The problem with 'It's overconsumption, not overpopulation'

Why overpopulation remains a serious problem, despite it being unfashionable to worry about

When flying over land, I’ve often been struck by the fact that for as far as I can see stretches a landscape sculpted by humans; a world scarred, sectioned, and straightened to sustain an insatiable will. The feeling that accompanies this realisation is the same as when I hear that there are 3,500 deaths per year, or nearly ten per day, on the desperately overcrowded Mumbai suburban railway [1]. Or when I hear that half of the world’s habitable land is used for farming [2]. Or when I hear that humans and our livestock make up 95% of the world’s mammal biomass [3]. Or when I hear that human-made materials weigh more than all life on Earth combined [4]. Or when I hear northern Jakarta is sinking by 28 centimetres a year because so many people are drawing water from wells [5]. Or when I hear that 90% of the protein food (seafood, meat, tofu) we eat contains microplastics [6]. Or when I hear that by 2050, it’s expected that the plastic in the ocean will outweigh all of the fish [7]. Or when I hear it took the human race 300,000 years to reach its first billion, yet we added the next seven billion at nearly 10,000 times that speed. Or when I hear that humans have eliminated 83% of wild animal and 50% of natural plant biomass [8].

The feeling in question is that there are simply too many people. But to state this is deeply unfashionable. Despite the fact the global population is projected to reach over 10 billion by 2084, worrying about this is considered passé. It’s a sign that you haven’t been keeping up, a sign you haven’t got the memo. Now, ageing demographics are considered the real problem, and to solve this we should be having more kids. And after all, the problem isn’t overpopulation, but overconsumption.

The environmental activist George Monbiot has expressed precisely these sentiments. In a piece for The Guardian, he dismisses overpopulation concerns as a “fatuity” and claims growth is a locked-in “mathematical function” that can only be changed by “mass murder”. The article also raises the alarm regarding populations rapidly decreasing in Western countries, warning that if the current trend doesn’t shift “there will, within a number of generations, be no Europe and no United Kingdom” [9].

Monbiot suggests that the problem of an ageing population could be solved by immigration. This is false. The primary economic challenge of an ageing population is the shrinking proportion of working-age adults available to sustain economic growth and support the dependent demographic. A study conducted by the UN found that maintaining the current support ratio in the UK would require a net inflow of 1 million immigrants annually to rejuvenate the population enough to counterbalance the effect of ageing [10]. Accommodating this many new arrivals would be equivalent to building a city the size of Birmingham every year. This isn’t logistically feasible.

Another problem is that once immigrants have settled for a few decades they tend to have fewer kids. For example, the fertility rates of the UK-born children of migrants with Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian origins are 32 to 57 percent lower than the same groups in the 1970s. These declines are also more rapid than fertility declines in origin countries. For migrants of Indian origin, between 1998-2006 they actually had a lower fertility rate than white British populations (1.67 vs 1.74) [11]. So before long you’ll be back to square one.

However, the more important overriding claim that Monbiot makes is that we should be concerned about overconsumption, not overpopulation. The problem with this claim can be elucidated by the following analogy: You run a zoo. The monkey enclosure has a number of trees that are branching over its fence. One of your zookeepers suggests cutting the branches so the monkeys don’t escape. You reply that if the monkeys simply change their ways and stop climbing, then there won’t be a problem.

It’s true that the branches won’t need cutting if the monkeys stop climbing, but it’s an absurd suggestion. Relying purely on a drastic reduction in human consumption is a similar false contingency; it’s a blind hope for unprecedented, permanent behavioural asceticism. It’s the nature of the will to consume more and more just as monkeys are wont to climb trees. This is not a fact isolated to modern society, but has been the case throughout civilisation, and is indeed the case with all living things, down to the vine that chokes the tree it lives on. It’s possible to escape the cycle of samsara, but Buddhist monks aren’t known for their fecundity.

Hubris assumes human ingenuity will indefinitely conjure solutions to outpace planetary limits. This ignores Jevons paradox, which dictates that as technological advancements increase efficiency, the relative cost of a resource falls, leading inevitably to an increase in total consumption. As William E. Rees points out, humanity functions as a dissipative structure; a dependent sub-system of the ecosphere that maintains its complexity only by extracting resources and discharging waste back into the host. Technology acts merely as a highly efficient accelerator of this process, quickening the pace at which the natural world is converted into degraded remains [12].

Even if we disregard Jevons paradox, to assume that technology will save us is reckless. Historical precedents show this hasn’t always been the case. Extensive studies of ancient Mayan settlements reveal a history of severe land degradation. The data indicates distinct epochs of accelerated soil erosion and massive sedimentation, particularly during the Preclassic period from 1000 BC to AD 250, and again during the Late Classic period from AD 550 to 900 [13]. The stripping of the ancient forests to fuel their sprawling cities and feed their growing numbers initiated a fatal, unstoppable cascade of ecological failures. The profound loss of nutrient-rich topsoil meant that despite their highly sophisticated, intensive agricultural techniques, their crop yields inevitably began to plummet catastrophically. Because of this intense, self-inflicted environmental deterioration, the region experienced massive species loss, leading directly to severe protein deficiencies, widespread malnutrition, and eventually, extreme famine among the general populace followed by civilisational collapse. Perhaps if Monbiot had been there to spread his anti-consumerist ideals this wouldn’t have happened, but I doubt it.

One might reject such precedents on the basis that modern techno-industrial (MTI) society is different in certain relevant, hopeful respects. Perhaps, but it’s also different in certain relevant, troubling respects. MTI society has only been around for 0.09% of Homo sapiens’ existence, yet in that brief time we have multiplied eightfold and utterly transformed the world. Yes, so far we have found solutions, but it’s an extremely brief “so far”. As shown by Luke Kemp in Goliath’s Curse, there are an extraordinary number of potential points of failure, and unlike previous societies where most people had smallholdings they could rely on, when our system falls, everyone will fall with it.

Yet to sustain such an enormous population, our brittle, hyperconnected system is essential. We can’t return to a situation where everyone has a piece of land to rely on. Even if we spread populations out across the sparse countryside of the Steppe or Canada, this would ultimately be disastrous, given that living in rural areas uses far more resources than living in densely populated urban areas. Since we already burn through resources at double the sustainable limit [14], encouraging dispersed settlement would increase the demand for infrastructure, transport, and energy to even more extreme levels. We are therefore locked into the mechanism. To support ever more lives, we must crowd into highly efficient, tightly controlled urban centres, relying on sprawling global supply chains that deliver food, energy, hardware, and water precisely on time.

This results in a disturbing predicament. The very mechanism required to minimise our per capita resource extraction simultaneously maximises our vulnerability to systemic shocks and totalitarianism. A localised failure in agriculture, a grid collapse, or a disruption in trade routes can swiftly cascade into a global crisis, while our reliance on the mechanism creates such an extreme asymmetry in power favouring those in control that authoritarianism naturally follows. We have engineered a mechanism mandatory for daily survival, but which deprives us of the local self-sufficiency and redundancy needed to weather planetary crises and maintain control over our own lives. And for those of us yearning to return to the freedom of hunter-gatherer life, unfortunately the Earth can only sustain about 17 million foragers at most [15]. The current population is 476 times larger than this number.

Indeed, even with our MTI society, our current population is already way over the number of people the Earth can sustain. Estimates put its carrying capacity at anywhere between 50 million [16] and 3 billion [17] (of course, if one is techno-optimist enough, then in principle the carrying capacity is infinite, but I’m referring to numbers grounded in reality rather than the imagination).

Currently, about 4.4 billion people are part of what is known as the consumer class, defined by a daily expenditure exceeding $12 [18]. This segment, which consumes resources at a rate that would require between 2.9 and 5.1 Earths to sustain if scaled globally [19], is projected to swell to 7 billion by 2050 [20, 21]. We are witnessing a massive demographic convergence; as billions transition from penurious to resource-intensive lifestyles, the physical demand for biomass, minerals, and freshwater will move toward an impossibility. Global material extraction has already tripled since 1970 and is set to increase by a further 60% by 2060 [22]. Humanity is currently using nature 80% faster than ecosystems can regenerate; essentially spending 1.8 years’ worth of biological interest every twelve months [23]. When 3 billion more people enter the consumer class, this excess in resource extraction will only become even less sustainable.

Of course, the fact that fewer people will be living in poverty is hardly something to lament. Nor should those of us in societies that have long benefited from high resource use engage in the hypocrisy of wagging our fingers at those newly freed from destitution. The most humane hope is for a world where everyone can enjoy these fruits. However, with our current population size this isn’t feasible.

The problem with the likes of Monbiot claiming we don’t need to worry about overpopulation because the population will begin to decline in a few decades is that this misses the point that the world is already extremely overcrowded, it’s just that the full scope of the effects of this hasn’t yet, in the incredibly brief time that this enormous population size has existed, fully manifested.

Even if we are to accept the upper estimate of 3 billion for the Earth’s carrying capacity, if fertility rates continue to decline at their current rate then the population won’t reduce to this number for at least another 300 years. In that time, what catastrophes might happen? When species reach too large a population, a mass die-off will occur and bring the numbers back to a sustainable level.

Take, for instance, the case of the reindeer introduced to St Matthew Island in the 1940s. Without natural predators and with an untouched reserve of lichen, the population exploded from a mere 29 animals to over 6,000 in just two decades. They wildly exceeded the island’s biological limits. When a particularly harsh winter arrived, the entirely depleted food source could no longer sustain them; the population crashed to just 42 individuals in a single year [24].

While human beings are vastly more adaptable and capable of technological intervention than grazing animals, we are still ultimately bound by the fundamental laws of ecology. We cannot artificially inflate our carrying capacity indefinitely without eroding the very biosphere that supports us. The danger of the next century and a half is that our immense, resource-hungry population will trigger systemic ecological collapses, global crop failures, deadly pandemics, or resource wars long before demographic trends can peacefully course-correct, just as has happened in numerous civilisations before ours, such as the aforementioned Mayans, the Sumerians, the inhabitants of Easter Island, Great Zimbabwe, Cahokia, the Nazca, the peoples of the Henderson and Pitcairn Islands, and the Ancestral Puebloans. The more humane thing to do, then, is to continue with low fertility rates for a while, rather than waiting for nature’s scythe to do the work for us.

None of this is in conflict with concerns about ageing demographics. I fully expect that the latter will be an incredibly difficult challenge. But even with declining fertility rates, the number of people born in the last 12 years was still higher than the number born in any other 12-year period in history. That’s a lot of people to have been brought into a world in such an incredibly precarious position.

While the effects an ageing population could have on the economy is seriously concerning, the danger of a world this far overcapacity is another kind of existential risk. The idea of transitioning to a new economic model that doesn’t rely on continuous growth might seem far-fetched and idealistic, but it seems more possible than evading the first and second laws of thermodynamics: we simply cannot conjure limitless energy and resources out of nothing, nor can we endlessly consume more without generating catastrophic levels of ecological disorder. A steady-state economy, which prioritises equilibrium and human well-being over relentless expansion, aligns our societal ambitions with the unyielding physical realities of our finite planet. We must choose between proactively designing an economic framework that respects these strict boundaries, or waiting for the uncompromising laws of physics and ecology to force a much harsher, involuntary correction.

With some of those who are alarmed about declining fertility rates, it’s clear that their concern isn’t simply with ageing populations, but the erasure of the ethnicities most in decline. They often frame this concern within the context of the “Great Replacement” theory, which suggests European peoples are being replaced by immigrants from other cultures. This is perhaps odd in light of the fact that Renaud Camus, the originator of the theory, actually criticises the notion of trying to outbreed other ethnicities, arguing it reduces human beings to mere biological factories or livestock, and that treating women primarily as instruments of national reproduction destroys the cultural and spiritual dignity of a society. But of course, for the likes of Elon Musk, who has been very vocal about his belief that European females should push out as many poor souls as possible [25], seeing human beings as purely industrial reproduction units is natural to a mentality that has made him the most grotesquely wealthy person in the world.

Peoples come and go, fading out yet leaving behind ways of thinking and seeing that live on by synthesising with others and bringing new Weltanschauungen into being. The Europeans of the future will no doubt look a little different to the current stereotypes, but will also be the custodians of a fresh spirit, just as the mixing of Iberian, Arabic, and Roma cultures brought about a new life that has in retrospect created much of what we consider to be quintessential Andalusian culture today, such as flamenco and Mudéjar architecture. Change is constant.

It’s true that the mixing of cultures is happening now incredibly rapidly and extensively, and this comes with extraordinary challenges and understandable feelings of discombobulation among both newcomers and those whose families have lived in Europe for generations. But everything is moving incredibly quickly these days. It’s the most obvious and least precedented characteristic of these difficult times. I find the prospect of being replaced by machines far more disturbing than the notion of my culture melding with others.

There are indeed some communities that are seriously divided along ethnic lines, and there are legitimate concerns about discordant cultural attitudes occasionally resulting in some horrific affairs, but the evidence shows that in most cases immigrants are assimilating more with each generation [26, 27]. Walking around Bordeaux, I see a medieval church with a congregation almost entirely consisting of Africans, and a bustling market kept alive by immigrants. It’s hard to feel that this rejuvenation of public life, this sincere engagement with elements of the world as they were originally intended, is the great danger to the soul of humanity, or that these people are merely squatters among the ruins of a civilisation that they don’t understand, as opposed to a native people who have become so hopelessly lost within the “simulacra and simulation” that Baudrillard illuminated that any turning back to the old ways can only be a simulation itself. Low fertility rates in Europe will certainly result in major changes, but the future may not be gloomy.

The intention of this essay is not to defend pro- or anti-natalism. The intention is merely to highlight that common sentiments used to hand-wave away the dangers of overpopulation are non sequitors (”we need to worry about ageing demographics, therefore overpopulation isn’t a problem”) or half-baked (”the problem is overconsumption, not overpopulation”). Additionally, many of the current concerns about how the world will be if current fertility trends continue are understandable, but in the grand scheme of things they are often myopic, and sometimes rather questionable. The notion that raising concerns about overpopulation is “anti-human” is nonsense, like claiming it’s anti-human not to want to cram as many poor souls as possible into the Black Hole of Calcutta.

Of course, the opposite is the case. If we want humans to live decently, then it’s necessary to be concerned about the realities of our current population size. It’s also necessary to be concerned about the effects of ageing populations, but worrying about one problem doesn’t miraculously solve the other. Instead, we are simply faced with harsh realities either way, a situation that the corporate “can-do attitude” finds difficult to accept. Unfortunately, life can be brutally difficult, and all we can do is pick the lesser evil.

References:

1. Think Global Health. “Why Mumbai’s Overcrowded Trains Prove Fatal.” Accessed 18 March 2026. https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/why-mumbais-overcrowded-trains-prove-fatal.

2. Our World in Data. “Global Land for Agriculture.” Accessed 18 March 2026. https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture.

3. Our World in Data. “Wild Mammals and Birds Biomass.” Accessed 18 March 2026. https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass.

4. Smithsonian Magazine. “Human-Made Materials Now Weigh More Than All Life on Earth Combined.” Accessed 18 March 2026. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/human-made-materials-now-weigh-more-all-life-earth-combined-180976522/.

5. Seasia. “Why Jakarta Is Sinking Faster Than Any Other City in the World.” 8 September 2025. https://seasia.co/2025/09/08/why-jakarta-is-sinking-faster-than-any-other-city-in-the-world.

6. Ocean Conservancy. “It’s Not Just Seafood: New Study Finds Microplastics in Nearly 90% of Proteins Sampled, Including Plant-Based Meat Alternatives.” 8 January 2024. https://oceanconservancy.org/newsroom/press-release/2024/01/08/its-not-just-seafood-new-study-find-microplastics-in-nearly-90-of-proteins-sampled-including-plant-based-meat-alternatives/.

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17. Tucker, Christopher. A Planet of Three Billion. Alexandria, VA: Atlas Observatory Press, 2019.

18. Fengler, Wolfgang, and Homi Kharas. “How the World Consumer Class Will Grow from 4 Billion to 5 Billion People by 2031.” Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-the-world-consumer-class-will-grow-from-4-billion-to-5-billion-people-by-2031/.

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20. Fengler, Wolfgang, and Homi Kharas. “How the World Consumer Class Will Grow from 4 Billion to 5 Billion People by 2031.” Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-the-world-consumer-class-will-grow-from-4-billion-to-5-billion-people-by-2031/.

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25. The Guardian. “Elon Musk Posts January White Supremacists.” 12 February 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/12/elon-musk-posts-january-white-supremacists.

26. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and European Commission. Indicators of Immigrant Integration 2023. OECD Publishing, 2023. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/indicators-of-immigrant-integration-2023_1d5020a6-en.html.

27. Algan, Yann, Alberto Bisin, Alan Manning, and Thierry Verdier. “Assimilation and Integration of Immigrants in Europe.” IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Discussion Paper 5185, 2010. https://docs.iza.org/dp5185.pdf.