It’s Capitalism, NOT Overpopulation
With the human population on Earth recently surpassing eight billion people, there has been a great deal of discussion around the idea of overpopulation and the impacts of a growing population on Earth’s limited resources and humanity’s contribution to greenhouse gases with respect to the climate crisis. While it is important for us to recognize that the resources required to support us (i.e., land area, food, pollinators, ecosystems) have limits governed by the laws of nature, we also need to understand that our socio-economic behaviour plays an equally important role in how resources are used to meet our needs.
Under our current system of global capitalism, resources are developed and distributed in ways that are profitable to corporations, rather than in ways that guarantee we meet our basic human needs in a just, equitable, and sustainable manner. Looking at the issue of hunger, we do not produce food in ways that seek to alleviate mass suffering, but rather we produce foods — such as cash crops (i.e., sugar beets, soybeans etc.) that are shipped around the world and used in food processing so that various corporations make money at every step on the supply chain, when we could be growing food items to meet local needs for sustenance. Other evidence suggests that 77 percent of the world’s agricultural crop area is used for the production of livestock (such as cattle), rather than growing crops that can feed human populations directly. If we are concerned about the impact of a growing population on hunger, we should rethink the way we produce food, rather than focusing solely on the number of people on the planet.
With regards to climate change, the overpopulation argument fails to consider that individuals who live in different parts of the world have drastically different footprints on our planet. Western imperialist nations such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada (among others) have a history of exploiting resources (both natural ecosystems and human labour) in foreign countries which aided our industrial development, and intentionally suppressed the development of nations in the global south. This uneven development has led to western nations having a higher standard of living when compared to the over-exploited nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and has also resulted in uneven contributions to the global climate crisis.
Canada is one largest emitters of greenhouse gases on Earth (both in total emissions and per capita emissions). The massive volumes of emissions that we produce to support our standard of living have a disproportionate impact on countries in the global south who are most at risk for the severe consequences / negative impacts of climate change such as droughts, wildfires, floods, and military conflict over scarce resources. Not only have western imperialist nations benefited off the exploitation of these countries, but our standard of living created through that exploitation now threatens entire populations in at-risk regions of the world due to the unjust and inequitable distribution of world resources. Overpopulation assumes that every one person on the planet is using resources equally, while western, capitalist nations actually consume much more than our fair share of what’s available.
Another aspect of this issue is the amount of waste that is produced as a result of capitalism including single use plastics. Right now, corporations are not required to provide a plan for the end of life of their products. This trash then creates a problem for our landscape as we run out of places to store our waste when we could be using that land area for purposes that alleviate suffering and/or meet our basic human needs. It’s not profitable for companies to recycle their own products, and we don’t have laws or regulations that prevent corporations from creating things that will just end up adding to the trash pile. We also have a problem of planned obsolescence where companies intentionally develop products that are designed to fail, because that ensures recurring revenue with customers that keep coming back to replace their products or buy the latest versions. Again, overpopulation isn’t driving the accumulation of waste, but the capitalist economic system that only seeks to profit at the expense of sustainability.
The overpopulation argument is based on outdated (and colonial) Malthusian and misogynistic beliefs that have held sway in science and the broader public for far too long. Even Malthus himself — when he originally proposed the idea of overpopulation, was actually much more concerned about the global “poor” destroying what was enjoyed by those who weren’t poor. Overpopulation has been used to justify various forms of oppression throughout human history including racism, anti-immigration sentiments, eugenics, the control of women’s bodily autonomy and reproductive rights, and they are fueling a descent towards eco-fascism within some sections of the environmental movement. Ecofascism describes the idea where those in power could enforce environmental measures over the needs and freedom of its citizens, and if overpopulation is perceived as a genuine threat then that places a target on those who are responsible for reproduction in our society — primarily child bearers.
When recent findings suggest that billionaires are responsible for a million — a MILLION — times more emissions than the average human on the planet, we should not, and cannot blame childbirth for the problems caused by an inequitable economic system (and those who seek to perpetuate that system). The impact of overpopulation is only a problem if everyone on the planet lived like those in western capitalist nations, where over-consumption, commodity fetishization, discard culture, and fossil fuel addiction are considered normal, when they are in fact driving the joint crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.
Yes, we need to be cognizant of the fact that the natural ecosystems that support us have limits and thresholds that human society must adhere to in order to ensure our continued survival on Earth. But, given the inequitable, and unsustainable use of resources on our planet, we should be questioning the myth of infinite growth and endless profits for shareholders before questioning whether people should stop having children or not. If we prioritise over-population as a primary concern, then who gets to decide which people get to have children or not? I fear that these concerns will only lead us back down the path of eugenics and forced sterilisation as we have seen in the past. Overpopulation leads to the belief that humanity is the problem, when every human is not equally responsible for the crises we are facing. Humanity is NOT the problem, capitalism is the problem.
