Is Overpopulation a Myth

[Smokes]

If you ever drive across the USA you will see a lot of Nothing. Empty land just sitting there with nothing on it. There is miles and miles of nothing between cities. Why have we used more land for urban development? Seems like we are just letting all this good land go to waste by not developing it.


The Continental U.S. (i.e. lower 48) has about 1.9 Billion acres and the vast majority is undeveloped as only 69.4 million acres, or about 3.6% is urban. Here’s a fascinating map that shows how little land we live on; the green areas show U.S. Census blocks where the reported human population is zerO.

Look at all them green blocks where No one live. What a waste.

https://www.theifod.com/how-much-of-the-u-s-is-inhabited/

Look at this shit I drove by today and it looks like this for about an hr. So what 70miles.

You could fit millions of people there.

 

[M4rk]

No its dry land.

 

[Smokes]

We don’t even use it to grow shit to eat. Same link.



I found this illustration surprising (again from Bloomberg), showing the relatively small amount of cropland that is actually used to feed humans (ignoring the cropland that is dedicated to feeding livestock):

 

[Sonny Qc]

Same in canada.

Let's be honest here, if the world become overpopulated,
we should blame India and China.

 

[Takes Two To Tango]

7 billion of anything is ridiculously huge amount.

And you compare that to other animals. I think we're the highest population.

 

[aus101]

If there isn't any fresh water supply it's hardly habitable.

 

[Mike]

Overpopulation doesn't just mean is there empty space we can shove more people. You have to figure in the use of resources an impact on the environment.

And yes, there are way too many people.

 

[Bornstarch]

There's an upcoming food shortage that will answer your question.

 

[dirtypablo]

What a waste? Land where the beauty of nature unfolds and isn't covered with strip malls and morons endlessly consuming plastic garbage is a waste?

 

[Spounman]

Same in canada.

Let's be honest here, if the world become overpopulated,
we should blame India and China.

Move people to the Nahanni valley and record them being attacked by Sasquatch

 

[Tatra]

Overpopulation has nothing to do with land, it's about resources. America already fucked up, building cities in the deserts.

 

[shunyata]

If you want to see overpopulation in action, go to Mumbai.

The US does have plenty of landmass, but plenty of the undeveloped land mass on your map is mountains, deserts, swamps, the Mississippi river, and isolated areas that are nowhere near anything else of note.

For a developer to be set up a big community you need a few things

1) land you can actually develop at reasonable expense (just because land is cheap doesn't mean it won't be expensive to build on due to elevation, instability, swampiness, etc

2) water. no one will live there without water

3) reasons for people to actually live there, a community, commercial districts, businesses, jobs in the region, etc.


China has done what you want, building big planned cities in the middle of nowhere, and so far that program has been a huge bust with most of them remaining empty. Just ghost towns.

 

[William Huggins]

There's an upcoming food shortage that will answer your question.

Not caused by an inability to produce.........

 

[Islam Imamate]

Overpopulation doesn't just mean is there empty space we can shove more people. You have to figure in the use of resources an impact on the environment.

And yes, there are way too many people.

No TS is right, overpopulation is a myth. Climate change is driven by resource consumption which is largely driven by the more developed countries. The problem isn't the amount of people, its the Western development model that leads to massive per capita strain on the environment.

If anything developed countries have low birth rates so there's not enough people being born.

If you ever drive across the USA you will see a lot of Nothing. Empty land just sitting there with nothing on it. There is miles and miles of nothing between cities. Why have we used more land for urban development? Seems like we are just letting all this good land go to waste by not developing it.


The Continental U.S. (i.e. lower 48) has about 1.9 Billion acres and the vast majority is undeveloped as only 69.4 million acres, or about 3.6% is urban. Here’s a fascinating map that shows how little land we live on; the green areas show U.S. Census blocks where the reported human population is zerO.

Look at all them green blocks where No one live. What a waste.

https://www.theifod.com/how-much-of-the-u-s-is-inhabited/

Look at this shit I drove by today and it looks like this for about an hr. So what 70miles.

You could fit millions of people there.

A lot of the empty land in the West are federally owned reserves and they're in very dry areas where it'd be hard to develop.

However we do waste land by having single use, single family zoning in suburbs around our cities when we could allow for more mixed use, high density urban development. Tokyo has a population that is 50% larger than that of the NYC metro area while taking up 1/4th of the land area so its 8x as dense. If all our major urban centers were like that we'd have a lot more available space and housing prices would be lower as well as having less obesity and smog related health problems

 

[My name is]

I think it's more of a resource issue than a land issue..... how accurate are we on the population stats ?

 

[Cole train]

Looking at birth rates nope

Africa about to crash the roof by 2030s not to mention what india is up to

 

[gspieler]

Overpopulation doesn't just mean is there empty space we can shove more people. You have to figure in the use of resources an impact on the environment.

And yes, there are way too many people.

What a waste? Land where the beauty of nature unfolds and isn't covered with strip malls and morons endlessly consuming plastic garbage is a waste?

Overpopulation has nothing to do with land, it's about resources. America already fucked up, building cities in the deserts.

If you want to see overpopulation in action, go to Mumbai.

The US does have plenty of landmass, but plenty of the undeveloped land mass on your map is mountains, deserts, swamps, the Mississippi river, and isolated areas that are nowhere near anything else of note.

For a developer to be set up a big community you need a few things

1) land you can actually develop at reasonable expense (just because land is cheap doesn't mean it won't be expensive to build on due to elevation, instability, swampiness, etc

2) water. no one will live there without water

3) reasons for people to actually live there, a community, commercial districts, businesses, jobs in the region, etc.


China has done what you want, building big planned cities in the middle of nowhere, and so far that program has been a huge bust with most of them remaining empty. Just ghost towns.

+1 on what these posters said.

 

[Bornstarch]

Listen, no matter how much empty land you got in the middle, people will still move to the cities where everyone is. If you imported a billion people into the US, not one of them is moving to bumfuck Alabama. They will ALL move to the already overcongested cities.

 

[Armbars]

No TS is right, overpopulation is a myth. Climate change is driven by resource consumption which is largely driven by the more developed countries. The problem isn't the amount of people, its the Western development model that leads to massive per capita strain on the environment.

If anything developed countries have low birth rates so there's not enough people being born.

A lot of the empty land in the West are federally owned reserves and they're in very dry areas where it'd be hard to develop.

However we do waste land by having single use, single family zoning in suburbs around our cities when we could allow for more mixed use, high density urban development. Tokyo has a population that is 50% larger than that of the NYC metro area while taking up 1/4th of the land area so its 8x as dense. If all our major urban centers were like that we'd have a lot more available space and housing prices would be lower as well as having less obesity and smog related health problems

Tell that to the M25 Motorway arsehole.

It's like a fucking carpark all day and night. They make more lanes and more people make it even slower.

There's far too many people

 

[DaleBoca]

We can’t even feed most of Africa in this day in age… How do you plan on adding feeding another billion people? Those burritos that are the size of your hand will no longer be there.