Is Overpopulation Still a Problem?

Ahh yes, as a Filipino, I knew our overpopulated country would be mentioned in a topic like this. Another reason why we are overpopulated here is because many in the slum areas, the poorest of the poor, have 7-10 children while being unemployed and uneducated. The church supresses the release of free birth control handed to the poor cause they consider it as a sin. Then the middle class to upper middle class have less children, sometimes only one to two children, because they are more educated and more aware of the cost of having too many children. So the poor keeps having children while the middle class produce less. The church opposes the government from logical solutions and now Filipinos just voted the previous Dictator's son back to presidency. For you Americans out there complaining about how much of a mess your government and country is, I'm telling you, you haven't had the slightest idea of how bad a country like mine can get.

Elon saying Japan will eventually cease to exist reminds me of a conversation I had about a time when I lost a lot of weight all at once. I told my colleague that I was losing a pound a day. He said, "How long do you think you could keep that up?" And I said, "well, I was 150 pounds when I started, so 150 days."

Even if there is a specific carrying capacity for our planet and limit to technological productivity, doesn't mean we have to or should reach it. I think a great progressive move for humanity would be to give back large swaths of our planet to nature instead of dominating every last square inch and resource. Biodiversity is important for the evolution of life and for the maintenance of our planet and its life-giving environment. Let's take a few steps back from controlling it all and playing gods.

"Honey I shrunk the resources" is the best thing I've heard all week
Amazing content this was so informative and listenable I' m so grateful for content like this

Would like to have seen the impact of planned obsolesce plays in the use of resources, while it would be a difficult technical and social problem to solve, given current incentives, it would be interesting to see how the "overshoot" day would be affected.

I am really starting to like your way of presenting science. You're a gem :)

Thanks!
There is no doubt in my mind that the population will reach a sustainable level in the long term... the question I have is if this level will be reached the good way (planning and policy), or the bad way (the horsemen of the apocalypse...)

I love Sabine's humour. Her deadpan delivery means that anyone who is not really listening may miss her quips.

This is without a doubt my new favorite channel - Sabine can bring a difficult topic sooo close to understanding for "all" that it has to be call a gift.

Hi Sabine, interesting as usual. Two things to note, carrying capacity also depends on the quality of life; we certainly don't want more billions of people with not enough to go by. Currently we have more than a billion people without electricity and more than that being "energy poor" and a quite a few millions who are undernourished. Even if we stabilize the population below the carrying capacity, there is the issue of abundant energy with enough return on investment to sustain a highly technological society, so if that energy becomes scarce, the carrying capacity factor decreses. Basically, there is a dependance of energy for the capacity of the planet to sustain life at high number of human occupants.

You take on some really great topics. An engrossing walk-through of the whole spectrum of speculations, and then some nicely grounded analysis.

Thank you so much for focusing on this topic. Personally I react negatively when people sound the alarm that we don't have enough people. Some people want to be parents and some do not. I should not be lectured by the Pope that I am selfish for choosing to have a pet instead of a child. In my case I have neither. I grew up on a farm but I also lived in high density population centers. I have an experience of pressure in high density populations that I do not feel when I am out in the country. Perhaps there is a reaction to crowding on fertility rates.I believe there is a bias for unending growth economically and with that the need for more and more people. Those assumptions are about to be tested. Who wants to live in a world where you are supposed to have children whether you want to or not ? I believe the trends in population growth or decrease can change at any time. The idea that we would be trapped in a trend to the point of our demise seems irrational. If AI and robots are going to replace us maybe we will have some help caring for our elderly. Thanks again for the topic.

Would be interested in how the population would develop if we were to figure out indefinite longevity. Would it be dramatic to the current growth or would the projection be much lower than expected?

This has quickly become one of my favourite channels. Not because of the factual content (which is excellent), but for her dry sense of humour … just love it!!!!! 😄

Excellent video...as always. Love this channel....always fascinating. Thank you for your content, viewpoint, and humor.

Sabine, I LOVE your blogs. You tackle many topics that I have questioned (and with "wicked" humor). Please keep up your good work.

Great fun video & very informative and great to have a level headed chat about the matter without immediately veering either to utopia or apocalypse in predictions.
There are of course inter-related topics such as reducing absolute poverty, emancipating women & inequality all of which help to keep population growth as a manageable change and some places where depopulation is also an issue.
I think the elephant in the room though is that what has enabled us to vastly increase food production to feed a much larger population is primarily based on finite fossil fuels. Which tragically in their use are also destabilising the planet's ecology & risk greatly reducing carrying capacity in addition to being close to running out.
Technology is just a sculpture without energy & we are facing reductions in net available energy, alongside destabilising the biosphere.
Without fossil phosphate mining, the Bosch-haber process for creating synthetic nitrogen from natural gas & the vast energy surplus required for mechanisation from a fossil fuel economy our population would never have got anywhere near its current size. Any future predictions on population trends, I would argue, must take these resource issues into account to have any chance of accuracy.

Thanks for your sensible and perfectly balanced analysis, Sabine. I know I shouldn't but I was surprised.

Trying to think what category I fit in as I believe that we need to have fewer people and more robots. Sabine, excellent presentation thank you.

As the population increases, so does the complexity of the interactions as well as the severity of the extremes that that result from this greater complexity. So a small change in the overall population density of the entire world for instance will tend to lead to pockets of extreme density increases. Similar to how small changes in global temperature can lead to significant increases in the number and severity of storms. Just looking at population growth based on simple one to one co-relations such as resource availabilty, do not represent the whole picture. They also often overlook big parts of the story, like in order ti increase production of a, we need more b, but if we use more b, there is less b for producing c ...

Wonderful presentation! I would very much also like to hear your thoughts on the disruptive effects of AI and quantum computers on world population predictions and standards of living.

The issue is not "the world" but certain hotspots. Countries with rapid population growth experience turmoil, wars and potential collapse, especially when the young can't get jobs. The burden falls on nearby countries to take in, resettle and retrain the migration outflow, at huge cost to their economies.

Another great video Sabine, keep up the good work 👍

Sabina, great program! As a plant and soil scientist who has also worked on water issues, I have to bring up one point. You mentioned climate change but you did not address environmental degradation, and by extension, the ability of the earth so support us. The aquifers our farms and cities rely on are being pumped dry. We are in the midst of, and the cause of, one of the greatest species extinction events in Earth history. I could go on and on. These degradations and extinctions are only accelerating as we mine the earth for more resources, farm more land, build bigger cities. Then, there is heat. Compress the same volume of air in a smaller space, and that air gets hotter and particles of air collide more and more. Same thing happens with humans and rats and conflict.

Dear Sabine, I really love how you have, through concise yet easy to understand videos sprinkled with humor, made it more accessible for the average person to also learn from the studies of technical sources such as The Lancet. You are doing great work, and I appreciate you very much.

The Haber-Bosch process is the reason why we have such large populations. Fixing N2 and digging out fertilizers (Phosphates and Nitrates) using Diesel Engines are essential. Perhaps this sort of thing will always stay ahead of the needs of a large population, forever.
I would not bet on that.

Sabine-I love you!
Not only are you brilliant but you have this dry sense of humor that just cracks me up!
Please stay on you tube!

As usual, intelligent and coherent interpretation, without BS... Viel Dank...

Regarding the lower fertility rate... I wonder about the psichologycal aspect of humans. Less siblings or no siblings, how does it affect us? Are we going to become more spoiled individuals? Or with lower social skills? Will we consume more resources individually? I am curious about more aspects. Will a single-child in a big city have (proportionally) much more environmental impact as a big group of siblings in the countryside?

Informative and entertaining for sure! As to the future, totally inconclusive, and for good reason.

Malthus was not wrong about the limit of food production: from the late 18th century viewpoint and tech level. What actually caused mass population growth in the 20th century was the invention of cheap artificial fertilizer.

It is not easy to combat the #1 human motivation: reproductive selfishness. I was unaware that Musk was a poster boy for this motive.

18:20 I hear the claim of progress frequently but nobody ever defines it. Progress causes all the problems, then we're in the dilemma of needing more progress to fix what we messed up, but the new progress rarely fixes the mess and causes more mess.

I always find the delivery entertaining, even when I am not particularly interested in the subject. I love the deadpan humor.

As it happens I just finished reading Zeihan's "The End of the World is Just the Beginning". It is fascinating to contrast Sabine's viewpoint with Zeihan's, who is a geopolitician. He fleshes out the implications of rapidly changing demographics with the end of globalization. The implications are scary.

Unfortunately many people are not concerned about progress, they were concerned about having power over other people.

The fertility question is really interesting. Here in Brazil people used to have 10 kids or more in the past, when now it's pretty difficult to see a family with 3 kids.
But the thing is the mentality of the time and it's context. Back then we were a mostly an agrarian country, so people had lots of kids to help them to take care of plantations and farm animals. While today we're mostly a... I forgot the word... We live mostly in cities. Where life's expensive!
Anyway, thanks for the video, Sabine! 😊
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

There seems to be an implicit assumption that in countries facing a decline in population, the population will eventually "stabilize". Is there an example of this ever happening? I believe that is what Elon Musk is pointing to - that once population starts decreasing a lot of things start to break. For example, the social security net for more retirees needs to be financed by fewer working people, which might further dampen the desire to have and raise more children. So we get into a negative feedback loop. Another negative feedback loop might be deflation (again, Japan is an example), where falling demand due to falling population means prices keep falling, thereby reducing incentives to consume or produce. I think this video, excellent as it is, is remiss in not exploring these negative feedback loops. We could only have more confidence that we can have a stabilized world population if we have proven viable strategies to combat these negative feedback loops.

I feel like there are two competing perspectives when it comes to population. The business/production end, and the spacial/resources end. Both are correct in there own estimations but horribly wrong in each other's. Not enough of the world is on fire yet.

How about a talk on the oceans fisheries? I remember in the late 50s/60s, the oceans in the future will be a massive source of food. I think that fish populations have drastically declined do to over fishing.

This video covered in 20 minutes everything I learned in my Demographic Analysis class

What I love about Ms. Hossenfelder, she does the research and includes references. When Elon Musk tweets, it just worthless opinions.

"Elon Musk fathered 8 children, though maybe by the time I've finished this sentence he has a few more" - damn shots fired

The problem is that countries are not centered towards 2.1x ratio. So Japan could introduce some pro family programs. But Nigerians could introduce sexed classes and mass education for women. Generally the largest pop growth is in poor countries in challenging climate, often politically unstable, which could lead to more unstability in future and that large population could lead miserable life.

Ich liebe Sabine ❤ such ein unique personality, she’s a gem 🎉

Very thoughtful presentation. Thank you Sabine.

I keep waiting to point out the average ages of the people in these reduced populations and the real meaning about that inverted pyramid you dismissed as soon to be fixed. You simply pass over the 40 or 50 years of adjustment and how it would shake itself out in terms of the ages of relative groups with it.

I think the biggest fear about depopulation in developed countries (but also many developing countries like China) is simply that our economic models and pension schemes are predicated on the fact that people have kids and maintain the population around the replacement level. In most developed countries, Boomers failed to do so and they now get retired, provoking both a pension overload and a capital crunch which will, in turn, dry up the capital that had allowed the developing world to feed itself and access modern technologies. And just add the fact that young people drive consumption, are agents of progress, and challenge the status quo. Aging countries are therefore condemned to slow death before their demography has the time to recover. As for the developing world, many are likely to experience rapid deindustrialization and, most likely, famine.

14:31 "If you extrapolate this trend indefinitely, Japan will cease to exist" However as they are currently one of the biggest cheese importers in the world, this will mean more for the rest of us.

In the Middle Ages when the plague killed off more than half the population, life generally got a lot better for those who survived. Suddenly there was a lot more land available to farmers and a labor shortage meant that peasants could command better pay from their lords.

In about 1966 one of my science teachers predicted that in a mere 10,000,000 years, with the population growth rate of that time, the mass of humanity would be expanding at the speed of light. Of course he know that this would not be possible, but he just wanted to see when it might happen. Of course, I may not remember the number correctly😄, but it's interesting to think about. 😄

I think one thing left out here is the inverse correlation between increasing idh and education with fertility rate

What bothers me most about "doomsters" and "boomsters" is the unwillingness of either side to accept any piece of information from the other. It's a major problem in politics today.

10:03 It's not a temporary problem because the birth rate is below the level of reproduction i.e each new generation will be smaller than the one before. South Korea currently has a birth rate of 0.8 which means every new generation is more than twice as small as the previous one. To maintain a population at the current level you need a birth rate of 2 or even slightly more than that.

I have only recently become a subscriber and love that we visit the different points of views of each respective camp then go into the science behind it. We need more Clip-Sharers like you rather than influencers! Keep up the great work!

Interesting take. I'd have liked to see your thoughts on the "If everyone on Earth had the lifestyle of the average American, we would need 4.5 Earths for resources."

I hope you get it all worked out . I also wish to continue conspicuous cheese 🧀 consumption.

I am more of a doomster, but with hope. First, it's not only how many people, but what resources they use up... as people increase their standard of living they will use up more resources. The idea of an automobile for each family I think will go out the window... but we still need good healtcare, good quality food, water, clothes etc. If we only concentrate on humans we might just pull it off!.... but as far as the habitats and species we've known will surely be depleated... Also this uneven decrease in population apparently is very stressful for economies and countries won't take it in stride. To sum up, it's not how many we are but how wiseflully we use up resources and achieve the carrying capacity, if not for all species at least for humans....I have a gut feeling the world as an ecosystem in the future would be better off with at the most 1/4 the current population... I guess 2200 wil be a different story!

"ZPG" - Zero Population Growth was indeed a hot topic in the late 60's through the mid 70's as the environmental reawakening (from Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" about the dangers of DDT) lead to many environmental movements including the creation of "Earth Day" and many others. I think we need this topic to reach worldwide prominence again soon!

Interesting analysis, as usual. Neglects the long-term effects of AI. Thanks to robotics and AI, population shortage will not cause problems for any developed country in the medium term. In fact, a shrinking population, like in Japan, will make for a more pleasant lifestyle.

Thanks for addressing this topic, Sabine.
Here in Ireland, demographics is a touchy subject because our population still has not recovered from the British-amplified famine of the mid-19th century. Where other Western countries have cities of hundreds of thousands sprinkled across their land, ours are merely tens of thousands. Where they have capital cities and main industrial/urban areas counting tens of millions of people, ours (Dublin) is an order of magnitude smaller. Yet, most infrastructures that are taken as granted in our neighbours, exists here in a much lower density and straining, or is plain missing. And since we've started our demographic transition shortly after joining the EU in the 1970s, most of the housing that exists now, which was built with families of 6-9 as the typical size, is proving woefully inadequate for the common families of 3-5 we have now. The point, I think, is that it's not so much an issue of volume of resources, but of how they're employed in the end, against a context that can shift in unanticipated ways. By trying to hammer the problem into a question of too few or too many babies we may be losing some critical flexibility in addressing the potential underlying issues.

Another important factor is humanity's reaction to changes. Right now overpopulation is a philosophical question, which will gradually turn into an economic one (it partly already has), and finally become an existential question in a few thousand years (60th century ballpark). At that point, humans will radically change their approach, if they exist long enough to see it happen. Being worried about humans not breeding enough is like being worried that humans will suddenly stop eating - possible, yes, but inconsistent with all observations.

Really glad you covered this. It’s been heavy on my mind

Am I right in thinking this or not: The reason Doomsters got it wrong is not just because of the increased technology in food production but more so because they could not believe we would cut down all the forests of the world and turn them into farms.

The wealthiest people have a vested interest in maintaining a reward system that requires resources to be in excess supply in relation to population. To them, they would gladly decimate the population to maintain a system that awards them power.

4:43 It's important to recognize that humans created poverty. We invented it. It's our thing. We could just say, "Let's de-create (or un-invent) poverty," and we could make it vanish.

Thank you for putting your ideas together on this topic and share it, Sabine & team!

In the 13th century when England had fewer than 3 million people they were building those amazing cathedrals. Little towns of 20,000 were all playing.

As a person who gets extremely overwhelmed around a lot of people, I wonder what the name of the metric is for how much people can stand being around so many other people. Maybe I just need therapy. 🤷‍♀️

I can't help but feel that any time a politician asks you to have more children there is something in it for her/him, and when a rich person like Musk do, it is some kind of wish for more customers for their product or they are just flapping their mouths randomly.

I am just getting to see your videos. Thank you for giving more then one view on most topics. Keep up the good work.

Just want to say I really appreciate the humor in these videos

Comprehensive and fascinating as always. My immediate thought upon hearing Musk's views was about habitat destruction and species diversity - and your description of sub-Saharan Africa as the biggest hotspot re future population growth has me particularly concerned about our cousins the bonobos (my fave), chimps and gorillas, who inhabit that region and nowhere else. As you say, the problem isn't population growth per se, but that it's happening most where it's least sustainable, creating greater human inequities, diseases and pressures on other species.

Just noticing that Manila's population density, the figure 42,000 per km² is very close to the very pleasant 11th arrondissement in Paris, which has all the modernities of electricity and running water, and a functioning sewage system and efficient garbage collection. It is a nice and safe area for residents and tourists as well. :-)

If the overshoot of resources is now in August and has steadily gotten earlier over the years in the face of expanding technology, and expanding population, how can we expect innovation to answer the problem of future overshoot?

The WEF needs to watch this video before they go and depopulate. You are the BEST Sabine!

Love your humour, Sabine, FIRST CLASS!

I'm Swedish and if the population increases like she says people will most likely move, maybe to Germany.

More thought should be given to the stability of the ecosystem with all the stress that increased agriculture and other human exploitations induces. This is surely the biggest factor regarding maximum population. Also, to comment on Elon Musk's thoughts on this: His views are purely from an economist standpoint, and from that worldview a growing population is needed for the endless expansions of economies. A population reduction guarantees a long-lasting recession, and we need to decide if this is a bad or a good thing.

A book titled “Factfulness” makes a strong case that the worlds birth rate is already below replacement levels. Sabine should read this book and update this video in my opinion.

I've felt like overpopulation is an issue, but thankfully it's an issue that will sort itself out if people are allowed control over their own bodies (birth control). Just looking at a satellite view of google maps we can see how we decimated so many natural environments to put farms in. I think it's important to remember while thinking about carrying capacity is that earth isn't just for us, it's also for animals and plants. The fact that so many forests are decimated and animals are going extinct is showing we are already above our "carrying capacity", not in the mathematical sense since technically we can probably squeeze more out of the earth, but more like an invasive species can decimate a natural environment.
Although I think it is ok to have kids, since the amount of kids people have when given the choice is below replacement rate. Instead of trying to convince people to get sterelised, we should give people free access to birth control.

Love your humour ;-) thanx for interesting info boiled down to essential content

Informative, well researched and dry humour 😁 thanks. No,I won't put my credit card details here..

Great video and great delivery. I was hoping you would mention how animal populations in the wild will regulate their own populations during good and bad times by having fewer babies when things are rough like when food is scarce and then have more babies when things are going well. I'd be interested in how much we might self-regulate our populations based off of our environmental pressures.

Reasonable people can disagree on whether or not there is an over-population problem. But it's absurd to make the argument that we must have more people in order to survive as a species.

Love your humor :). I recite bits to my wife and we both giggle like kids. :)

As a geography student learning about populations, im surprised you didnt mention a little bit of boserupian theory! Since you mentioned malthusian, these 2 theories of the earth’s carry capacity and method of dealing with population go hand in hand! Lol nice vid, i still think we should have less kids tho lol

Interesting note: Uranium was the FIRST item on the "index" of necessities for gov't. Last I checked the gov't was protecting it's energetic Uranium with the entire military. If someone tries to steal it - it blasts off to a new home......

Video after video without picking she answers things i have been walking around wondering for years. But without the need for doing the research. Its like a FUN FACTS OF EVERYTHING. 🎉

I feel like this video deserved more discussion on our ability to support such a large population, even of just a few billion with modern lifestyles. I think in general people under-appreciate the question of if modern development is realistic. Natural systems usually contain time delays so environmental harms continue to develop over time- even if we maintained our current population and lifestyles, the ecological crisis would continue to get worse.
And regarding that 60s/70s research about overpopulation, of course there was a lot of error when trying to estimate population, but just because technology helped us in the past does not mean that it will always be that way. There are obviously limits on our physical abilities and it's unrealistic to assume that human ingenuity can replace functioning of natural systems.
Of course people and institutions don't want to give up modernity, so it's not easy to talk about or get watch time from, but I think it's really important to consider and discuss. I obviously have more to say about the ecological crisis, so leave a comment if you'd like and I'd appreciate discussing whatever. (Effectiveness of existing green tech, anthropocentric/ethnocentric bias, misleading information from institutions, whatever)

She said "noone expects Japans population to continue decreasing indefinitely" but there was no real explaination to that. Low fertility in developed countries isn't caused by overpopulation, so why exactly do we expect fertility to go up eventually?

I am reminded of Coruscant, that city-planet in the Star Wars films that's just skyscrapers as far as the eye can see, not an inch of grass or any wildlife. That's what the world would look like if the human population keeps climbing.

Am I wrong, or has Sabine done several videos on the problems of energy productivity and pollution? producing for so many people in the world must have an impact.

I’m surprised Sabine didn’t address the social dislocations and poverty which will be caused by falling populations. A 50% decrease in Japan’s population won’t lead to a ‘nice’ future. It will be a difficult ordeal unprecedented in human history.

Never knew the plague also hit Asia as much as Europe but it makes sense.

This was, as always, a highly informative presentation that (seemingly for me) covers all sides to the story with pleasing rigor and stoicism. Now, I'll have some Gruyère because ... I still can.

Several points: 1. The resource estimates are always too low; some resources are as yet undisovered and some are considered unattainable die to technology/cost... until they're not (see: fracking)
2. China's population collapse will be worse than shown here because they have been cooking the books and because their population is imbalanced... if only 45% of you pop are women then that is the driving factor for growth.
3. Japanese overall population numbers are as you describe... but the distribution will be heavily towards the elderly to the pouinty that the smaller group of young people cannot sustain the social systems leading to economic collapse. This will lead to emigration or even foreign invasion (eventually).
4. Discussion of Malthusian vs technology is no longer enough. Western collapse is coming from a lowered biorthrate and the collapse of marriage and traditional institutions -- these are not included in the pop numbers you used. If 20% of America's college-age youth identify as non-binary or trans we won't need a Chines One-Child-Policy to obliterate our demographics... we're doing it from the ground up.

This woman is a joy!

Not worried about the brains for progress but for the hands for profit

Best humor ever. Adorable and informative. Had no choice but to subscribe.