“Richard writes, “Capitalism, not population is the main driver of planetary ecological collapse … .”. It sounds like an echo of statements from old-Marxist-socialism. It is not serious. Is Richard telling us that, while we are fighting a long-drawn-out battle against capitalism in order to overcome it, we can allow the population to continuously grow without risking any further destruction of the environment? Should we then think that a world population of ten billion by 2050 would not be any problem?”
By emphasizing population in bold italics he distorts my meaning. What I said was that “Capitalism, not population is the main driver of planetary collapse. . . ” — that is, the MAIN driver, not the ONLY driver. Though I’ve never written about this topic at length, I’ve never claimed that population growth is no problem at all. Saral’s right that some Marxists claim that the whole problem is capitalism, that there is no population problem, that the human population could grow more or less forever. They’re mostly responding to Malthusians who contend that overpopulation is the whole problem, not capitalism. I understand where they’re coming from. But both approaches seem simplistic to me. Of course overpopulation is a problem, a huge problem. Look around. I live in one of the most crowded pieces of real-estate in the world, in the middle of Manhattan. Sometimes the sidewalks are so full I have to walk along on the street to get by the crowds of people. By any rational measure there are just way too many people here.
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