Tag: Carrying Capacity

Climate ChangeSocial Issues

On Human Overpopulation

A recurring theme among a number of widely divergent political and environmental movements is that of human overpopulation. Often, the claim that there are too many humans has conspicuous racist overtones and is associated with ecofascism, but claims of overpopulation are also made by people with very different political ideas. Much of the popular overpopulation discourse appears to be quite ignorant about what โ€œoverpopulationโ€ even means, however, and about what it might imply, so I thought it might be useful to write a few words about this. What even is โ€œoverpopulationโ€? โ€œOverpopulationโ€ is a relative term โ€“ it means that...
Climate Change

(Not) Too Late for What?

Some people seem to believe that it is too late to fight climate change. Others seem to believe that this kind of fatalism is as dangerous as climate change denialism (because both effectively advocate not doing anything). Itโ€™s hardly a secret that Iโ€™m rather pessimistic about climate change and its effects โ€“ just have a look at what Iโ€™ve written about the topic before โ€“ but that doesnโ€™t mean that I think that it is โ€œtoo lateโ€ to fight climate change. Rather, I think that the notion of it being โ€œtoo lateโ€ (or not) in this context is nonsensical. The...