461
We produce more resources than we could ever consume in the least sustainable ways possible.
(mander.xyz)
this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
461 points (87.8% liked)
Science Memes
20273 readers
998 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Overpopulation is not a myth. 36% of the earth's mammalian biomass is Humans, only 5% is wild mammals. 71% of avian life is livestock. https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass
Half of all "habitable land" (which includes everything except deserts, tundra, salt flats, beaches, or exposed rock) is used for agriculture. Half of all land, for agriculture. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2019/12/agriculture-habitable-land/
Industrial farming is not sustainable at the current rate and relies on either mined or petrochemical derived ammonia which supplies the nitrogen necessary for protein. Synthetic Ammonia alone feeds half the world population and requires an additional 2% of the world's power to produce.
The global ecoystem is in rapid decline.
I gave up finding appropriate sources halfway when I realized this post will just get removed eventually.
Humans today are like 300% more biomass than every mammal on earth 100,000 years ago.
It's not the growth of ethanol (maize) and animal feed (soybeans) producing crops on the last 30 years, highly fucking inefficient and produced in the worst way possible, not even that pasture uses A LOT more land than agriculture while being a lot less energy dense, both using a lot more water than producing direct food, it's the poors.
Edit: And also, beef is the major cause for deforestation too:
Also: animal ag uses 80% of all arable land with most of it destined for grazing land (which a lot of (rain-)-forest had to be razed for) while only producing 17% of global calories and 38% of global proteins. The rest comes from human edible plants. A global switch to a plant based diet would reduce land usage from 4 to 1 billion. It's still possible to re-wild grazing lands.
It doesn't have to be one or the other, we can tackle multiple solutions simultaneously.
Developing nations have proven to increase their carbon footprints over time, e.g. China, so the fact that they're the fastest growing populations on earth is a serious issue we can address with solutions such as: empower women's rights and advancing access to education and upward mobility in society. That was the same exact solution that the UN came to in their meeting in Cairo, Egypt in 1994.
EDIT: 3. less people consume less beef also
Producing beef is the most inefficient way to produce food, in both use of space and water, and energy. We don't need to impose things on people if humanity reduces its beef consumption.
If we cut beef consumption by half, literally oligarchs would not have an economic reason to deforest the Amazon, because of the price drops. But no one wants to do that.
You're conflating a lot of words, gives an example for China, while Chinas population is not growing even (or will start to diminish on some years), associating different things into the same sentence is hard to pick what exactly you're talking about, China or Africa (the last place where population growth is happening at large beyond the 2.1 fertility rate).
Beef is heavily subsidised either by giving money directly to the producers, or letting them get away with pollution (or deforestation in places like Brazil) and using terrible food and/or drugs for their product.
Without subsidies I'm pretty sure beef wouldn't be affordable even in rich countries.
This mix of "things that are possible/reasonable" and "things that are wildly speculative" is interesting.
Reasonable/possible
Wild speculation / nonsensical.
This is not at all how large societies have worked, in any time period, ever.
While it might be technically true, it's missing a whole bunch of steps in the middle for it to be a practicality.
And that was just off of the top of my head.
Oligarchs gonna oligarch, removing one revenue source isn't going to suddenly kill interest in the amazon, with it's abundant resources and space.
As I said in my comment:
And about this:
Beef is the major factor in the amazon, by a large margin, as in my original comment. Palm Oil is not a significant part in Brazil, nor real state. Mineral is mainly in Roraima, but not as big as beef, because it's based on small operations, there are a lot of sources on this for gold mining and the local Yanomami indigenous population that fights agains this (as this is done on their land).
If you’re going to cherry pick at least cherry pick from the text being mentioned.
Your whole comment was :
and wasn’t the comment to which i was responding.
Cool story, still irrelevant to my point which was:
Create a revenue vacuum (like removing the biggest value stream in a region) and oligarchs gonna oligarch right in and expand another value stream to make up the difference.
I’m not advocating for this to happen, I’m saying that expecting beef reduction to remove oligarchs from the amazon is unrealistic.
They also sell the rainforest lumber, but lifestyle changes aside we should always pursue a lower total population via lower birthrates until we can restore natural order.
China was a developing nation a long time ago, and since 1700 their population has grown 11x over, and now they produce more emissions and utilize more landmass than any other nation on earth.
Total emissions or per capita?
less capita = less emissions
Chinese leadership are trying to promote population growth, again.
Wrong place, my bad
NP we good.
edit: dammit, real-time updates kicking my ass
Did you check it again?
What is the ideal amount of biomass for humans? Same question for agricultural land. What’s the ideal amount? I’m torn between thinking this is just how things go or maybe I’m just terribly ignorant. At some point the majority of biomass was dinosaurs or something, so what? That’s the ebb and flow of life. It wasn’t the biomass of dinosaurs that caused their extinction. How do these biomass stats indicate overpopulation?
I can’t disagree with the industrial farming and overall ecosystem points you raise but the biomass bits seem awfully arbitrary.
I’d also say feeding 50% of the world’s population for 2% of the world’s energy seems pretty damn efficient.
The whole human biomass question is difficult to me. Half of humanity doesn't have access to proper toilets. I have cheap products produced by contemporary slaves in asia. Fewer people with better conditions sounds good to me.
There was an article released this year that found 2-2.5 billion humans to be the carrying capacity of the earth. I've only read the abstract though.
https://researchnow.flinders.edu.au/en/publications/global-human-population-has-surpassed-earths-sustainable-carrying/
Open access:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ae51aa
Berries in swedish forests go ungathered because the work pays so badly swedes refuse it and our new anti abuse laws stops the thai workers who did it for pennies earlier from coming here.
Good riddance, I say, people can gather their own blueberries and make their own jam - if the alternative is working conditions no one should have to suffer.
If the aim is to have no one live in squalor and have everyone live a luxurious, but preferably more eco friendly, western lifestyle then how many humans can the planet support without degrading over time?
How can we make 4-6 hours of daily paid work enough to live on, globally?
How can we change society to stop chasing growth and find a system that allows future generation a planet with wildlife, clean air and water and a temperature that humans can enjoy not just survive?
That was a weird ass study, they calculated the number based solely on historical population numbers and not any actual metrics regarding planetary capability. I have my doubts how useful a calculation that actually is.
They do use some more data than that, see my quote.
But that's still based on random points in history. Their argument is basically 'climate change started at this point, so that's where the max sustainable population is'. Which makes absolutely no sense. Technologies were different, cultural attitudes were different, yadda yadda. It's Malthusian arguments in a new (and less logical) wrapper.
If the benefits of a trade is on the back of the worker then it's not a trade. They should rise the price so they can pay enough.
0%
The equivalent of dinosaurs are mammals, not humans. But the biomass of humans isn't really the issue, resource consumption and pollution are. Even if we transition to 100% renewable energies, which we have to sooner or later, unless civilization collapses before fossile fuel runs out, we rely on countless finite resources. The more people the more of a problem that becomes.
Agriculture is part of this issue, a lot of it is currently running on depleting soil snd much of the yield multiplier is coming from oil (fertilizer and fuel). Just because in recent time agriculture performance could keep up with population explosion, doesn't mean this will be the case forever, especiall as car centric utban planning eats up fertile land at an excelerating rate and usable land for agriculture is already pretty much maxed out.
Providing everyone with a good live just gets harder with every billion more in the planet as resources are finite and exponential progress can'g go on forever.
Personally I'd say 10% each humans and livestock, or some similar ratio such that wildlife remain 80%.
Another option is to return as far as the proven stable number of 2 million humans total, though that would take many many many generations to do and isn't even guaranteed to be better for the environment since sometimes forest management and natural disaster response can actually be helpful.
Definitely lower than 2 billion. It's going to take a lot of figuring out since we clearly have no idea what number will bring global ecostability.
The 36℅ you cited is for Mammalians, that doesn't mean the rest of Biomass can be compared to it.
Animal Biomass is around 0.5℅, so that puts it into relation.
Also the earth consisist of 70% Water, this means Land mass is 30℅ and from that 30℅, around 46% is used by Humans.
Also Land use has been steadily falling with modern agriculture. There was a time when Europa barely had any forests left, because of the extensive agricultural need for Farmland.
I know "numbers scary", but I think a bit of contextualisation can't hurt.
NB: Ecofascism is still Fascism.
You're gonna sit there and tell me it's fine if only 5% of mammals are neither human nor livestock? That's a horrifying thought alone, it means we've consumed or destroyed all of nature that we had the capability of doing such to. We should not be the 95% under any circumstance. We should not be 50%. We need there to be nature, we need there to be a natural order.
For the record, the larger groups are fish and arthropods. That's it. Sauropsida or Reptiles and amphibians are such a small amount of biomass that they're completely negligible.
BTW, it's super cringe when you call the advocacy of women's rights and education as "Fascism". You know who else fights against the idea of allowing or promoting population decline? Christofascists and Technofascists like Elon Musk, they're pushing for population growth instead.
"(..) we need there to be natural order."
The natural order of things, does it involve a concept of degeneracy and normalcy?
Always funny how quick the mask slips.
Also humans are animals and therefore nature. There is no concept of nature versus humans, unless you enforce these boundaries to construct an ideology that needs it.
This idea of nature just means everything "that is good" is nature, which does not make sense. In that view a whale is nature, but the rabies virus is not.
Also to respond to your last sentence with an equal out of place diction.
Why can't you accept that Hubble's constant is universally equal. That is anti science.
It involves a natural slow decline in human population via methods like empowering women's rights and widely available education and upwards mobility in society. The solution that the UN came to in Cairo, Egypt, in 1995.
The fuck are you talking about with masks and normalcy?
You mean the "natural decline" that is already happening.
Also what "upwards mobility" - Capitalism is hell bent in killing us all - the upwards mobility is not the solution here.
Correct (except for the spelling), users such as you, OP, and Elon Musk are advocating against that. You're part of a movement called pronatalism.
I have used the word capitalism exactly 0 times in this discussion, so you have no reason to assume the methods of naturally reducing population has anything to do with it, stupid tankie.
I would be saddened if a serious leftist called me a tankie, because that would mean I didn't get my point across, but since you seem to be arguing from a right wing position I take it as a compliment.
Those numbers mean nothing to refute the overpopulation as a myth. The core premise of overpopulation is that humans can no longer produce enough food to sustain its people. So mammalian biomass doesn't matter, total amount of farmable land doesn't matter, and percent of avian life does not matter.
It's never been a question of our impact on the environment. it's a question of our impact on ourselves and how much past our means we are.
How much of our farmable land is currently being used to produce non-edible crops such as maize used for fuel additive or soy used for cosmetics? How much farmable land are we sabotaging with pollution which could be cleaned up? These are more pertinent questions for this, because if we could be making more food instead of maize or soy, we could still feed our people.
No, it absolutely isn't that, idk where you even got that from. The core premise is that it is unsustainable for any reason.
Producing food is one reason for evidence of current overpopulation, as I mention 50% of the world's food production is with synthetic ammonia sourced from mining and petrochem which are finite nonrenewable resources.
Another reason is that the world ecosystem sustains all life including humanity, and when it collapses the human population will collapse with it.
Literally from Malthus himself. He argued that due to overpopulation we'd cause mass famines, leading to war and societal collapse. And he solidly pointed blame on developing countries overbreeding and called for population control and oven culling in those nations. All arguments directly derive from his original argument.
Because that is the only solution to overpopulation, is population control and population culling. Population too big, either start killing people or forcing couples to not have children. That's what you're arguing for every time you agree with an overpopulation argument.
The new twists of ecological destruction are also highly misplaced. You'd have to pin the blame on the places which are reproducing the most, which is not the case. The damage we do with deep sea fishing, fish farms, and meat farms is not the fault of the poor nations overbreeding - the only groups we could blame for overpopulation right now.
In reality, we'd not be causing nearly as much damage to our environment if we weren't using fossil fuels, weren't transporting a massive portion of our goods from overseas, weren't getting most of our meat from cows and other methane producers, weren't fishing in such a way that destroys the seafloor, etc. There's literally hundreds of ways I could list that we're doing which if we switched to an alternative would solve large portion of our ecological damage.
We all are carrying out these unsustainable practices, regardless of population. Those practices are the problem, not overpopulation. We could still be producing enough food with sustainable methods that don't destroy the world ecology.
Well I can compare your anti-population-reduction stance to Elon Musk. Do you feel good knowing that Christofascist and Technofascist oligarchs hold the same view as you?
As for your absolutely bonkers claim that sustainability isn't directly proportional to population size, I feel need to argue such a blatantly false statement.
I'm not the same person btw.
Genuine question, wouldn't a directly proportional link require that sustainability efforts go up in a direct mirror to population?
edit: a downvote isn't particularly helpful here, is that a downvote of "yes, but i don't want to admit it" or "no, because reasons" ?
Ask better questions, ig. Do I look like I'm running for governor? Idk what you think should or should not be happening, but the answer has absolutely no impact on what is happening now and what we know will happen as a result: human overpopulation is real, it is the driving force behind ongoing global ecosystem collapse, we know of many safe and friendly methods to reduce birthrates.
I’m....not sure how much better i can phrase that question ?
It was concise, contained all the information needed for an answer, it could even be a single yes or no.
If you have an example of how that could have been asked in a better way, I’d be interested in seeing it.
There was no reference to my thoughts on the overall theme, the question is only loosely related to that theme.
If it helps, i don't care at all about the overpopulation classification or anything to do with it.
Is it easier if i remove all references to the theme? Let's try this :
Doesn't directly proportional mean both metrics being compared need to track each other?
I didn't tell you to rephrase anything. Let's end this here.
ah, so questions about logic aren't good questions?
or just that one ?
edit: i replied before your edit.