Who are these clueless, detached from reality buffoons, who ceaselessly advocate for increasing the human population beyond the Earth's support capacity?
This latest buffoon's name is Lyman Stone: director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies and he now joins another low IQ buffoon - Matthew Yglesias. A grade Z moron who scribbled in a New York magazine piece ('One Billion Americans') , several years ago that the U.S. is "virtually empty" and could easily hold three times as many people (i.e. a billion at least)
Meanwhile, we now have Stoner Stone the director of research for the oxymoronic consulting firm "Demographic Intelligence"- who tries to make an analogous case for a billion Americans. According to this overeducated Bozo writing in the NY Times Saturday (The Population Bust Is Coming Sooner Than Anyone Is Prepared For)
"In 1775, a year before the Declaration of Independence was
signed, a Harvard professor named Edward Wigglesworth did the math on American
population growth and could barely contain his excitement. He had found that
the colonists were doubling their numbers every 25 years, mostly through
births, and at that pace he projected that by the close of the 20th century
there would be “ONE THOUSAND TWO-HUNDRED AND EIGHTY MILLIONS” of us (his
capitalization, not mine). A billion Americans, and then some.
Sadly, there are only about 340 million of us today. We should
be asking not just why we so badly undershot Wigglesworth’s hopes, but also
whether we are about to start counting down instead of up."
Sadly? What are you a certified moron? We 0ught to be thankful there are only 340 m of us today, given millions can't even get a first home, and there isn't the land or resources already to support them. (And AI data centers sucking up ever more of both.) Newsflash, in Wigglesworth's era there were more than ample resources to support that population - of 2.4 million. So this benighted Harvard prof could be somewhat forgiven for letting the paucity of populace in relation to available resources go to his head. Naturally, the colonists would be 'doubling their numbers' because they also grasped the margin existed to double them without consequence. (Until they began invading native tribes' lands)
Having made his preposterous analogy he goes on to try to show where we - in the current overpopulated world (and nation) - fall short:
"If America’s population does decline, it will strain our entitlements system, damage the economy, reduce innovation and entrepreneurship, and cause serious labor shortages. But the majority point of view — held by major institutions like the Census Bureau, the United Nations and the Social Security trustees — is that the United States probably won’t face population decline until the 2080s, or even beyond 2100.
That forecast is far too optimistic. The more accurate projection, which I outlined in a recent report for my organization, the Institute for Family Studies, sees the American population beginning to shrink in the 2050s. It is a forecast so grim it could upend American budgeting and, thus, American politics."
Look, it doesn't matter what the UN, Census Bureau or Social Security projects or whether "over-optimistic" or not. Because there are already far too many people for the resources that can sustain them - namely water! Here in the American West the whole Colorado River is drying up thanks to relentless heat and prolonged drought. Vegas is in dire straits literally begging for water from states that have more. Here in Colorado they are already talking about 'toilet to tap' alternatives for when the crunch comes. Then there is San Diego County which depends on ocean desalination. Even so, it is only able to meet 10 percent of the region's demand but at great cost. Meanwhile, short sighted fools use up what precious water we have on AI data centers, bitcoin 'factories' and fracking.
Know what will "upend American politics"? Not having enough water to drink in an increasingly hot country, or enough food to eat because the dearth of water for crops makes them impossible to grow or sustain. Upend budgeting? That has already been upended because we are consuming more than we have, what the planet has! The limits of our resources are best illustrated in the concept of Earth overshoot, as embodied in the graphic below which shows humans are currently consuming the equivalent resources of 1.6 EARTHS per year, e.g.
The interpretation of the graph (upward) is straightforward. By June, 2030 TWO full Earths - that is, the resources therein - will be needed to support the then population. Already we are at 1.6 Earths. Every year Global Footprint Network raises awareness about global ecological overshoot with its Earth Overshoot Day campaign. Earth Overshoot Day, calculated annually by the Global Footprint Network is the day on the calendar when humanity has used up the resources that it takes the planet the full year to regenerate.
What is all of this telling us? Easy! We do not NEED (and Earth can't support) any more people on this planet! Or...in the US of A.
Our illustrious 'populace popularizer' continues with more twaddle:
"Wigglesworth saw exponential growth as the mark of a heroic country. For the first century of our country’s life together, we stayed on that trajectory. Then we spent the last 150 years proving him too optimistic. "
Correction: The last 150 years we proved him not REALISTIC enough. Not realistic enough to factor in resource availability to population growth. Wigglesworth in 1775 could afford to entertain exponential growth because for a limited time - there was enough sustainable margin for it. That no longer exists. That margin is gone as in vamanosed.
He adds, again oblivious to facts:
"The question for our country’s 250th birthday is how many more birthdays we want it to have, both for its babies and as a country."
The answer to the question inheres within the answer Isaac Asimov (see top) gave for the planet's carrying capacity. Asimov defined carrying capacity thusly:
(Usable land resources, water + food +
fuel) / (individual food, fuel + water)
If the numerator is 11.4 x 10 9
hectares of usable aggregate equivalent land-water resource base and if 4
hectares is the ideal "mean individual requirement" over a lifetime
(e.g. to meet all basic needs and have a few private luxuries) that means:
CC = (11.4 x 10 9 hectares) / 4 hectares/person » 2.85 billion
That is a figure we are now on the verge of surpassing by
a factor of four.
As for the U.S. carrying capacity this can be estimated given the current global population is » 8.3 billion (for simplicity). Then:
U.S. (x)/ 340 m = 2.85 b/ 8.3 b = 0.34
U.S. (x) = 340 m (0.34) = 115.6 m
So the U.S. given Asimov's carrying capacity computations should have no more than 115.6 million people.
A useful metaphor that Asimov used to illustrate carrying capacity has since become known as "the bathroom metaphor" and it works to get people to understand the debilitating, disastrous effects of too many people in a space with limited resources.
As Asimov noted, if two people live in an apartment, and it comes with two bathrooms, they have a comfortable life. Either one can use the bathroom anytime he or she wants and can remain in there as long as they desire, even reading while doing business.
One can say, that for the purpose of "Bathroom
freedom" - 2 is the carrying capacity for a two -person apartment. Now,
let there be twenty people occupying the same apartment, and what happens?
Bathroom freedom evaporates. Visits now must be regulated by the clock, and no
one may stay in for too long. Indeed, a timetable likely has to be set up for
each person's bathroom use. (Don't laugh too hard at the improbability of this
example, since we now know of numerous cases where immigrants have been found
crammed into such conditions - but usually in a house)
The point is, that the liberating (and convenient) use of a bathroom which held for two persons, no longer applies with twenty, and probably evaporated
by the time there were five or six occupants of the apartment. (And we won't
even go into where each - unrelated- person sleeps, if there are only two
bedrooms).
Stone then cites two “ two major pieces of wishful thinking" that he thinks would not solve the problem:
1- More immigration to compensate. Which he claims won't work.
2- Women are merely delaying having children rather than forgoing it entirely.
No.1 fails because, according to Stone:
“birthrates are collapsing across the entire planet, not just here at home. The supply of would-be migrants will shrink as more countries run out of young people”
No. 2 fails because;
"Research shows that delays
in childbearing are usually not made up, and, anyway, estimates that take
deferred childbearing into account have fallen by just as much as the headline
fertility rate.”
What is this Bozo’s solution?
“It will take serious money aimed at the people doing the work of
raising the next generation of Americans, an end to the marriage penalties
woven through our tax and welfare codes, a surge in building family-size
houses on par with the one during the last baby boom, and a culture that treats
children as a future worth having rather than a lifestyle expense. Those are
big asks, but they are things Americans can achieve if they set their mind to
it.”
Justifying the question: What planet is he living on? Not this one! Because this 'pronatalist' hasn't the foggiest notion about the planet's inherent support limits. Among the most critical is the access to fresh, potable water. Look for example at Capetown, S. Africa, narrowly avoiding "Day Zero" in 2018 but at the cost of 40 percent of the country's water intensive crops. Without freshwater resources, the whole 'enchilada' goes south, from crops to public health. It's a no brainer, given we are seeing the exhaustion of stores of fresh water globally.
One notable ‘State of the World’ report (2000, pp. 46-47), warned that the ever increasing water deficits will likely spark “water wars". Even now, 1 billion-plus people live in water-stressed conditions, meaning that renewable water supplies have dropped below 1,700 cubic meters per capita, a critical survival threshold. As observed (p. 47):
“When a country’s renewable water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per capita (what some analysts call the water stress level) it becomes difficult for the country to mobilize enough water to satisfy all the food, household, and industrial needs of its population.”
Where is the additional water going to come from to support Stone's hyper GENEROUS population fairy tale? Desalination plants for his additional billions? Who is going to pay for them?
One NY Times commenter, as I expected, mustered a rejoinder to this bunkum that is well worth repeating:
"The carrying capacity of planet earth has been calculated at 500 million to 2 billion, total. If we conserve resources carefully, avoid contaminating and degrading our environment, and preserve, permanently, massive undisturbed natural areas of the continents and oceans.
This sustainable threshold was passed in the early 1970's. And in the meantime we have despoiled the entire planet. Which only a coordinated global effort of humanity to restrain and actively undo our abuses can undo. Or several ten's of thousands of years, or possibly hundreds of thousands of years, without the presence of humans, for Gaia to heal herself. The only sustainable solution is a steady state economy. All opinions to the contrary are theistic cornucopian fantasies. Those alive today may or may not see this eventuality. It can certainly be seen on the horizon, one only needs to look. No matter how much one believes it is not so, how much one believes that someone will come down and and save us before it's too late, we cannot change the laws of physics or bend the laws of thermodynamics. Every bit of objective science we have tells us that we are bound to and by the environment we live in. It us up to us to save ourselves. Mathematics, physics, environmental science, and human physiology, tells us that anything more or less that 2.1 children per family is unsustainable. This is an unavoidable truth. I think Malthus is more instructive."
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