Talk:Human overpopulation/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Consumption, sustainability and overpopulation

It may already be partly covered although this post is about Special:Diff/1011789252. Consumption (and the economy) and their relation to sustainability (and pollution) is related as the consumers include people; when too many people expect or have access to the same goods at once (a trend when a nation's economy is growing) it also means accelerated pollution (improperly recycled/reused goods as well as emissions), resource exploitation and environment destruction, obviously... Moreover, even where the economy is less developed, although the impact is less global, local pollution is important, especially with improper infrastructure, (mismanaged and excessive waste, unsustainable agriculture).

There's the argument that future technological progress will magically solve it all, that still largely rests on faith despite the incredible agro-tech advancements made in the last century, especially if ignoring those problems (that some lobby groups urge us to minimize). Another argument is that acknowledging the problems of increased and accelerated consumption by other economies encourages racism, yet at the same time the West is no better, started the trend and contributed to pollution there where regulations were lacking; we can see that some of those emerging economies are ahead of the West with the deployment of alternative energy sources, by necessity, or may have had no choice to manage population growth at times, lessons everyone can learn from...

Finally, let's take a simple example of resource consumption, wood and paper related deforestation. Soils dry up, lands erode, once it's too late the soil is also unsuitable for reforestation. That happens everywhere there's forest even if the populations are massed up in small spaces elsewhere (and use it for construction, energy, advertizing, offices, hygiene, tools, etc). The sun's energy is less reflected, increasing climate change, the oceans acidify, more forest fires occur, more co2 released, etc. Many forcings and buffers are understood, some loops and tipping points recognized, we never really know when it'll collapse, but know that it's concerning and that good education and better management can slow it. EOS (end of sermon). But since I don't intend to actively monitor this article and that it was mentioned at FTN I thought a summary would be useful for the talk page archives. —PaleoNeonate – 00:50, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate: Generally I agree with these statements -- but the sources themselves don't talk about overpopulation -- they talk about these other issues -- the larger challenge with this topic is that the article is adding sources that talk about overpopulation as an issue, with scholarship that covers a wide range of other concerns -- that are connected but not overpopulation -- we should not be in a place of synthesis, Sadads (talk) 21:58, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

The lead graph needs improvement

Any graph showing growth over an extended period of time will inevitably emphasize the last increment of the X axis, rendering the rest of the graph useless. A better mathematical representation of growth over very long periods of time is to use a logarithmic graph, which allows the audience to view all the various steps along the way, something akin to this this graph here representing the various stages of human technology and associated growth periods--Tallard (talk) 18:29, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Yep, for sure, Sadads (talk) 21:58, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Sounds like motivated reasoning. Logarithmic graphs are surely suited to showing the detail of trends already assumed to be logarithmic. In a state of ecological equilibrium, almost no species will be displaying hockey-stick population growth. Rollo (talk) 20:39, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Suggestion posted. Nsae Comp (talk) 21:36, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

General ideas

This is a valid topic and the article is fixable. In the little debate above, both sides are right. @Tallard: is right that comparable population growth in any non-human species would be called "overpopulation" without further discussion. That is why everyone is talking about it! And @Sadads: is right that overpopulation is understood as a synonym of ecological overshoot and yet, in the case of humans, economics and technology are crucial factors in the calculation. That is why the whole concept is flawed! I think the text can reconcile this divergence if we stick to facts and to steel-manning. 1: Define the theory from the outset as a proxy for unsustainability, because in biology that is what overpopulation implies. 2: Make clear that the hypothesis is conditional on other human-specific factors. Rollo (talk) 21:54, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Rollo! Totally agree -- I think the issue right now is that the article confuses consensus facts (population growth, overshoot (ecology) etc) with academic framework "human overpopulation" which is contentious, debated, and a theory -- probably worth trying to do a complete overhaul with that kind of direction in mind --> focus on where the idea comes from and pointing to the more appropriate pages for discussion of fact (like the history of population growth, or specific environmental consequences). Sadads (talk) 22:42, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

So, a suggestion for improving the intro, which is the only bit most people will read. Begin with the first para: "Human overpopulation (or human population overshoot) describes a human population that is too large for its environment to sustain it in the long term [remove society, 'population sustained by society' seems tautological]. The idea is generally discussed in the context of world population, though it may also be identified with regions. Overpopulation is caused by human population growth, which in recent centuries has become exponential due to changes in technology that reduce mortality [more concise]. Experts concerned by overpopulation argue that it results in [not 'causes'] a level of consumption and pollution [added] which exceeds the environment's [removed redundant references to local and global] carrying capacity, leading to ecological overshoot [instead of 'overshoot of natural resources', because I believe pollution is at issue too in carrying capacity]. Human overpopulation is often discussed in relation to other population concerns such as demographic push, depopulation, or even ecological or societal collapse and human extinction." Thoughts? Rollo (talk) 21:15, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

@Rollo: That sounds like a good start, I will tweak it when it goes live -- but that is the general direction it should be going in, Sadads (talk) 22:52, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

@Sadads Done. The main changes are for concision. Also removed the reference to pollution because it is not technically a factor after all, mea culpa. In general the idea is to square the circle, because I do get your concern. At every mention of "human overpopulation" you are seeing a subjective value judgement that elides the decisive issue of consumption. I will even guess that you see hypocrisy and perhaps even, yes, the dreaded R-word! But we can address that in the following paragraph. The fundamental rationale for this article is that if overpopulation can occur for another species, then it can for humans too. Indeed, if the term is synonymous with the less emotive "population overshoot", which I believe it is, then overpopulation is certainly real. Because it describes a trajectory rather than a destination. The difference with other species is that the factors of technology and culture mean that humans still theoretically have time to course-correct and pay back the debt before it comes due (at the expense of most other species, obviously). Perhaps the thesis of this article would then be invalidated. To assume that outcome is the most likely one seems, to me, unduly anthropocentric. But the article should be careful to leave that final judgement to the reader. Rollo (talk) 00:48, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Malthusian obsession in the lead is editorialising and goes against Wikipedia guidelines

Leading with a focus on debunked old Malthusian notions on an article about overpopulation is editorialising and original research. Various types of criticism belongs in the criticism section. The way the lead stands make the article look like the entire article article is a critique of Malthus. Overpopulation is primarily a scientific concept. And by leading with an anti-Malthus statement, the article fails at NPOV. I deleted the offending, unsourced, editorialising, NPOV, paragraph, as its only place is in the criticism section. User:Sadads reverted my edit. This is how edit wars start, when people demand keeping poor content, against wikipedia standards, on pages, politicising a page that should be about science, to push one's viewpoint. This page needs an overhaul.--Tallard (talk) 00:21, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

@Tallard: Happy to talk, but... the problem with the article is that there its not focusing on the scholarship of overpopulation -- but rather, right now, its interpreting a wide range of other topics by stringing together facts from other lines of scholarship -- such as population trends or the scholarly literature on environmental crisis where overpopulation is not the consensus -- population pressure on the environment is, but making the moral judgement that it is overpopulation is not. Sadads (talk) 22:07, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

This sounds like a climate change denier imposing denialism on a climate change page. This is not even a debate. Homo sapiens is more populous than rats and mice. No academic ecology science book claims that humans are not overpopulated. The top rung of the food pyramid should be the least populous. Overpopulation is not some moral judgement. This is not a "debate". The numbers aren't ambiguous, and as the International Panel on Climate Change sets the standard for questions of climate change, the IPBES sets the standard for Homo sapiens impact on this planet. Criticism of the NAMESAKE of the article belongs in the denialism section, not the lead. But I'll not be coming back to Wikipedia to argue with deniers. There are not enough hours in a day to argue with deniers. I'll leave it to others to fix this hot mess.--Tallard (talk) 04:19, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

@Tallard: Hahahahahahaha.....I am one of the most active organizers on WP:WikiProject Climate change -- and am actively promoting work on climate topics in the public... for example I was on a podcast recently or take a look at my Twitter. Describing me as a denier is really not paying attention to context.

Human population growth at the same time that we seek GDP and economic growth under our current system of extraction is most certainly the root cause of every environmental crisis we face at the moment -- however, claiming "overpopulation" i.e. that we have passed a certain threshold of carrying capacity simply because of the number of people on the planet is pretty radical -- and a matter of interpretation and not consistently held across the science and when taken as a "truthful" position it has a tendency to be a justification for a wide range of rather contentious and rather unhelpful political positions (such as ecofacism) or colonial/racist population controls. The consistent language used by the IPCC and other scholarly literature is population growth, a focus on the misuse of natural resources, a focus on Planetary boundaries, and redistribution of environmental impacts -- so that high-wealth countries have less impact, and that low wealth contexts undergo sustainable development. Many of the models by the IPCC allow for some population growth AND all of these outcomes -- and most demographers that I have read/heard talk in scholarly settings, suggest that we are on track for population decline starting as early as the 2040s -- which relieves population growth pressures. The most recent concensus report from UNEP on all the crisis explicitly says "The resource-intensive and increasingly unequal model of human development indirectly drives global environmental change." Overpopulation is not the consensus interpretation of the facts -- but overconsumption as part of development. Sadads (talk) 13:16, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Placing the unscholarly Malthus in the lead turns this into an "anti" POV article, Malthus simply has no business in the lead. His views were opinion, not science. The article is poor, and "guardians" are insisting that it remain poor. Very sad. I agree that it's not be absolute scientific consensus, but the field of biology is pretty clear on these matters. When one species exterminates all its competitors and is now the leading animal biomass of the planet, with the only species even near us are rats and mice. With the planet as a whole experiencing an extinction event close to that of 65 million years ago, to refute the sciences of biology and paleoecology with aged debunked popular politico-economic notions is really missing the point. Not only does Malthus not belong in the lead, he barely belongs in the article at all. It's also reminiscent of all criticisms of democratic-socialist policies receiving shouts of "Communist!". Come on guys. Stick to the science, get the silly politics and anti-POVs out of this. --Tallard (talk) 04:38, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I tend to agree with this, but I would argue that the shoehorning of politically charged terms like "ecofascism" into the lede is even worse, given it is almost entirely a pejorative as almost no one except a handful of unstable individuals on Reddit or 4chan and a couple of mass shooters have ever described themselves or their ideology using that term. Moreover, the topic of ecofascism and its relationship to discussions on overpopulation is hardly explored in the article. Lastly, it politicizes the article even more so than the placement of Malthus and his ideas in the lede.

You have twice mentioned how human biomass exceeds even rats and mice, and I'm thinking that might be worth mentioning in the article if it can be backed up by a reliable source. I actually added something similar to the Biodiversity loss and the Holocene extinction sub-section. It could be a good addition to that same sub-section. Just a thought.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 05:44, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I no longer participate in Wikipedia, the experience was extremely aggravating and stressful. I now only make occasional comments in discussions. But yes, this article basically reads as a "human overpopulation is a lie" hit-piece, it's as anti-science as it gets. So in fact, if the guardian editors insist on this perspective, to be accurate, they should change the article's name to "Fallacy of human overpopulation" which would better reflect the article's terrible failure at NPOV. ;) --Tallard (talk) 19:01, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Back to basics

Looking again at this article and the discussion, I think we need to begin by defining terms better. As it stands, this article is not even convinced of its own premise! In the very first line of the revised intro I synonymized "human population overshoot" with "human overpopulation". But now I see that @User:Sadads believes the two terms are distinct. Such confusion is certain to become propagated throughout the article if we cannot agree on definitions from the outset. From a pan-speciesist viewpoint like @User:Tallard's and mine, "human overpopulation" and "human population overshoot" are just synonyms for the same self-evident fact that current human population growth is unsustainable (@User:EMsmile). But I can appreciate that "population overshoot" sounds like jargon whereas, as Sadads keeps hinting, "overpopulation" has a troublesome emotional resonance and dark unspoken connotations. So I suggest we make this problem explicit from the outset. To square the circle, my proposal is that we take "human population overshoot" as the generally accepted scientific theory supported by the evidence laid out in the article, and "human overpopulation" to be a value judgement on it. In other words: "overshoot" is the fact of the current trajectory, and "overpopulation" is a possible interpretation of that fact. My personal opinion is that such a distinction is a politics-inspired mangling of the English language, but I also see that without it some readers will see the article as prejudiced, and I would like the subject to be taken seriously. Opinions? --Rollo (talk) 22:50, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Rollo! I appreciate the reach out -- and I think its a good idea to dig into the main thrust of the article.

I agree on the overarching definition shift: Human population overshoot is still a conclusion based on a complex cluster of systems that are very hard to evaluate or measure and most of the claims that I have seen so far are made by a very narrow group of expert communities-- but that seems like a much better term to lead with and use. I also think we need to push more of the history of population growth stuff out of the article -- it mixes trends with conclusions.

I think the rescoping of the article to focus on why some experts come to this conclusion, and how they reach that conclusion would help a lot. There also needs to be a sizable criticism section that evaluates how this conclusion enables certain (rather damaging) social movements and ideologies -- I have been doing a deep immersion in the climate activism and UN level space -- almost everyone who speaks about these issues treat the group championing this conclusion as fringe except when analyzing very specific geographies or regions.

Claiming " self-evident fact that current human population growth is unsustainable" at a global level is still a conclusion taken by a group of experts many of whom are not experts in human society but ecology, conservation, geography, etc, but widely disputed by many different types of justice advocates, critics, fields of expertise (economists for one), etc -- overexploitation, overconsumption, overcrowding (esp. regionally or in specific cities) , population pressure and population growth are all demonstrable truths that are widely used in the international literature. Taken together, one analysis might be overshoot comparable to other animal species, while another conclusion might be that we have developed a means of organizing society that is unsustainable -- both of which suggest we need to help communities either a) reduce impact per capita or b) reduce population -- but have different premises as to why. The international frameworks I have been reviewing, including for example the IPCC or Making Peace with Nature, suggest do both -- but lay most of the responsibility on growthism, overconsumption and mismanagement of natural capital. I have yet to see a widely peer-reviewed piece that comes to the conclusion "overshoot" (beyond carrying capacity) or "overpopulation" (simply too many people)-- even the widely signed scientist warning in the concern section here describes it as "population growth" and its effects. These kinds of scientific communities are very careful about precision of language -- so I would rather the article not mix up these concepts.

Also digging into the sources being referenced for links to overpopulation on other parts of Wikipedia -- most of them use "population pressure" or "population growth" as specific descriptive terms. If we screened all the sources in this article for explicitly making a conclusion about the result of population growth, I think you would get a very different emphasis within the article.

Anyway, happy to discuss how we get to something that is a bit less overwhelmed by Wikipedia:SYNTH and uses better WP:INTEXT attribution of opinions/conclusions by experts. Hope this is helpful, Sadads (talk) 23:49, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

@Sadads Thanks for the taking the time to make such a thorough critique of my proposal. Of course, you are right that we need to stick to Wikipedia policy on research and citation, and also keep as close as possible to the current academic center-ground. Like @Tallard and probably a good deal of folks on the street, I find myself hard-pressed to conclude, after glancing at the devastatingly simple graph at top, that "No, it is not altogether certain that human overpopulation is a fact". I am bothered by the notion that academia would regulate such straightforward vernacular. And I am not troubled by the possibility that some might use such language in support of damaging ideologies. Too bad, I'd say: language belongs to everyone, what matters is what's true. To question such a transparently valid thesis as "human overpopulation" seems to me a political project in itself. Population is one of the three factors determining ecological impact (alongside consumption and technology). If "overconsumption" and "over-exploitation" and "insufficient decoupling" are all generally accepted concepts, as they should be, why would "overpopulation" be rejected if not for entirely tangential political reasons relating to the nationalities of the population? For me this argument holds, by proxy, for "population overshoot". You object even to that, citing backup from economists and social-justice activists. Fair enough, as I said already. I am bothered by all this linguistic distortion but I do understand the issues. Anyway, I will end my rant there. My aim here was to improve the clarity of the article's introduction, but I see that it will be difficult to help given our divergence on terminology. Once again, fair enough. If you do find time to rewrite it or prune the rest of the article, I am happy with your basic idea on rescoping: i.e., explain the rationale for "human overpopulation" and the objections to it. But I am going to stick to my guns on "overshoot". I believe that to be an ecological term which should not be subject to the veto of justice activists or "cornucopian economists" (as EO Wilson calls them). Thanks for reading. Rollo (talk) 22:25, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

The concept of "overshoot" is an economic perspective, not a scientific one. As technological prowess continues to entertain us, the "overshoot" calculations continue to change because the goalposts are changeable, rather than fixed, they look at how much humanity consumes, but give little consideration to the ecosystem itself. It makes this a non working concept in science, overshoot is not overpopulation, though it's awfully fun in activism and makes for great memes. As someone mentioned up thread, superimposing the past 10k or 20k years of Homo sapiens increase onto any other species tells the whole story very clearly. Trying to impose a different definition of overpopulation for humans than we use for any other animal makes no scientific sense. If people want to insist on an economics view or an activist view of overpopulation instead of a scientific one, then the economics and activist views can play the role of alternate definitions later in the article, but the lead should stick to the field of biology. Articles about "energy" don't lead with debunking Deepak Choprah's definition of energy! ;)--Tallard (talk) 04:52, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I think that what we need is a definition of sustainable population for Earth. Unequal consumption and non-renewable resources are factors, but it seems that the consensus is 8 billion.--Pages777 (talk) 15:50, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

@Tallard Well, maybe you missed it, but that is substantively the argument I have been trying to make. Indeed, I understand both "overpopulation" and "population overshoot" to be synonyms of the same biological concept, whose truth is not in doubt for humans. The problem is that others here understand the first term to be sociological, and now you are saying that the second term alone is about economics. So the real problem seems to be basic definitions. Not sure where to go from here. Rollo (talk) 12:44, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Remove or reduce the "Further reading" section?

I would like to suggest to remove the further reading section. I don't see the point of it. If any of those references are particularly important, they should be used for in-line citations. Would anyone object to a drastic cull of the list, perhaps even have no "further reading" section at all? EMsmile (talk) 14:43, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

and are there any (few) links that would be useful to have in an "external links" section? If nothing comes to mind we don't need to have one. EMsmile (talk) 14:44, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

@EMsmile Totally support that -- this article was having a lot of problems (see the first section above -- we had a user who was POV pushing). My tendency is to trim and remove -- we should try to get the article more focused on the scholarly dialogue about whether or not overpopulation is a good conclusion to make from the available evidence rather than a random mixing of all the impacts of humanity, and attributing them to human overpopulation. There is a lot of Wikipedia:SYNTH going on in the article still. Sadads (talk) 14:50, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

@Sadads I read some of the discussions above and am finding it fascinating. I am new to this topic and its scholarly debate and would be happy to help trim and interlink with other articles better. Somewhere above someone talked about this article being about "the opposite of sustainability". This reminds me to point out that the article sustainability also needs some improvement work done. Perhaps we can ensure that this article interlinks properly with other relevant articles and does not repeat / overlap too much with content covered elsewhere. - And I agree with the approach you are proposing for improving this article. EMsmile (talk) 15:10, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

I would be okay with reducing the section, but outright deletion might be a bit extreme. The section does contain some good scholarly books and articles, some of which I have added myself. If the consensus is in favor of deletion, I'll work on adding these materials to the appropriate sections when I have the time.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 16:01, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi C.J. Griffin, I am just continuing with possible baby steps for improving the article (I did see the bigger picture questions as raised below by User:Rollo and am trying to get my head around it). Nevertheless, may I ask in the meantime which scholarly books you have added yourself and want to keep, and whether you see scope for including them in the references section rather, or not? Those lists of "further reading" can become long and arbitrary, especially when it's a hotly debated topic such as this one. So I would argue: the shorter the better; not having it at all probably best. EMsmile (talk) 01:29, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

I've already started moving some of these sources in question to the body of the article as citations, and have added material from most of them. I still prefer pruning to outright deletion.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 05:27, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi C.J. Griffin where do we stand with this now? It really is a very long "further reading" list compared to other articles and should be pruned. EMsmile (talk) 13:30, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

My position remains the same. I'm in favor of pruning the list, but not outright deletion. Numerous articles have longer further reading lists than this one. Look at the articles on capitalism and socialism for example.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 13:35, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

That's fine by me, let's start with the pruning then. Would you like to have a go at kicking out some of the older / less relevant ones? (Most Wikipedia articles (97%) actually have no "further reading" list at all, according to WP:Further_reading). EMsmile (talk) 13:44, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Okay. I have removed some materials which are older by a decade, seemingly off topic or integrated into the body as citations.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:11, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, the further reading section is still too long. It should probably only contain the books but not journal articles or newspaper articles from the Guardian. If someone wants to discover that sort of stuff, they can simply do a Google search. I don't think a further reading section should contain sub-headings; this to me is a sign that it's too long. EMsmile (talk) 08:22, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I can live with that, although I think it's fine as is.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 13:35, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Sustainable population figure

I decided to state that 8 billion is the consensus in the "Sustainable population" section. Those two meta-studies are strong evidence. Those lower estimates provided by others seem to be the products of small groups of people.--Pages777 (talk) 00:24, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

@Pages777 What about @Tallard's argument that technology "changes the goalposts" of what is sustainable? To use the obvious example, before the Green Revolution 8 billion would not have been sustainable, which suggests that the number moves constantly upwards. I thought the definition of overshoot was a situation where a population temporarily exceeds the environment's carrying capacity, until either it crashes or "pays back the debt" by restoring the capacity of ecosystems to provide resources and absorb pollution? This payback could be done, very theoretically, using yet-to-be-invented technology. Which in turn means that any dire situation could be termed "sustainable", as long as the resources continue to flow. Some tricky definitions here, that really need to get consensus before the article can be fixed. Rollo (talk) 13:03, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

I added "as of 2012" to that 8 billion figure.--Pages777 (talk) 20:33, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Unrelated to your query, but the page for Sustainable population has a lot of content that more or less duplicates this page and needs work.Arcahaeoindris (talk) 14:42, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Defining what this article is about

Hello. I think this article has come a long way in the last few months, with some WP:OR, WP:SYNTH and WP:VERIFY issues being resolved. However, there still appears to be some edit disputes. I think a central problem here is that the article needs to stay on WP:TOPIC, but perhaps editors' definition of what the topic is differs. This article did not need, for instance, very lengthy sections on the human impact on the environment or resource depletion (there are articles for that) but only needs to briefly outline the topic and any sources that directly relate them to overpopulation. Many of the sources cited here, do not mention overpopulation. The topic of this article is human overpopulation and not population growth - these are not the same topic. Sources that discuss the impacts of population growth, and not the impacts of overpopulation, in my view, are not relevant here unless they can be justified. I welcome any thoughts. Arcahaeoindris (talk) 08:24, 21 October 2021 (UTC) @Sadads: @C.J. Griffin: @Peteruetz:

In regards to this edit, the source in question discusses population size, in particular "large population size", in addition to population growth, as factors not only in increasing overall consumption but also ecological and social problems. A quote: "Large population size and continued growth are implicated in many societal problems." One section of the source, where that quote can be found, is actually titled "Ecological Overshoot: Population Size and Overconsumption". References to negative impacts of large population size certainly pertains to human overpopulation, as I see it. I don't think a source has to literally use the phrase "human overpopulation" to be considered relevant here. And it is hardly redundant, but a follow up and rebuttal to the preceding sentence in the last paragraph: "critics of overpopulation suggest overconsumption be treated as an issue separate from population growth". I think the material is WP:DUE and should be restored--C.J. Griffin (talk) 12:10, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Noted, thank you for clarification. In this particular case, this does sound like it is under the scope of the article, so can stay in the lead if you insist. However, upon review I don't see why it needs to be left as a rebuttal. The WP:LEAD summarises the article, and so follows its structure (i.e. summarising history, proposed impacts, criticisms) and does not really refute any of the criticisms mentioned, and the reference itself is not mentioned in the criticisms section. If anything, it should also be in the paragraph above, as it just reiterates the same points. It doesn't seem to me to add any new ideas to what is there (in summary it more or less further supports "Modern proponents of the concept have suggested a link between overpopulation and human-caused environmental issues such as global warming and biodiversity loss" - you could also add "societal issues"). Paul Ehlrich is literally one of the first authors, who is also mentioned in the paragraph above. I suggest to move the citation to the paragraph above, which I will do and slightly modify the wording. Arcahaeoindris (talk) 10:52, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I can live with that.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 12:54, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi all, there is still a long way to go in this article. I reiterate my invitation to discuss this over zoom if anybody is interested (let me know). The topic is too important to neglect. I also disagree that the scope duplicates those of other articles, as indicated in the header, but yes, redundancies should be removed. Peteruetz (talk) 15:40, 22 October 2021 (UTC) @Sadads: @C.J. Griffin: @Arcahaeoindris:

@Arcahaeoindris @C.J. Griffin @Peteruetz Sensible proposals here. My view, already argued, is that the fundamental disagreement here is over the context in which "human overpopulation" is to be understood (biology, society, culture, economics, or whatever else) and the timeframe in which it is be understood (as of today, or as of the future). In other words, there is absolutely no consensus about the very reality of the subject of the article! This is a serious problem! I believe that the simplest way to solve it is to outline the various factors of disagreement in the introduction, with supporting quotes from relevant proponents, and then remove everything in the article which does not directly reference the terms "overpopulation" or "overshoot" in the context of humanity. This will mean cutting out most of the article. Objections? Rollo (talk) 21:50, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I would object to obliterating most of the article and reducing it to basically a WP:STUB simply because the term "overpopulation" is not used in some or many sources. See my post above about other terminology which would obviously relate to this article, such as population size in relation to growth. And I would also argue that journal articles which discuss the impact of population size and growth on the environment and the material which precedes them are WP:DUE to sections of the article relating to environmental impacts--C.J. Griffin (talk) 22:14, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with @Rollo:. A lot of this article is still really not up to standard. I have already tried to do this as much as I can, but there are still WP:VERIFICATION issues which as argued do not even mention overpopulation, overshoot or population size, or do not explicitly link a specific issue to this. These must be cut down, or removed entirely. I'm especially talking about the "Resource depletion" section especially. Arcahaeoindris (talk) 09:34, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I would not object to the removal of the section "resource depletion" if that would prevent further purges of sourced material, although it looks like there is a blend of strong and weak sources present there. I would keep the material from scientific sources and remove the rest, especially op-eds, and move it to other relevant sections perhaps. That's being said, I would strongly object to reducing the article to a stub on the flimsy argument that reliable sources don't literally use the phrase "overpopulation", but are obviously discussing ecological or social problems regarding population size and/or growth (which I would deem relevant to the article). As an example, could someone seriously argue a source like the World's Scientists Warning to Humanity is irrelevant here, when the language reads: "We are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats"? The 2019 climate warning goes even further, and argues that "the world population must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced—within a framework that ensures social integrity". Clearly relevant to this article!

I will agree the article is indeed not up to standard, and the inclusion of myriad opinion pieces on the "myths of overpopulation", often with no attribution, doesn't help. I am starting to understand User:Tallard's frustration expressed above. Another thing I've noticed, the article on population growth doesn't discuss any of this. Perhaps one solution could be to move some disputed (because of semantics) yet well sourced material there instead of deleting it outright. Even without any move, that article definitely needs an update on the negative impacts of population growth.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:38, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree to keep the scientific sources, if they can be verified as supporting the arguments inline text, but a major issue flagged previously is that many of these were/are WP:OR or WP:SYNTH. Attribution in the criticism section can certainly be resolved.

I'd like to echo @Sadads:'s argument above that "the problem with the article is that there its not focusing on the scholarship of overpopulation -- but rather, right now, its interpreting a wide range of other topics by stringing together facts from other lines of scholarship -- such as population trends or the scholarly literature on environmental crisis where overpopulation is not the consensus -- population pressure on the environment is, but making the moral judgement that it is overpopulation is not."

This same, central contention remains, and would not necessarily be resolved no matter where material sits. A good starting point might be adding a "definition" section and clearly agreeing the parameters of what overpopulation is actually defined as. For instance, does this article also cover the idea of "population explosion"? Is this a separate topic to "overconsumption"? Arcahaeoindris (talk) 16:15, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Well we at least agree that population pressure on the environment definitely seems to be the consensus, as the 2019 IPBES paper and other landmark reports have made clear. In an encyclopedic article on the topic of overpopulation, I don't think that consensus should be omitted, but included in a way that is balanced. That whole section on Environmental impacts seems quite balanced as it exists now, and it took some time to reach a consensus on how to construct it just a month or so ago with all parties seeming satisfied to an extent (see this discussion on the Overshoot (population) talk page). In particular the paragraph that says:

Continued population growth and overconsumption, particularly by the wealthy, have been posited as key drivers of biodiversity loss and the sixth (and ongoing) mass extinction,[84][85][8] with some researchers and environmentalists specifically suggesting this indicates a human overpopulation scenario.[86][87] The Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, released by IPBES in 2019, states that human population growth is a factor in biodiversity loss.[88][89]

Given the contentious nature of the topic of overpopulation, I think this demonstrates how these overlapping issues of population size and growth and overconsumption, and the impacts they are having on the environment and society, can be incorporated in such an article in a balanced way. That section is the strongest section in the article precisely because it is balanced in this way, and far and away has some of the strongest sourcing from academic and scientific sources on these topics.

Now if we were to implement what some have been proposing here, to remove all material that doesn't include the term "overpopulation", then that well balanced paragraph is basically reduced to "Some researchers and environmentalists specifically suggest that biodiversity loss and mass extinction indicates a human overpopulation scenario." I don't think that would be informative or encyclopedic, nor reflective of what the emerging consensus is on population pressures and overconsumption, which really can't be divorced from any discussion on overpopulation. I think, going forward, this section should serve as a model for other sections in how to construct an article on a controversial topic such as this--C.J. Griffin (talk) 16:55, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

The section you mention still has multiple maintenance tags, requesting attribution and verification. Those few sentences you quote above do indeed provide factual statements that we agreed as a consensus but to call the "environmental impacts" balanced and up to standard remains a stretch in my opinion. And in fact some sources do actually attempt to divorce overconsumption and population size (e.g. DW and New Scientist, Vox). Arcahaeoindris (talk) 17:16, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

The one sentence has those tags. Like I said, per our conversation linked above, both parties were somewhat satisfied with the material. Nevertheless, that section still has stronger sourcing than most, and it better written than most other sections, I think you would agree. That some sources divorce overconsumption and population size is already noted in the article I believe, with those sources included as citations, which is fine. However, I don't think those sources reflect the consensus on this particular issue as other sources, including significant reports in peer-reviewed journals, clearly do not concur with this, and the landmark IPBES report concludes both are having a negative impact on biodiversity. So bottom line I can't see any justification for reducing the article to a stub if this material can be incorporated in a balanced fashion.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 17:32, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you and yes, not disagreeing that it's better than other sections, just still would not consider it settled. I am also interested in hearing comments from other editors in addition to the compromise the two of us reached. I note the mention of population growth in the excellent IPBES report (albeit it could still be argued this does not explicitly support "overpopulation" or "overshoot"), but in my opinion publications in Frontiers Media, and writings of Paul R. Ehrlich, should be taken with a pinch of salt.Arcahaeoindris (talk) 18:02, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Okay, fair enough. I am also interested in what others have to say on this, and the arguments put forth for avoiding eradicating much of the article. I do think it is unfair to simply state that the Frontiers article I linked to is simply the "writings of Paul R. Ehrlich", as there are 16 other contributors to this, all of them prominent scientists, with the lead author being Corey J A Bradshaw. There are, of course, other scientific articles making a similar case without Ehrlich's involvement. Likewise, I would take anything written by a fellow at the neoliberal think tank American Enterprise Institute, Lyman Stone from the Vox article you linked to above, with an enormous grain of salt. We all have our biases, no doubt. Our responsibility here is to build a decent article in spite of them.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 18:39, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Hey both sorry for being away from so long -- was working through some serious burnout. I like the direction the article is in right now --- and tend to agree with @Arcahaeoindris so far in terms of assessing sources and scope -- I think its really different to include strong, clearly biased voices in opinion sections with clear caveats and framing of the source, than in the rest of the article where the description of "human overpopulation" or patterns of overshoot caused by population are being described in light of a pattern of scientific evidence -- which again is a very particular interpretation of the facts, and conclusion that is not the consensus framing of the problem (which we agreed upon above as patterns of overconsumption and overuse compounded by population growth). Sadads (talk) Sadads (talk) 12:11, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, I am consoled to see such an oddly perfect balance of biases in this discussion! Not naming names, of course. Would be a shame to waste such an opportunity to get this balance into the article. If I advocated "eradicating much of the article" that was only because an article which does not even agree with itself on definitions is verging on worthless, no matter how good its sources. We have surely established that this is the main problem of the article. The title of this article, for better or for worse, is a red flag to an awful lot of people, including some in this discussion. At the same time, "human population pressure on the environment", or even "human population overshoot", are not particularly controversial. To me at least, all three formulations point to the same concept. But who cares what I think. If we use a red-flag term in the title, we have no choice but to cover the debate, in good faith, right from the introduction. And then, I believe (but not strongly), to prefer sources which mention the concept by that name. The alternative is that the whole article risks being dismissed by swathes of readers as biased. In which case it need not exist and it would be better to concentrate efforts on other articles, perhaps even one on the same topic but with a less problematic name. In this era of terrible polarization and cynicism and skepticism towards authority and science itself, we have to tread very carefully indeed. Unfortunately. @Arcahaeoindris @C.J. Griffin @Sadads Rollo (talk) 20:30, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

PS: Personally, I am too lazy and incompetent to do the actual research required to make this article great. But I will be delighted to go over anyone else's work with an eagle eye to help us get the best result possible. I care a lot about the subject, I have opinions like everyone else, but above all I want this article to be taken seriously by readers, whatever their bias. NPOV will be tricky but it is absolutely possible, and particularly indispensable in this case. Rollo (talk) 20:44, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2019 and 20 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mensk123.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:59, 16 January 2022 (UTC)