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More on overpopulation

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Here's some more evidence from Yglesias for the thesis that overpopulation is not a critical environmental issue:
...the most important point about global population growth is the point David Brooks makes today—it's slowing down almost everywhere and the global trend is clearly toward birthrates that are below the replacement level. Because of "demographic momentum" and rising life expectency, relatively few countries are poised for falling population in the short-term but Russia is already there, Japan will be soon, Spain and Italy will follow, and while China is difficult to predict they're looking at the sharpest cliff.
You hear a lot that if everyone lived like Americans then we would need five Earths' worth of resources to support everyone. That's true, but the converse is that if everyone lived like Ethiopians we could comfortably support 10 billion people or more. You might respond that would eat up all the available land, but if everyone in the United States lived in a city with Brooklyn's density, we could fit everyone into New Hampshire.

Again, the most critical environment issue is climate change, and it isn't caused by overpopulation. It is caused by inefficiency and poor resource allocation.
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  1. AnonymousMarch 14, 2012 at 12:14 PM

    I agree that the current population isn't the problem that it's made out to be. All the world's major problems are caused by the cartels that create debt money out of nothing and then foist the yoke of taxation on the peoples to repay these created debts.

    Taxation drives overproduction and consumption artificially. If people were truly free, meaning if they owned themselves and the fruits of their labor, and were not forced at gunpoint to pay taxes; they would produce little more than needed to survive. Artificial consumption would drop off radically.

    The ancient families that have run the world for thousands of years with their debts schemes are the root problem of the majority of the world's ills.

    Create debt free money and free humanity of involuntary taxation you heal the planet. Who would chip in for wars etc.?

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