Dire predictions of the negative consequences of overpopulation, ever since Malthus, have turned out wrong. The population doomsayers didn't even anticipate the real problem we face today: climate change.

Climate change is not caused by overpopulation, but rather by the industrial output of developed countries. These countries, except for China, are not densely populated and have lower rates of population growth than the rest of the world because obtaining contraception is legal and convenient.

On top of that, regulating reproduction is a violation of the most basic human freedoms.

At the expense of causing massive climate change, it is worth noting. The era of our ability to "increase the world's carrying capacity" may be coming to an end.

I really, really hope I'm wrong and we're able to get Climate Change under control, but we are heading in the exact opposite direction right now.

> Dire predictions

Those are not only predictions, but existing examples. I invite you to visit the slums of developing/"third-world" countries, or even just see images/videos of them.

> regulating reproduction is a violating of the most basic human freedoms.

We regulate MANY things that are also basic human freedoms.

Slums are not caused by overpopulation. They are caused by poverty and lack of opportunity, often abetted by bad government policy. Tiny countries with small populations have slums.

Many of their problems are caused by overcrowdedness, and there are few ways to fix that without stealing even more space from nature and other species.

As for poverty and lack of opportunity, what do you propose would fix that? Honest question, because this will lead to more problems that need to be pointed out.

Not all developed countries are densely populated, but many are. Netherland and South Korea rank among the most densely populated countries in the world.

We already have a fairly effective way to curb population growth: education. Highly educated people tend to have less children than people with little or no education. In fact, education gives plenty of ROI in many areas, so we can tackle this and other issues by investing in better education without explicitly having to ban anything.

That said, I think some mandatory "how to raise kids" training could do a lot of people a lot of good.

Is your plan to depopulate the wealthy countries responsible for CO2 emissions who already have a replacement level birthrate?

Or is it to artificially prevent population growth and economic development in undeveloped countries? It would be morally unacceptable for the global north to extract wealth from the global south for 500 years, use the wealth to build highly industrialized economies, then prevent the rest of the world from catching up economically.

It turn out that education and empowerment of this kind (especially where you can show women that their children will survive and that everyone can get an education and a job) will naturally lead to lower fertility rates. Apparently women aren’t all hormone driven baby factories (who knew?) and given a voice in the matter will generally prefer fewer children (and more time to pursue life outside raising babies).

So if you support zero or negative population growth, you can do a lot worse than donating to Plan International and other charities specialising in education and support of women in developing nations.

You can empower people (especially women, a commonly oppressed class), save the world from overpopulation, uncover the next generation of genius-entrepreneur, and do this all without being labelled a villain.

As the environmental disaster gets worse, we will end up sacrificing more species in the pursuit of safety for our own. We might mourn the necessary sacrifice in passing, but ultimately the surviving humans will justify everything in the name of one more day.

There are already numerous examples of authority stepping in to “save people from themselves.”

What will conjure up the constant resources and space required for the constant growth required by the economy?

Probably the sun and small scale fusion for at least the next thousand years or so. Eventually other stars/large scale fusion/some type of energy production we haven't discovered yet.

>and space

There is enormous amounts of room left on earth. Everyone on earth could have an acre of land to themselves with 10x the current population, and that completely ignores multi-level construction (either above or below the surface). But long term there is a lot of space outside of earth.

Bonkers - if we are to believe the environmental lobby (and I generally do), we are already destroying much of the biosphere. You can't have it both ways! Either things get worse for everyone, or humanity starts to control itself.

Controlling itself doesn't have to mean population control. It just has to mean taking care of our environment in a sustainable way. The number of people we have been able to support in a sustainable way has increased by several orders of magnitude over the past tens of thousands of years and I don't see a compelling reason that trend needs to stop. Climate change isn't tied to population, it's tied to greenhouse gas emissions. We already have the technology demonstrating that we don't need to emit greenhouse gasses.

Extinction of other species is also tied to deforestation, mining, pollution (chemical, light and noise) as well as hunting and accidents. All of that only increases as our population grows.

And regarding limiting population growth, what solution could possible be there that would be acceptable in a liberal democracy (i.e. does not require authoritarian regime controlling your every move, or the biggest genocide in history of mankind)?

This is because educated women choose to have fewer kids later.

Luckily this solution is not only effective but is also very much acceptable in a liberal democracy!

You left out strong social safety net, but that is key: children are literally people's old age and disability support mechanism when there isn't a sufficiently reliable public one.

I am very suspicious of overpopulation arguments because it is a stalking hourse for alt-right style ethno nationalism. Rather than addressing issues it is a veiled attack on "lefties" and liberals. Blaming the entire environmental crisis on our reluctance to adopt authoritarian controls. And playing on perceived inconsistencies in how liberals see the world. Perhaps we have different laws on rape,murder, and consensual sex because they are different things! Your argument only makes sense if you completely ignore any nuance.

I think this is really about fear of immigration and uses climate change as an excuse.

FWIW, the majority of right-leaning folks (at least in the US) are vehemently against things like population controls. Go read some of the articles on Breitbart or InfoWars and this will be clear -- most of their concerns involve the government (which is pictured as an ever-left-leaning entity) overreaching in its restrictions on civil life.

The power of social conservative right wingers has been waning for a decade or so now, c.f. Trump.

Honestly, the problem is going to solve itself. We're going to see devastating natural disasters and famines. We're going to see causalities like we've never seen. We're going to see massive die-offs of the poor in countries that are in the direct path- coastal countries, Africa, and middle east.

I know I'm going to get hate for this, but the US and other western countries are going to have to face the realities that they are going to need to lock down their borders as we're going to have massive refugee problems. I don't agree with Trump 90% of the time, but he is putting in place a framework that will be used in the next 10 years to keep the onslaught of refugees. America has it good. We can survive the storm, but most of the world will not be so lucky.

And words cannot express what I feel. This whole thing sucks. It's going to hurt. And it's the kind of thing where we can't save everyone.

A massive claim. Care to support it?

As far as I was aware, much of America's success is a simple accident of history, notably: having a massive virtually unoccupied continent with enormous unexploited natural resources, a single unified market with single currency, having no land border with a hostile foreign entity capable of posing a genuine threat, and taking advantage of (or as some argue deliberately creating the circumstances for) the rest of the world being smashed by two world wars.

There's a lot of evidence of this. Look at crime rates in Germany and Sweden before and after their mass immigration import.