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So the topic of "the world is overpopulated" has come up a number of times around the office in the last few months. I dunno if it's just a coincidence, but every time I can remember, it was Asians (Orientals, as per Stef's recent comment that he wants to bring that word back, which I'd be happy to oblige and contribute, but must admit I prefer to say "Asian" out of habit) who brought up the statement, and everyone else just affirmed them. Whether it was preference cascade causing more skeptical people to hide their less-than-convinced stand, or whether I was the only person in the room who thought (on the inside), "No, the world' isn't overpopulated, that's just a line of bullshit you've bought into", no one else so much as attempted to refute that claim. I tried, but both because I haven't refined my in-person argumentation skills in a long time, and because I held back so as not to place myself in an awkward position at work, I didn't convince anybody. So I'm wondering, what are the arguments in support and opposition of the claim that the planet is overpopulated? Obviously, the claim is about humans, not ants nor deer, and the issue isn't necessarily that the number of bodies itself is too high, but that the sustainability of providing for any single human life is impossible at the scale of how many total lives we are at now. Whether it's a matter solely about food scarcity, or living space, or waste disposal space (or others I haven't noted), or a combination, this is usually what people are talking about when they mention "overpopulation". They're not talking about Jews or Armenians being densely packed into close quarters during their respective genocides. My observations are... I'd argue that living space is definitely not a problem, because technology has brought us multi-level buildings, so the same square footage of land has had its capacity for living space multiplied many times fold over the recent centuries. The industrial and post-industrial eras, in particular, have brought about the advent of skyscrapers, which may be used as either office spaces, or as hotels and apartment complexes. So "packing" human beings into enough room isn't the issue, although I suppose someone like Paul Joseph Watson would argue that people want to living in homes, not apartments, and they don't want to live in plain, glass towers like skyscrapers, but the issue is not pleasing humans, but providing for humans, so I'm going to ignore that argument for this topic's sake for the time being. So, as I've presented the matter of technology allowing for multiplication of the use of land area by occupying increasing levels of building stories, "living space" is not in immediately short supply, so that leg of the overpopulation stool is gone. Likewise, I'd pose that food provision is also a matter of technological advancement. With the advent of GM crops, botanists have developed drought-resistant, disease resistant, higher-yield crops. Combined with better methods of cultivation, like crop rotation, green houses, and many other utilities designed to enhance our ability to produce food that I'm not even aware of, coupled with a production-centric economic model like Capitalism that creates abundance of resources, is "not enough food" really a problem at all? Isn't it just that some places have too many people and not enough food provision, while other places have a far greater capacity for food production relative to their populations? So the issue isn't the ability to produce enough food, it's something else that's preventing some places from doing so, isn't it? For example, foreign aid acting as a disincentive for productivity and an incentive to reproduce. Either way, would it not follow that the "not enough food" leg of the overpopulation stool has also been knocked off? So lastly there's waste disposal. Here I don't really have any arguments about the issue, so much as I'm going to fall back on the expertise of someone else. In this case, Angela Logomasini of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, demonstrated in the "Recycling" episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! with a visual aid that a tiny portion of land (relative to the rest of the country) could account for 1000 years of landfill space, were there all disposal to be 100% landfill and 0% recycling. So if that's accurate, then all hopes of standing on the overpopulation stool have all but flown out the window, as the last leg it has to stand on (that I know of) is not well and truly gone. But beyond that, there's the argument that much, MUCH older civilizations, far less advanced than where we are at right now- namely, medieval Europeans -effectively lived in their own filth, and they built their cities on top of their older cities, and "filling the land" (in this case, with entire cities) hasn't proven to be any issue over the last several centuries. And yet again, as with the previous 2 matters, technological advancement is a present matter. So would it not follow that techniques to use the most of space have made efficient use of space where waste is concerned a moot point, too? I'm sure there's plenty of other arguments, so tell me what I've missed, or where I may be completely mistaken! If I'm not wrong, how can I effectively communicate that overpopulation is either not a pressing issue, or possibly even a lie, to these people who so confidently express that it's real and there's nothing they can do about it besides affirm its reality, and that they should adopt rather than procreate? Because I'm tired of seeing relatively intelligent people nice themselves into extinction, as well as I'm tired of hearing leftist platitudes everywhere I go, but I don't want to go on some spontaneous tirade when I could present a compelling case to persuade someone instead.