The Myth of Overpopulation

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As we enter the new year, the world population nears eight billion. That is to say, approximately eight billion people live on Earth. Walk on Earth. Eat and drink on Earth. But at the turn of the 20th Century, it was a mere 1.65 billion. How did this happen?

In 1950, the world population shot up wildly. Soldiers returning from World War II started families, and a newfound global economy spread technology and modes of industrialization. Altogether, these factors spurred a “baby boom,” one of the greatest population surges in recorded history.

Even at the beginning of the 20th Century, though, eugenics had already become a universally accepted idea in the scientific community. Some races, went the narrative, are inherently, developmentally superior to others. The “inferior” races possessing “inferior” genes should thus not be allowed to reproduce. This racist idea persisted through the mid-1900s, soon disguising itself behind the name of overpopulation.

Covert Population Control

In the 1960s, as birth rates soared in Latin American countries, global organizations looked to birth control as a means of driving down poverty and food consumption. The World Bank notoriously stated that if a developing country “…succeeds in reducing its fertility by 50 percent…its per capita income will be higher by at least 40 percent” (Galeano). This troublesome and ill-intentioned statistic was then used to justify forced sterilization in Latin America.

The myth of overpopulation was largely developed by the United States to wage war—but not on the battlefield. In order to keep revolution subdued in impoverished countries, the USA sought first and foremost to quell the influx of births. Eduardo Galeano notes in Open Veins of Latin America that it is more effective to kill revolutionaries “in the womb than in the battlefields.”

Thousands of Amazonian women during this period were sterilized, though the region is hardly populated at all. Furthermore, the “overpopulation” concern falls apart when one recognizes that Latin American countries like Haiti or Bolivia have a mere fraction of the population densities of European countries like Italy or Belgium (Galeano).

Assembly of First Nations Calls for Criminalization of Forced Sterilization of First Nations Women | Assembly of First Nations

Government-mandated forced sterilization of First Nations women took place between 1928 and 1972 in Canada; the most recent confirmed case took place in 2009. The Canadian government has done little to acknowledge this part of its history.

Double Standards

Today, the myth persists. In any discussion of overpopulation, blame is consistently placed on the people of the global South. Environmentalists like Jane Goodall and David Attenborough still tout the long-disproven theory of “too many mouths to feed.” In 2013, Attenborough asserted that famines in Ethiopia were “about too many people for too little land.”

Undoubtedly, the “Western world” also has its fair share of poverty and food crises. Around 10.5 percent of Americans are food insecure, according to the USDA. However, it is never argued that the United States should sterilize its poor and destitute.

The richest, too, are the most inclined to push this narrative. Forty-nine percent of global emissions are caused by the wealthiest 10%. And yet, the poorest 50% produce a meager 10% of global emissions. Moreover, the majority of global emissions come from the rich, industrialized countries in Europe and North America, in addition to Australia and New Zealand. In contrast, the entire continent of Africa produces ~2-3 percent of global CO2 emissions.

Looking Forward

At the beginning of the pandemic—that is, an entire year and a half ago—people cheered that “nature was healing” without human presence. No, nature was healing—briefly—without overbearing corporate presence. Human presence, in its very nature, is not wasteful. Rather, the product of corporate excess and consumption vastly contributes to our destruction.

Irrefutably, poverty and hunger are real. There are few with food and many without. Yet we must remain ever wary of those who try to convince us that humans themselves are nature’s enemy. Thomas Malthus’ theories on population growth have never been truly observed in a real population. To blame a continent, a country, or a people—and in many cases an indigenous people—for these problems is deeply racist and neglects the exploitation from the global North that causes a lack in wealth and resources.

Cover art: “Overpopulation” by Igor E. Prokop.