While I would like fusion, fission would solve many problems too -- if we could get past the fear induced by the environmentalists.

Let's do more with Thorium.

Merchant gets half of this right: There is not, and never has been, an "overpopulation" problem, except within that airy space between the ears of misanthropes, mostly of the collectivist and "green" cults. She's a bit coy about whether or not she's in agreement with their attempted fusion of Eco-Catastrophic Scary Story and vestigial Marxism, but she does wind up her piece with the conclusion that a.) it's all the fault of the United States and EvilGreedyCorporations, and b.) "the world's most vulnerable" and "the planet" are their victims. Which I take to be a soft-sell of the same conclusion: We must have socialism! Huzzah!

Here's my appraisal:
For decades, the Marxian conquest of humanity rested on a reliable mantra: "Capitalism is evil because it can't produce enough! See the people starving homeless in the streets! We must have socialism!"

So near the close of the 20th century, along comes President Ronald Reagan, who initiates some modest baby-steps back in the general direction of laissez faire - against enormous, withering opposition - and... even that modest adjustment is sufficient to usher in what would become a full quarter-century economic boom period. And guess what: The one economic group that advanced more in their standard of living during the '80s decade (the alleged "Decade of Greed,") was precisely the group who started the '80s decade at the absolute bottom, the poorest of the poor. In 1993 economist Jeff Scott and philosopher David Kelley compiled data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Treasury Department's Office of Tax Analysis into an article they named "Gekko Echo" (after the EvilGreedyCapitalist character in Ollie Stone's movie "Wall Street,") in which article they reveal that while the rich got richer in the 1980s, the poor got orders of magnitude richer than anyone else. The article is here, and I recommend bookmarking and viral-izing because it's important:
https://reason.com/1993/02/01/gekko-e...

The facts tell us, conclusively: The "Reaganomics" policy works, and benefits everyone working within it, particularly those who are starting out poor. And since Reaganomics was just, again, a minor adjustment away from statist controls and in the direction of economic liberty (a.k.a. capitalism,) it's an irrefutable indicator of the pent-up potential of even a still-constrained capitalist remnant, to improve vastly the human condition, so say nothing of full capitalism's potential. So there's your solution to the "world's most vulnerable" problem among third-world nations: Adopt an American-type Constitution (to lay the essential foundation of human rights, particularly property rights and limited government,) then step aside, permanently, and let the self-regulating market forces work their magic.

Meanwhile: During that same late-20th-century period, socialism basically imploded worldwide - tossed onto the Trash Heap of History with pointed and righteous contempt by the countless millions who had been enslaved and brutalized under its catchy banners and slogans for decades.

So what's a poor vestigial Marxist ideologue to do? Simple: Flop to the obverse.

"Capitalism is evil because it produces too much! We are 'materialist' and 'consumerist' and we're 'raping the Earth' and 'depleting our natural resources' and 'the SKY is falling! Auuugghh!' We must have socialism! Huzzah!"

The immediate question this farcical flip-flop prompts is "What the hell do these fools want, really?" A step back and the answer to that is simple: It was never anything to do with a concern for "the most vulnerable, but rather the resumption of ...the Marxian conquest of humanity. A simple fact: There are people who are just plain evil, and who have coalesced their evil into a fetish for systematically enslaving and destroying other people. And there is no better system for accomplishing this task, particularly on a large scale, than socialism.

So this endless avalanche of eco-apocalypse Scary Stories is just a post-Soviet retooling of vestigial, recidivistic Marxism. That's all this entire charade is about.

As for "depleting natural resources," there is nothing I can possibly attempt that can top the voluminous work that Pepperdine University economist George Reisman has done, particularly in his 1996 treatise "Capitalism," but also in essays such as his 2010 piece "Natural Resources and the Environment" - which I also strongly recommend bookmarking and viral-izing:
https://georgereismansblog.blogspot.c...


And the last word on the Schneider-esque Scary Story that is "Overpopulation," is of course the late Julian Simon's book "The Ultimate Resource," which should be considered required reading in this context: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691003815/

Every new baby is potentially a vast expansion of usable resources - a potential Edison or Hill or Ford or Jobs - not a depletion of them.
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Especially if you fly cross-country, at night: it's mostly dark, once you get beyond the metropolitan areas.

The biggest problem we face is a population concentrated in massive city centers, where disease, pollution, and crime spread, creating most of our difficult to solve issues. Big metropolitan areas are a remnant of feudalism, with lords ruling over their peasant labor.

Modern technology has made massed population centers unnecessary, which is one reason these archaic structures have significant unemployment. Much of today's business can be conducted remotely, with assembly line activity becoming increasingly automated. The freelance worker community has been growing steadily, and even large companies are going increasingly toward remote operations. USAA, an insurer that serves military, both active duty and retired, has over 22,000 employees, and has gone completely remote in its operations, as one example.

Restructuring populations to smaller communities would significantly reduce the stress on transportation and power systems. Regional nuclear power would improve the reliability, availability, and cleanliness of energy. With fewer workers having to commute, consumption of fossil fuels would be reduced, as would the demand on electric motive power.

Transitioning to laboratory grown meats (proceeding well in Israel) would significantly reduce the environmental impact of the meat industry. Expanding the use of greenhouse grown produce would lessen the impact of those farming activities on the environment and transportation (if the produce was grown closer to the smaller communities).

Increasing medical technology to become more automated and enable better remote diagnosis and treatment would create a better distribution of care. Better distribution of medical care facilities in smaller communities would reduce the emergency services delay times, and make the "golden hour" survival time increasingly possible.

The problem is thinking rooted in fifteenth century social structures. Recognizing the technology revolution that is upon us, and skillfully adapting to the benefits of this revolution can be the solution to our population dilemma.

Finally, we are about to become a serious space society, with colonies off planet, either on other celestial bodies or in artificial habitats. That immense change in human society will create an environment for new wealth and exploration as we expand into space, insuring our survival.

If the Earth's population were all crammed into TX, each person would have about 980 sq ft of space.
TX - 268820 sq miles
sq mi - 27,878,400 sq ft
Earth pop - 7.6B

The moon (luna) has always been associated with lunatics.
Me dino proposes that all libtards should feel perfectly at home up there.

Have any of you looked down at the Earth from a plane? We are definitely not over-populated. Get up in a plane and look. There is plenty of Earth to feed the population. It is the greed of governments, and the hatred of the people running the country. You are doing exactly what they want. You are blaming everything on the existence of other humans. Stop it.

Our Earth also has more unpopulated land than populated land.

Can one argue that international wealth redistribution/socialism etc caused overpopulation?

There are too many people.
I'll volunteer to be no more

... in about 50 years or so. (/s)

if we ever get fusion power going, that will solve many issues

and we MUST move into space