alt Hacker News> Essentially all of our problems are caused by excessive population - climate change is caused by energy usage which is too high because there are too many people. Wars, migration, resource depletion, hunger, water scarcity, all of it.
Any evidence for these assumed causal relationships? Wars have been waged by small numbers of people in the past and today, migration in such general terms has always been inherent to humans, resources are depleted by mass-consumption of a tiny fraction of the global population, and hunger is caused by not distributing available food to those who need it.
These problems are hence mostly political. Again, only a tiny fraction of the global population has any significance in the relevant decisions.
Replies
Causal arrow goes the other way. Complex societies are dissipative structures, whose increasing complexity is powered by surplus energy.
I think you're over focusing on the decision making. If there were few of us, building replacements for our engines would be more economical than bombing our neighbors to influence gas prices. Even if its just one maniac who decided the bombs were necessary, they did so against a background that would encourage other behavior if we had fewer people.
I have family that has worked to fight corruption and poverty, for decades.
They believe that poverty is the root cause of most human problems. For example, some of the worst despots in history, got there, escaping grinding poverty, in their youth.
When you are skint, your priorities change, and things like labor laws, ecology, and species diversity, are non-starters.
It also doesn't help, to have rich people, dancing around, showing off their wealth. That tends to breed resentment (see "war").
I think maybe both of you are correct, in a sense - the population growth provides means (labor, competition, consumption) for increasingly extractive and unequal society.