I think about it like this, overpopulation is clearly an issue but much more nuanced than Hughes presents. Essentially, his statement equated to this:
the best way to stop trash piles is by reducing the reproductive freedom of lower income Indonesians. This is tyrannical and polluted thinking. It contains no understanding whatsoever of the globalization of the trash trade. It is well established that developed countries exploit countries in the Global South when it comes to exporting their trash and in some cases, Indonesia specifically (
https://www.invw.org/2022/04/18/ric...21, Indonesia, Vietnam,,in 2020 to 41 million https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ountries-grapple-with-wests-unwanted-plastic; https://e360.yale.edu/features/plastic-waste-imports-recycling-indonesia; https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/plastic-waste-indonesia-pollution-health/). It is not adequate to simply blame lower income people in one country for what is an international problem. It is particularly unfair to blame them, when the burden of that problem is disproportionately burdened by them.
Regarding overpopulation, zero-sum thinking is also inadequate (
https://www.cato.org/policy-report/...valuable-people-debunking-myth-overpopulation). The greatest resource that humanity possesses is its youth. Empowering them with the skills they need to realize economic independence reduces the need for them to have large families to fund their retirements. More educated and skilled people, means more potential for ideas and innovation that we can use to deal with overpopulation issues in the future. The late Hans Rosling, a former health advisor to the UN has a great talk on this that presents this argument much better than I can, so I will link his talk here (
).
The easiest thing for privileged Westerners to do, is to go on an expat forum and blame lower-income locals for their ills. This is silly and a product of zero-sum thinking. We participate in the local economy and we choose to live here, so while we have the freedom to moan, we should at least do so in a balanced way and not be
dasar bule about it. Overpopulation is complex and is impacted by longer life spans due to better health care and the longer life expectancy of people (a good thing); population density has a more negative impact than the simple increase in the totality of the world's population; and, one possible explanation for the trend of population growth is that the world's population will reach approx. 11 billion by the end of the century before leveling off should increases in levels of education and access to healthcare increase. The image attached below (taken from this link:
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access) shows that the developed world uses far more energy per person than those in The Global South. According to this data, taken from the US Energy Information Administration earlier this year, the average Indonesian uses between 5-10,000 kwh of energy per year, whereas that of the average American is in the 50-100,000 range. Let's humble ourselves and have a little think about that before we start berating others with less resources than us. The average American consumes 10x the energy of the average Indonesian and our own data tells us that.
Overpopulation is an issue, and it is unlikely to go away before the end of the century. Really, population density and the increase in concentrated areas such as large cities is the problem that we need to contend with to manage this phenomenon. The intellectual resources to solve that problem will be found amongst the people that it will affect the most, our children and the rest of their generation. The Global North contributes massively to global issues, including but not limited to the production of trash, and is as responsible for this problem and helping to solve it as The Global South is. Of course, it is easier to blame the kids and the poor than to actually do some thinking and help them. In turn, Douglas Adams was an environmentalist who had faith in humanity to solve and be responsible for its own problems, so do yourselves a favor and have some faith in life, the universe and everything. But if that is not possible, perhaps the next generation. Cut the crap and realize that all of humanity is in this together.
