If the world were overpopulated, what would be the Catholic response?

[flyinghouse]

They’d deny it was happening.

interestedman:

lol, so true. Simple but amazingly accurate.

Get a room.

 

[Regular_Atheist]

Get a room.

Hahahaha!

I think I have an admirer!

 

[lynnvinc]

If you think about it though all the off the shelf technology we have was paid for in oil, coal, and now natural gas. All of these supposed evils are the engine that drove us to the point where we were capable of producing these new technologies. And in my opinion the new technologies are not ready to replace our old faithful pals oil, coal, and natural gas. Thus why I believe we should keep running the old engine until we have the new one at ready to actually replace it, and hopefully do an even better job. I do not believe 20-40 more years is going to change the environmental landscape all that much and the transition will be much cleaner at that point and result in less suffering.

I’d be happy if people started taking baby steps in the right direction. It does take years & decades to completely do a reduction…it took us some 22 years before we were able to reduce some 60% below our 1990 GHG emissions level, and there are still plenty of things for us to do. I do sincerely hope we have time to turn this Titantic around before it hits the iceberg and sinks all of life, but the scientists can only say it may be soon (and, of course, it may already be too late – they really don’t know).

And some of the helpful technology is not new, but old. I often trot out a solar clothes dryer for Earth Day events – a clothesline and clothespins, or my clothes drying rack … with reusuable cloth diapers, napkins, and hankies (for drying hands in public restrooms). At church “Creation Day” events I promote “The Little Way of Environmental Healing”:

We are faced with enormous environmental problems that kill people, and destroy property and wildlife. Everyone needs to help solve these.

St. Therese of Lisieux teaches us the Little Way of Spiritual Childhood. She felt she could not perform the big mortifications of the saints. We also feel we cannot go back to a lifestyle without cars and modern conveniences.

St. Therese, though, was determined to become a saint. She read, “Whoever does not accept the kingdom of God as a little child will not enter into it.” Following this, St. Therese in childlike simplicity offered God all of her small deeds of ordinary life, and placed all her trust in God to help her scale the cliffs of perfection and avoid temptations. This is the Little Way. “Not everyone can fast, or wear hair shirts, or spend hours in prayer,” she used to say, “but everyone can love!” One thing alone is needful: all must be done for love of God.

What is needed to solve the big environmental problems is a life of many small deeds done out of love for God. We need to offer many small prayers to help us understand the problems and find solutions, and then more prayers to carry out our actions in daily life.

We need faith that our small deeds will, with God’s grace, amount to more than than a meaningless drop in the bucket, just as Jesus multiplied the fish & loaves. We need hope that we will one day be rejoicing with God in heaven, so we need not be too concerned with worldly riches, comforts, and honors. We need the charity of joyfully sharing God’s bounty and beauty with others around the world and in the future by helping to save the Earth.

 

[tafan]

I think people who believe in overpopulation generally claim that the world is becoming too over-crowded, so problems will start to emerge, rather than claiming that we’ve already reached the stage of it happening. And they’d probably use your claim about nations using up more resources than ever before as evidence of overpopulation, not evidence against it.

Then they are not thinking logically. It is not the fact that we are consuming more globally and overall that is meaningful to my argument. It is that poorer countries are consuming more and more of the food and energy on a per capita basis. If we were approaching any limit of resource availability; you would NOT see this effect. Hence I have done MORE than show we are not overpopulated yet, I have shown we are not yet approaching overpopulation

Well, we know that fossil fuels are running out, and there are declining oil reserves…

No they are not. We have enough coal to last over 200 years. We have enough known reserves of natural gas to last 100 years. What we are running out of is cheap oil (ie easy to get to). But expensive oil, it looks like there is a whole lot of that. In the form of tar sands, oil shale, shale oil (two differ things BTW), and deep water oil. Much of this is economically feasible for development with oil above $75.
And there are HUGE areas we have not even explored yet. The entire eastern seacoast of the US has not had any oil exploration done in close to 50 years. This is even the shallow waters. And when huge reserves have been found off the coast of Canada to the north and the gulf of mexicao and south america to the south; the odds are there is a lot there.

Now, much of this we may never choose to develope, due to lack of need and environmental concerns. But to say we know that fossil fuels are running out is patently false and completely ignorant.

And it is rather a logical fallacy to claim that people who believe in overpopulation have done bad things. You’re basically claiming that it’s immoral to believe in overpopulation because some people who believe in overpopulation also believe in doing immoral things. It doesn’t really make much sense. :

No, that is NOT what I said. I said I would not join up with those folks on their belief unless the evidence presented itself. And you have obviously not studied the evidence closely at all (which is common for people complaining about overpopulation). Let me be clear, if a group of people support grossly immoral actions, I assume their thinking is likely flawed on most matters. So that is reason to be doubly critical of ANYTHING they claim. It doesn’t mean they can’t be right on something; but it is not likely (especially if that something is related to their immoral stances).

 

[nute]

God is responsible for the well fare of the human race and is more than willing to care for us if we will that.

That is where you must begin or else the question of how the human race will fare in the future seems dire.

God helps those who help themselves.

There is a lot of oil in America alone and in other parts of the world. Look at the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The problem isn’t the amount of Oil, Coal, and natural gas that is left in the world, the problems lie with how we use it and where we collect it from.

God has many remedies available to Him:

Remedy one is inspire the human race to discover and/or commercialize new technologies that allow environmentally friendly power generation.

Remedy two, end of the world. God can bring about the illumination of conscience
and take the Earth and cosmos as we know them away.

Remedy N, honestly I can’t tell you how God is going to help us because God is not limited like we are.

Now for a waste of time, I can try to hypothesize what the future will look like

Fuel cell vehicles powered by ammonia, hydrogen, or natural gas in 20 years or less mass produced.

Solar to hydrogen becomes cheap and distributed power generation a reality,
20 years or less.

More biofuel produced using less land, ongoing.

God inspires us to return to space inexpensively, we find platinum and other valuable resources in asteroids etcetera.

There is another Earth like planet, we figure out both artificial gravity and faster than light travel.

Back in space, we build football field sized solar arrays and place them in Earth’s orbit. Power is transmitted via microwave to Earth and all liquid fuel is synthesized. When?
No idea.

There is an increase in mass transit and it is hydrogen powered, soon I hope.

True hydrogen is merely an energy carrier, but the use of hydrogen is environmentally friendly even if hydrogen is burned in a modified internal combustion engine.

Doing our best and praying a lot, climate change will not overwhelm us.

God has us in his hands, when the human race as a whole accepts this there will be peace and shortly after that the world will probably end. The biggest problem is our will: who are we willing to trust, make peace with, and share resources with? Are we willing
to be good stewards to the Earth?

 

[Contarini]

Then they are not thinking logically. It is not the fact that we are consuming more globally and overall that is meaningful to my argument. It is that poorer countries are consuming more and more of the food and energy on a per capita basis. If we were approaching any limit of resource availability; you would NOT see this effect. Hence I have done MORE than show we are not overpopulated yet, I have shown we are not yet approaching overpopulation.

No, you haven’t, because you clearly don’t understand what the overpopulation argument actually says. Overpopulation is not the point at which there is literally not enough food to go around. Once you get to that point, it’s way too late to do anything about it. Overpopulation is the point at which you can’t sustain the current population without seriously damaging the ecosystem and thus making the earth uninhabitable in the long run. And overpopulation advocates say that we have reached this point already–we have a relatively brief window in which to do something about it.

By the time we got to “overpopulation” by your definition, there would be no wild species of animals left, no rainforests, no wilderness of any kind; the oceans would be farmed, the polar ice caps would have melted, etc. Every inch of the earth’s surface would be dedicated to producing food. Only then would you get to the point you’re talking about. And at that point, there would be no resources left to address the problem. An “optimistic” scenario would be a massive depopulation of the planet–but since by that time the entire planet would be taken up with sustaining an extremely sophisticated human civilization, it’s not clear that any life would survive at all.

To define overpopulation that way is ridiculous, because it ensures that no one will even see a problem until it’s too late to do anything about it. Now I grant that the folks who worry about overpopulation tend to define it in overly alarmist ways, but that’s because they are worried (reasonably) that if you don’t err on the side of sounding the alarm too early, you will sound it too late. (The problem, of course, is that a “wolf wolf” scenario develops in which people tune out environmentalist concerns.)

Furthermore, this entire argument misses the point of the OP. And it’s interesting that folks on this thread consistently do this–they consistently move the conversation to the question of whether overpopulation has already occurred or is already imminent, when the OP specifically asked what the Catholic position would be if overpopulation occurred. I would further add that it’s clearly “when,” not “if,” assuming that the “don’t worry about overpopulation” crowd win the argument.

The moral question is whether a rate of population growth that is clearly not sustainable is a good idea, even if (on the most optimistic scenario) the unsustainability won’t become evident for centuries. Conservatives like to make alarmist noises about depopulation in Europe or whatever, but the way it’s happening (well, except for the role played by abortion) is a whole lot better than the massive death toll that would occur if overpopulation in your definition ever took place. There is in fact no danger of the earth becoming depopulated, and the arguments for “demographic winter” teeter on the edge of racism, to put it mildly (since in fact the human race as a whole is not facing demographic winter–Europe isn’t going to be depopulated, but in 100 years it may be mostly populated by dark-skinned people, which apparently worries a lot of conservatives very much).

Edwin

 

[tafan]

Contarini:

No, you haven’t, because you clearly don’t understand what the overpopulation argument actually says. Overpopulation is not the point at which there is literally not enough food to go around. Once you get to that point, it’s way too late to do anything about it. Overpopulation is the point at which you can’t sustain the current population without seriously damaging the ecosystem and thus making the earth uninhabitable in the long run. And overpopulation advocates say that we have reached this point already–we have a relatively brief window in which to do something about it.

Actually, I asked multiple times on this thread for a good definition of overpopulation, since my first assertion is that a hypothetical question could not be answered without a precise definition of the problem. And then I have not been arguing based on my misunderstanding but based on the definition I was suppied on page 4 of the thread:

interestedman:

Lack of resources. Famine, lack of clean water, lack of fuel, etc. I guess overpopulation would sort itself out though because a lot of people would die and the population would go down again. .

Now, your defintion is different, It is the point at which a large population seriously damages the ecosystem. Ok, we can work off your defintion for now. And you can show me the evidence of overpopulation.

I will show the counter evidence:

In 1970,the worlds population was 3.7 Billion people. Today the worlds population is around 7Billion people. So if we have already reached a point of over population and we have witnessed such a great growth in the last 40 years, we should have seen a definitive decrease in the world’s ecosystem.

Lets look at the facts:

evidence of ecosystem problems:

• Global warming - this is the one area of the envirornment where there is evidence to support the case. But that does not mean there are not ways to deal with global warming under the earth’s current population level. Most advocates of global warming have put forth many solutions to the problem. We can disagree with the need or the extent of the solutions. But if there are solutions (even if the problem does not require them), it is a given that overpopulation is not a concern.
• rainforests - This would likely be solved already if the rainforests were in industrialized countries, but they are not. It is a problem of emerging economies. As noted above, many of these countries are solving other problems, so there is legitimate reason to believe this too can be solved.

Evidence of ecosystem sustainability:
On almost every other environmental front, we have made great improvements in the alst 40 years in all of the industrialized countries. And it now appears that the emerging third world countries will have the technology and policies in place such that they will not do the damage the west did in the first 150 years of the industrial age.
These improvements include

• trees , for example there are twice as many trees growing in the continental US than in 1900
• clean air, every major city in the industrialized world is witnessing a continued improvement in air quality
• lack of polution in water - this again is much better then 30 years ago.
• Endangered species - many of the species that were near extinction have made come backs in the last 40 years.

On all of these, work will keep being needed. My point is that we are solving most of these problems. And doing so while the population is growing. If we had reached a point of overpopulation, this would not be the case.

 

[Dawnia]

Overpopulation is not the point at which there is literally not enough food to go around. Once you get to that point, it’s way too late to do anything about it. Overpopulation is the point at which you can’t sustain the current population without seriously damaging the ecosystem and thus making the earth uninhabitable in the long run. And overpopulation advocates say that we have reached this point already–we have a relatively brief window in which to do something about it.

I don’t see the problem. The worst thing that would happen is that people would die off. Overpopulation problem solved.

 

[Giggly_Giraffe]

I love the commercials for “overpopulation is a myth”. They make it so simple to understand

overpopulationisamyth.com/?device=desktop

 

[iloveangels]

I don’t see the problem. The worst thing that would happen is that people would die off. Overpopulation problem solved.

Yup. We could always bore them to death.

 

[ClemtheCatholic]

Here’s a fact for those who think the world is overpopulated: If everybody currently in the world lived at the same population density of Paris - we would all be able to live in an area the size of France.

 

[Regular_Atheist]

Then they are not thinking logically. It is not the fact that we are consuming more globally and overall that is meaningful to my argument. It is that poorer countries are consuming more and more of the food and energy on a per capita basis. If we were approaching any limit of resource availability; you would NOT see this effect. Hence I have done MORE than show we are not overpopulated yet, I have shown we are not yet approaching overpopulation

Huh? I don’t think you understand what I was saying. An increase in global consumption of resources shows that there is more demand for this resources, and one of the causes for this is that the population is higher. The more resources we use up now, the quicker they will run out. That’s the logic behind it, anyway, and it makes sense. If the population is increasing, as it seems to be, then our consumption of resources will only increase until the point at which it becomes a problem.

No they are not. We have enough coal to last over 200 years. We have enough known reserves of natural gas to last 100 years. What we are running out of is cheap oil (ie easy to get to). But expensive oil, it looks like there is a whole lot of that. In the form of tar sands, oil shale, shale oil (two differ things BTW), and deep water oil. Much of this is economically feasible for development with oil above $75.
And there are HUGE areas we have not even explored yet. The entire eastern seacoast of the US has not had any oil exploration done in close to 50 years. This is even the shallow waters. And when huge reserves have been found off the coast of Canada to the north and the gulf of mexicao and south america to the south; the odds are there is a lot there.

I’ll take your word for it, but I’d like some sources.

Now, much of this we may never choose to develope, due to lack of need and environmental concerns. But to say we know that fossil fuels are running out is patently false and completely ignorant.

How so? We have used up oil fields before, so it stands to reason that we will eventually reach the point where there are none left. Whether or not you would claim that it’s a problem we should worry about now, it’s certainly a problem that will one day exist.

No, that is NOT what I said. I said I would not join up with those folks on their belief unless the evidence presented itself. And you have obviously not studied the evidence closely at all (which is common for people complaining about overpopulation). Let me be clear, if a group of people support grossly immoral actions, I assume their thinking is likely flawed on most matters. So that is reason to be doubly critical of ANYTHING they claim. It doesn’t mean they can’t be right on something; but it is not likely (especially if that something is related to their **immoral **stances).

How is belief in overpopulation immoral?

And, for the record, I myself am not one of those people complaining about overpopulation. I don’t believe it is a problem at the moment, but it will certainly become one eventually. Even if it does, I can’t really think of a solution. I don’t believe it’s an issue right now, but it will become one some day. I don’t agree that it’s impossible.

 

[tafan]

Huh? I don’t think you understand what I was saying. An increase in global consumption of resources shows that there is more demand for this resources, and one of the causes for this is that the population is higher. The more resources we use up now, the quicker they will run out. That’s the logic behind it, anyway, and it makes sense. If the population is increasing, as it seems to be, then our consumption of resources will only increase until the point at which it becomes a problem.

I understand what you are thinking, but your thinking is incomplete. Look there could only be 50,000 on a planet and the planet could be running out of resources, or there could be 50 Billion on a planet and the planet may not be running out of resources. Your logic seems to be “We have a lot of people, and consumption is growning, so they will run out”.

This is not necessarily true, you have to determine how much is there and will they run out. It is hard to do, but you can look at where you stand now. And the way to do that is with fairly simple macro economics. If we were starting to run out of a given resource, you would see the rich nations taking up all of the availability and start to see shortages in the poorer nations. But we do not see this, as a matter of fact we see the opposite.

I’ll take your word for it, but I’d like some sources.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves Scroll down and look at table named “Declared reserves of major OPEC Producers (billion of barrels)” and you will see a significant increase in reserves of Opec nations from 1980 until 2010.

opec.org/opec_web/static_files_project/media/downloads/publications/ASB2010_2011.pdf Go to page 24, table 3.1 and you will see that world reserves of 1.2 MB reserves in 2006 and now in 2010 1.47 MB of oil. in table 3.2 you will see that natural gas has gone from 176 to 193 Billion cubic meters.

I could find a lot more. I actually study this stuff for a living. But that should suffice.

How so? We have used up oil fields before, so it stands to reason that we will eventually reach the point where there are none left. Whether or not you would claim that it’s a problem we should worry about now, it’s certainly a problem that will one day exist.

Some oil reserves we may determine we never need or want to develop. It is that simple. 50 years from now, we likely will not need as much oil. So for example, it seems likely the eastern seacoast of the US we will never develope due to environment/political concerns.

What you are saying does not stand to reason. The world does not stay the same. In the 19th century, most steel and iron plants relied on charcoal for heat. Much of the British isles were deforested because of this. People were predicting that the industrial revolution would come to an end because of lack of trees. This has happened with other commodities throughout history (eg whale oil ). The resources needed to not stay the same. For example, we are likely to see a significant shift from oil to natural gas in the next 20 years.

How is belief in overpopulation immoral?

Belief in overpopulation is not immoral. But those who advocate against overpopulation have a undeniable history of advocating for immoral solutions to the “problem”.

And, for the record, I myself am not one of those people complaining about overpopulation. I don’t believe it is a problem at the moment, but it will certainly become one eventually. Even if it does, I can’t really think of a solution. I don’t believe it’s an issue right now, but it will become one some day. I don’t agree that it’s impossible.

And my only point is that you have no evidence to support your belief that it will be a problem one day. None at all. If you were arguing (like Contarini) from an environment concern, you would have a stronger case to be made. But you are arguing from a lack or resources, it becomes completely bogus.

 

[Contarini]

Here’s a fact for those who think the world is overpopulated: If everybody currently in the world lived at the same population density of Paris - we would all be able to live in an area the size of France.

How is that relevant? People living at that population density need a lot of agricultural land to support them.

And again, this completely ignores the environmental impact.

At some point human population will surpass the resources of the earth to support us. At some point ecosystems will start to collapse. Maybe tafan is right and so far we’re able to deal with the consequences of our population growth–maybe environmentalists have been unreasonable in their estimates in this regard–but at some point the things they predict will really start happening.

Edwin

 

[ClemtheCatholic]

How is that relevant? People living at that population density need a lot of agricultural land to support them.

And again, this completely ignores the environmental impact.

At some point human population will surpass the resources of the earth to support us. At some point ecosystems will start to collapse. Maybe tafan is right and so far we’re able to deal with the consequences of our population growth–maybe environmentalists have been unreasonable in their estimates in this regard–but at some point the things they predict will really start happening.

Edwin

I find it relevant obviously there are many other details, issues, and complications but it is very interesting

 

[Jerry_Westerby]

…Let’s for the sake of argument say that the world is indeed overpopulated… What would be a moral and legitimate way to handle the problem?

Assuming over-population (defined here as worldwide food production and distribution optimal, but people are getting less than needed calories/clean water) is a fact, I don’t think the Church has an answer.

Westerby

 

[Contarini]

I find it relevant obviously there are many other details, issues, and complications but it is very interesting

Maybe it’s interesting to someone who has never before thought about the fact that cities need agricultural land to support them, and that the preservation of wilderness has considerable value both for human flourishing and as an expression of respect for God’s creation.

I would think that these considerations would be obvious, and so I fail to see what is so very interesting about this banal observation. I have never seen it raised except as a propaganda point to try to persuade people that overpopulation is not a problem, and that certainly seemed to be your point here.

Edwin

 

[Marybeloved]

While I personally don’t buy the notion that the Earth has surpassed its carrying capacity (far from it), I think there are a fair number of people who mean well in believing this, but are tackling the problem with immoral means (ie contraception and abortion).

Let’s for the sake of argument say that the world is indeed overpopulated, or will be in the near future. What would be a moral and legitimate way to handle the problem?

I don’t think the Church’s response would differ. Contraception will always be wrong. If there’s a legitimate need to limit children, we have nfp and abstinence.

 

[CrimsonThorn]

Huh? I don’t think you understand what I was saying. An increase in global consumption of resources shows that there is more demand for this resources, and one of the causes for this is that the population is higher. The more resources we use up now, the quicker they will run out. That’s the logic behind it, anyway, and it makes sense. If the population is increasing, as it seems to be, then our consumption of resources will only increase until the point at which it becomes a problem.

I’ll take your word for it, but I’d like some sources.

How so? We have used up oil fields before, so it stands to reason that we will eventually reach the point where there are none left. Whether or not you would claim that it’s a problem we should worry about now, it’s certainly a problem that will one day exist.

How is belief in overpopulation immoral?

And, for the record, I myself am not one of those people complaining about overpopulation. I don’t believe it is a problem at the moment, but it will certainly become one eventually. Even if it does, I can’t really think of a solution. I don’t believe it’s an issue right now, but it will become one some day. I don’t agree that it’s impossible.

I literally dont think there is a solution, even if there was a problem. Human nature is so greedy and selfish, i dont think anyone would care about future generations amd would just worry about their survival in the present time.

 

[CrimsonThorn]

I don’t see the problem. The worst thing that would happen is that people would die off. Overpopulation problem solved.

How utterly uncompassionate