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me_irl
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this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2026
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me_irl
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Overpopulation is causing so many problems; this is a good thing.
Controversial, but I dont think overpopulation is the problem folks think it is. More hands can mean more trees planted and more wind turbines built as much as it means oil refineries. Overpopulation is only an issue if you're coasting off shared resources.
we use close to two earths a year unsustainably right now. Sustainably we will have to use much less especially given the head room that will be necessary for biosphere healing. We are totally overpopulated for our current situation. The idea that we will destroy it more to figure out how to do it better is not a rational way of thinking.
That's not an overpopulation problem that's a united statesian uses ten times the resources of the average human problem. And yes, population scientists are confidently predicting we're going to max out at 13-15 billion people based on birth rates declining in the future. So overpopulation will never be a problem. The problem is overconsumption in particular large countries.
we are already overpopulated. even by european, japan, korea consumption standards.
Yes, I get it, beating on the US is a fun thing to do, especially right now. But if you think there's anything particularly wicked or decadent about Americans by nature, then you're no different than the countless racist despots that have caused untold human misery through the ages. Every time someone makes an assumption that another group of people is somehow more evil by nature, that assumption has been proven wrong again and again. People are just people.
What you're missing is that while the US does currently use an outsized amount of resources, we only do so because we are wealthy. If tomorrow everyone in the US dropped dead, the cost of various resources would decline, but all those resources would still be used. Sure a more globally equitable distribution of resources would be a good thing, but it won't do anything to help humanity's total environmental impact.
Earth has 8 billion people on it. The poorest 7 billion are scraping and scratching as hard as they can to live the same lifestyle as the richest 1 billion.
Well for one im not in charge of anything so that's a big difference between me and a despot.
and yeah the US is currently led by one of those countless racist despots so yes that's what's happening in this country, you are correct.
There's a lot here to unpack, and it conflates things that don't really make sense to conflate. Like, Americans using too many resources being a wealth issue is circular because wealth means resources. Maybe to make the perspective of others more clear, we're saying that this zero-sum understanding of resource managment fails to account that resources can be recycled, and that their recycling is economically stimulating because it's a form of resource capture. Manage the resources as necessary for the global population (with slack of course for emergencies) and keeping them on a closed loop. It's possible, but is not an exploitive practice so its mechanisms arent easily exploitable. That's the real issue. Humans only seem to gather and work together when there's a possibility that any one of them can become a god king and get visits to whatever the modern Epstein Island is.
You're arguing that progress requires death. We're arguing that it requires effort and intentionality.