tine to ready for the mass extinction event currently unfolding
Throughout human history, wealth inequality has been the primary driver of societal collapse.
Yes, but that has no bearing on what OP and my man EO Wilson is saying.
I'm pretty sure the real issue is resource allocation, we have tremendous resources and the knowledge to use them, they're just mostly owned by a very very small percentage of the population and the current system supports that, like it mostly has throughout history
We have 100s of millions living in fucking deserts. Please do tell how we allocate resources?
There are 10,000,000 souls in Tehran, out of water. But if they were just smarter we could support them! The Colorado River is damned near about to stop flowing, as is the Red River. Mexico City is the largest city in North America, semi-arid, out of water.
And here I'm only touching on water issues. How about the rest?
Are you joking? There are hundreds of different ways to get water to them. If you move any physical resources into a place, chances are high you can move water in the same way.
There’s also just building pipelines and extra desalination plants along the coasts or some more exotic methods of water extraction from the air or earth depending on how you want to do things.
Point is that we have the technology to produce as much fresh water as we could probably ever have a desire for. Fresh water is an extensible resource. And as long as we have vehicles, we can get that water to the people who need it (though pipelines would be more efficient).
So why does it seem like water is scarce if it isn’t? Because it requires infrastructure to produce, and—while building that infrastructure is very possible and not difficult at all for a developed country—few countries would pay to save the lives of the less fortunate unless it benefited them economically.
In other words, the scarcity you mention only exists due to the greed and selfishness of those with economic resources. Overpopulation isn’t the issue, economic systems that value money/revenue over the lives of others (capitalism) are the issue.
Edit: Also, the rivers running dry is mostly an issue with wasted water and allocation of that water (as the commenter above mentioned). Both of which would be drastically decreased if profit wasn't controlling their regulation more than preservation or societal benefit.
The unsustainable simply and brutally, won't be sustained. Degrowth is a deliberate managed descent back to sustainability. The alternative is degradation and collapse.
I have my eye on Japan. They seem determined to see depopulation through without immigration. They're going to be the test case on navigating this mess.
Yes, the obvious near-term solution is taking in immigrants. But those stubborn bastards refuse, so let's see how they play this.
Where did you live in the 70s where everybody looked like you?
Tulsa, OK. Everybody white. Hispanics were non-existent, black folks were rare enough and segregated to the north side. I literally never met an Hispanic kid and only had a vague notion of what the word meant. Lived in a one square-mile, middle-class neighborhood, smack in the middle of town, not a single black family. Hard to believe looking back, but there were only a couple of black kids in the surrounding hoods. I know that sounds like a bougie part of town, it was very middle of the road.
When I moved to Florida 20-years ago, about zero Hispanics until they came to save our ass after Hurricane Ivan. Having moved from Chicago, about 1/3rd black/white/Hispanic, I was like, "Where the brown people at?!" Very strange and I commented on it at the time, a lot. Locals didn't know what I was talking about.
That may sound weird given today's demographics, but that's the reality I lived. Now my street on the edge of a redneck burb is a perfect demographic snapshot of the local town. 35% black, 65% white, 1% Asian (my wife). Still no Hispanics!
So, imagine a middle-aged guy who never moved from those first two areas. He's watching everything go to shit, knows his near-ancestors had it better and better, what's different?! And no one talks about it! But the haters knew exactly what button to push.
CAVEAT: If you're young or from a major metro area, this will sound like utter bullshit. I'm just relating my experiences.
To be fair, before you were born Tulsa had a lot more black people in prominent neighborhoods. The white people literally massacred them and ran them out of town so you could live in your “Hispanics nonexistent/ blacks rare” white community.
Ecofascist nonsense. Grow up.
And here you are, without a single rebuttal to my many points. Not a single word to say to counter me, just name calling.
How would you rate your knowledge of ecology on a scale of 1-10, 10 being highest?
How many papers do you read in a year?
How many related journals do you have access to?
Just curious.
The one that blows my mind is housing.
People are astounded that a city that has grown by an order of magnitude by population but not by area is somehow significantly more expensive.
... is the one problem we humans are solving proactively and voluntarily
World got wealthier (compared to subsistence farming) and urban and populations now on the way to halving
Wish I shared your optimism. Got data on the populations halving? Maybe by 2275 or so...
(Serious question!)
OK TBF yes actual absolute size of population down 50% is probably 2200's. Ecology is long-term planning.
But fertility rate has already dropped below replacement rate in Europe, N & S Americas, and Asia. The long term trend is already taking pressure off pretty much everywhere but Africa.
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