I've seen some folks on here talking about how overpopulation is causing ecological collapse. And this is very, very wrong.

So, I'm just going to put this here:

This is from the Word Population Review, who have compiled their data from multiple different sources. You can find them listed at the bottom of the article.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/energy-consumption-by-country

Figure 1 (the first image) which lists energy consumption in 2022 in exajoules (EJ). For our visually impaired friends, I will list it here.

China 159.39 EJ
United States 95.91 EJ
India 36.44 EJ
Russia 28.89 EJ
Japan 17.84 EJ
Canada 14.14 EJ
Brazil 13.41 EJ
South Korea 12.71 EJ
Germany 12.30 EJ
Iran 12.16 EJ

Now, let's compare that to population.

Figure 2 (Which I will also summarize) Here, we have a chart listing population by country. It is based on data released by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs at the end of 2022.

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/

You'll find identical data on Wikipedia if you're interested. Here is the primary source.

https://population.un.org/wpp/

Let's go through it.

India 1.428 billion
China 1.425 billion
United states 0.340 billion
Indonesia 0.278 billion
Pakistan 0.240 billion
Nigeria 0.223 billion
Brazil 0.216 billion
Bangladesh 0.172 billion.
Russia 0.144 billion
Mexico 0.128 billion

And so on.

Now, your eyes might be drawn to China, which consumes the most energy and has the second largest population. But let's dig a little deeper.

How is it that the United States can have less than a quarter of India's population and use 2.6 times as much energy?

How is it that Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria can occupy the 4th, 5th and 6th spots in terms of total population but don't even show up in the top ten for energy use?

How is it that Canada is number 6 for energy use but number 38 for population? (0.038 billion people).

The answer is that population does not directly correlate - much less cause - energy consumption. The economic model, the way in which goods are produced and consumed is the relevant factor here.

We can also look at food consumption.

This one's from Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_energy_intake

The primary source is here

https://ourworldindata.org/food-supply

I'm just going to list the countries in order of how much food they consume per capita. (Figure 3)

Ireland
United States
Belgium
Turkey
Austria
Iceland
Romania
Canada
Germany
Poland.

Where's Indonesia? Where's Pakistan? Where are China and India, the two most populous countries on the planet?

Population does not correlate to resource use. We *are* using too many resources. There's no question about that. But that is caused by the economic system. Not the number of people. China may use the most energy of any country on this planet. But that is not because they have the second largest population. It's because they have embraced hyper capitalism.

Overpopulation is a fascist talking point. It almost always has racist overtones as it is deployed against countries like Nigeria, Bangladesh and other nations who may have higher populations but who do not consume nearly as much resources as countries with lower populations.

Finally, if you're really concerned about us one day reaching the Earth's carrying capacity, you should know that all research indicates that birthrates decline as quality of life rises. Education and access to contraceptives are the way to manage that issue.

https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Jan/un_2002_world_population_to_2300.pdf

#reproductiverights
#OverpopulationIsAMyth
#Sustainability
#NLRBE

I find it hard to classify Peter Coffin politically. On the one hand, I think their critiques of capitalism are spot on. But they'll be chugging along, making a cogent point, when all of a sudden, they say something that is not only wrong but sounds like corporate propaganda.

Here's their documentary on #overpopulation and #degrowth

https://youtu.be/OW8vkUY93i8

At one point, in this very long documentary, they say, that renewables do not provide consistent energy, and therefore, if we were to rely on them as our only source of power, people would die. (It's at about 90 minutes)

But here's the thing...That's wrong.

To the best of my knowledge, that's not true. When I was developing my own political outlook about ten years ago, I read dozens of studies which indicate that a 100% renewable energy infrastructure (across all industries) would not only meet but exceed global energy demand.

Here's one

http://energywatchgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/EWG_LUT_100RE_All_Sectors_Global_Report_2019.pdf

Here's another

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910

Here's a meta-analysis of 180 peer-reviewed papers, most of which insist that it is both technologically and economically feasible to meet global energy demand with 100% renewables.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544219304967?via%3Dihub

There are dissenting opinions, yes. I would be remiss if I didn't mention them. But if you look deeper, you'll find that a lot of these dissenters have ties to other energy industries.

And I'm not suggesting that we simply turn off all the nuclear plants tomorrow.

This is not some anti nuclear energy rant. I think there's a lot of potential in #thorium technology. At least as an interim power source. Possibly as a long-term option.

https://youtu.be/tHO1ebNxhVI

But any nuclear technology inevitably generates radioactive waste, which can be devastating if not stored properly.

Renewables will generate waste too. Just about every human endeavour does. But that waste is far more manageable.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544219304967?via%3Dihub

So if 100% #renewables is feasible (and the evidence suggests that it is), we should keep that option on the table and develop synergistic strategies. Now, what does that mean? Well, when most people think of renewables, they think wind and solar. And those would definitely be part of the equation. But people rarely mention the other options: wave, tidal, hydro and geothermal. The latter offers enormous energy potential.

A synergistic strategy means that you use all of these options together and you tailor the energy grid for each geographic region. You don't make solar panels your primary method of energy generation in the Yukon (which gets very little sunlight in the winter months). But in Arizona? That's a great place for solar.

Now, of course, there are obstacles. I'm not trying to make this sound like we can just snap our fingers and make clean energy infrastructure. But the key here is that our best scientific minds agree that these obstacles are surmountable.

Throughout the video, Peter equates "reducing consumption" with "killing poor/disabled people." The argument they make pretty much verbatim goes like this.

Humans need energy to survive. So, if we reduce energy consumption, people are going to die.

Except no one is advocating for that. Maybe Jason Hickel is. I haven't read his book. (He wrote Less is More). And Peter did include some cringy quotes from Hickel.

But when serious people talk about a reduction in consumption, we're not talking about leaving poor people to die.

Overconsumption is caused by the inefficiencies that are baked into #capitalism. Capitalism is an engine for turning natural resources into crap that sits in a landfill. Why? Because of cost efficiency and profit maximization.

Cost efficiency is not true efficiency. Real efficiency is getting the most productive output for the least energy input. Cost efficiency is making the most profit for the least cost. These two things are not the same.

Take phones, for instance. Phones could be modular and durable. In other words, if a single part breaks down - like one chip on the circuit board - the one part is repaired or replaced while the rest of the phone remains untouched. But creating phones like that costs more. And reduces repeat purchases.

Apple, Samsung and Motorola go out of the way to squash the repair market. They want to make it easiest to just replace the entire phone when a single part breaks down. That's why phones no longer have removeable batteries. Because if you have to pay for a new battery (which will be harder to find if your phone is a few years old) and for the maintenance of taking the phone apart and installing the new battery, you'll probably just buy a new phone.

That's what maximizes Apple's profits. Companies have to generate cyclical consumption to stay in business. That's the overconsumption we're talking about. Not basic living essentials like water and power and food.

Speaking of living essentials, let's look at housing. In 2019 - the last time I checked - the US Census Bureau reported 545 000 homeless Americans. Quite a bit, right?

In the same year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported 13 million permanently unoccupied houses. Permanently unoccupied means nobody lives in them. They aren't being used as somebody's summer home. They are literally just sitting there untouched, functioning solely as an asset on someone's balance sheet.

That's the overconsumption we're talking about. Not only do we have way more houses than we actually need, the people who do need them can't live in them.

Why are we, as a society, making so many unused houses? Because that's how developers make a profit! Profit is the problem.

Profit = overconsumption.

That's what we're talking about: harvesting natural resources that go into unused products, many of which find their way into landfills. Throwing out perfectly usable products that could repaired. Tossing used parts into landfills even though their components (gold, copper, cobalt, tin) are still perfectly usable and could be extracted.

No serious person is talking about "getting back to nature" or "shutting off the power and going primitive" or "leaving disabled people to die."

Anyone who advocates the latter is someone you should absolutely stop listening to.

#NLRBE #NaturalLaw #ResourceBasedEconomy

"“A [natural law] resource-based economy is a society without money, barter or trade, with the awareness that Humanity is One family and where technology, science and spirituality is used to it’s fullest to develop and manage the planet’s resources to provide abundance for everyone in the most sustainable way.”

#NLRBE #ResourceBasedEconomy

We can make the Earth a second garden of Eden, but we must move past politics. Past communism, past socialism, past monetaryism and capitalism. All politics is immersed in corruption. We want to absolve human beings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVOPkGAtt48

#NLRBE #TheVenusProject #TheZeitgeistMovement #ResourceBasedEconomy