{"id":51644,"date":"2020-03-08T08:12:07","date_gmt":"2020-03-08T13:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=51644"},"modified":"2020-03-08T08:12:56","modified_gmt":"2020-03-08T13:12:56","slug":"the-population-problem-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=51644","title":{"rendered":"The population problem problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/smallfarmfuture.org.uk\/2020\/03\/the-population-problem-problem\/\">The population problem problem<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A while ago I wrote a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/smallfarmfuture.org.uk\/2018\/06\/population-whats-the-problem\/\">post<\/a>&nbsp;probing critically at the idea that human population levels were at the root of our contemporary environmental problems. It prompted various critical responses in turn, including&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldpopulationbalance.org\/articles\/yes-overpopulation-problem\">this one<\/a>&nbsp;from Alan Ware and Dave Gardner of World Population Balance that\u2019s only just come to my attention. They published it so long ago that I suppose the moment to engage with it has probably passed, except that it\u2019s helped me clarify a few thoughts \u2013 as has a recent article by Meehan Crist in the&nbsp;<em>London Review of Books<\/em><sup>1<\/sup>. Since the issues involved are still very much with us, it seems worth wading into the population question once again, this time through the lens of the critique levelled by Ware and Gardner (henceforth WG) at my original post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I mischievously titled that original post \u201cPopulation \u2013 what\u2019s the problem?\u201d, not necessarily to suggest that population&nbsp;<em>isn\u2019t&nbsp;<\/em>a problem but to question what kind of problem it is. On this score, WG have no doubts \u2013 for them, it\u2019s an \u201cexistential problem\u201d. They proceed to substantiate this, as do many analysts on the topic, mostly by asserting very emphatically that it&nbsp;<em>is&nbsp;<\/em>a problem, sometimes invoking the emphatic assertions of others, especially those most respected of others, \u2018scientists\u2019. These scientists include the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/bioscience\/article\/67\/12\/1026\/4605229\">World scientists\u2019 warning to humanity<\/a>&nbsp;and other works co-authored by Eileen Crist. Seems like you need to be called Crist to weigh in on this debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ah well, I almost qualify \u2013 and for my part, notwithstanding all these assertions, I\u2019d say that inasmuch as population is a problem it seems to me a secondary problem that\u2019s derivative of other, deeper ones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The population problem problem A while ago I wrote a&nbsp;post&nbsp;probing critically at the idea that human population levels were at the root of our contemporary environmental problems. It prompted various critical responses in turn, including&nbsp;this one&nbsp;from Alan Ware and Dave Gardner of World Population Balance that\u2019s only just come to my attention. They published it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,7],"tags":[15683,1371,1160,9738],"class_list":["post-51644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-chris-smaje","tag-population","tag-population-growth","tag-small-farm-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51645,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51644\/revisions\/51645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}