{"id":162060,"date":"2020-06-01T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=162060"},"modified":"2020-06-01T09:54:46","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T08:54:46","slug":"blaming-the-covid-19-pandemic-on-too-many-humans-a-critique-of-overpopulation-ideology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/06\/blaming-the-covid-19-pandemic-on-too-many-humans-a-critique-of-overpopulation-ideology\/","title":{"rendered":"Blaming the COVID-19 Pandemic on Too Many Humans–A Critique of Overpopulation Ideology"},"content":{"rendered":"

28 May 2020 – <\/em>A world gripped by a deadly virus has precipitated a deluge of punditry claiming to have found the primal cause of the pandemic. Anthony Judge, writing in Transcend Media Service<\/em><\/a>, claims to have tapped into \u201cthe collective subconscious\u201d to blame what he calls overpopulation. How well does this claim hold up?<\/p>\n

Mr. Judge is concerned about \u201cthe epidemic of misinformation\u201d regarding the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic, \u201cobscuring a neglected critical factor undermining global strategic viability.\u201d Humanity, he posits, is \u201cunconsciously endeavoring to communicate a vital message to itself\u2026Collective Overpopulation Vitiating Individual Dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem of the pandemic for Mr. Judge has nothing to do with such ephemera as whether access to healthcare should be considered a human right, but something obvious only to the cognoscenti \u2013 there are just too many humans. The world\u2019s \u201cepidemiologists and health experts,\u201d Mr. Judge admonishes, \u201chave been lazily complicit\u201d in not seeing overpopulation as the fundamental problem. Mr. Judge goes on to indict the world\u2019s \u201cinternational institutions\u201d for being \u201cso negligently complicit\u201d of this \u201ctragic form of \u2018misinformation\u2019\u201d by making the \u201cBig Lie<\/strong>\u201d (his emphasis) of omitting the danger of overpopulation.<\/p>\n

So, what is the connection between population and pandemic? Employing what he calls \u201croot cause analysis,\u201d Mr. Judge conflates<\/a> \u201coverpopulation\u201d with \u201covercrowding.\u201d The overcrowding he is concerned about is that found in \u201curban slums,\u201d which he specifically cites in the article. That is, the overcrowding of poor people who cannot afford to live in what he calls the \u201csparsely populated areas.\u201d Predictably, he does not cite the floor of the New York Stock exchange as an example of overcrowding.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s test Mr. Judge\u2019s hypothesis regarding the relationship between density of population and response to the pandemic. Take Belgium, where Mr. Judge lives. After the mini-state of San Marino, Belgium has the unfortunate distinction of having the highest COVID-19 death rate<\/a> in the world at 83 deaths per 100,000 people. Its population density<\/a> is 974 people per square mile. In comparison, Singapore and Hong Kong are the two most densely populated territories in the world with 20,456 and 17,565 people\/mi2<\/sup> respectively, after the mini-territories of Macau and Monaco. The death rates are less than one per 100,000 population for Singapore and Hong Kong, with 23 and 4 total deaths respectively . That is, Belgium has 15 times the death rate of Hong Kong, while Hong Kong\u2019s population density is over 18 times that of Belgium. Belgium has twice the death rate of Singapore, while Singapore\u2019s population density is 21 times that of Belgium.<\/p>\n

Overpopulation is blamed not only for pandemics but as the primary cause for many of the world\u2019s myriad ills. Overpopulation, he judges, is also \u201ca primary driver for recourse to narcotics and opioids.\u201d Mr. Judge callously omits to mention in the article poverty and myriad forms of discrimination as drivers for the sickness of substance abuse.<\/p>\n

Consistent with those who espouse the overpopulation thesis<\/a>, Mr. Judge yearns for an idyllic past when the planet was not as overrun by humans, say the Middle Ages. Since the 1300s, the world\u2019s population<\/a> has increased over 17-fold. But that much smaller population did not prevent the Black Death pandemic from taking an estimated 75-200 million lives back then.<\/p>\n

In short, blaming the condition of humanity for pandemics is not supported by the facts. Densely populated places have succeeded well in containing COVID-19, while there have been far more devastating pandemics than the one we are suffering now, when there were far fewer of us on the planet.<\/p>\n

Overpopulation ideology, as represented by Mr. Judge\u2019s article, conflates overcrowding with overpopulation. If there were only three people in the world and they were are packed into a little cave, there would be overcrowding but not overpopulation. Mr. Judge\u2019s sophistry and my critique are not new. Two hundred years ago, Karl Marx made a similar criticism of Thomas Malthus\u2019 contention that the world was overpopulated. Malthus opposed the English Poor Laws because they ameliorated the conditions causing human suffering and thus encouraged poor people to reproduce. Malthus\u2019 theory was a retrograde response<\/a> to the French Revolution and the rise of the working class. Overpopulation ideology is misanthropic and reactionary in its origins and in its modern expression.<\/p>\n

Mr. Judge\u2019s article is silent about our political system or economic order; it\u2019s simply that there are too many people. Aside from being wrong, it begs the question, which people<\/a>? The ones in slums? The poor? Thanks to Oxfam<\/a>, we know just who the offending individuals are. A handful of multi-billionaires now have the same wealth as the poorest half of the world\u2019s population<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The objection to overpopulation ideology is not just an intellectual one, but whether such an ideological framework promotes solutions-oriented peace journalism. The ideology of overpopulation poses the wrong causes while obscuring the right solutions.<\/p>\n

World population growth rates are precipitously declining<\/a> and on a trajectory to stabilize this century, with the current rate<\/a> at 1%. Meanwhile resource consumption<\/a> continues to increase at a rate of 6 to 7%. Clearly, something beyond simple demographics<\/a> is at play, and that is what overpopulation ideology obfuscates.<\/p>\n

There are serious obstacles to achieving a more peaceful world. But these do not revolve primarily around human population demographics. Rather, the very relations of power call to be addressed in our quest of a better world. And this is precisely what the ideology of overpopulation obscures to the benefit of the powerful few and to the detriment of the multitude of humanity.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Roger Harris<\/em>\u00a0is a member of the\u00a0<\/em>TRANSCEND Network<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and on the board of directors of the\u00a0<\/em>Task Force on the Americas<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, a human rights organization in solidarity with the social justice movements of Latin America and the Caribbean, founded in 1985. He is on the state central committee of the\u00a0<\/em>Peace and Freedom Party<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, the only ballot-qualified socialist party in California, on the executive committee of the <\/em>US Peace Council<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, and on the editorial board of the <\/em>Council on Hemispheric Affairs<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

28 May 2020 – A world gripped by a deadly virus has precipitated a deluge of punditry claiming to have found the primal cause of the pandemic. Anthony Judge, writing in Transcend Media Service, claims to have tapped into \u201cthe collective subconscious\u201d to blame what he calls overpopulation. How well does this claim hold up?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":127604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[120,1829,1868],"class_list":["post-162060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-conflict","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}