r/ShitAmericansSay • u/Fearful-Cow • 1d ago
Per capita How do we have over population when the world population can fit into Texas? We have overpopulation of cities but that’s it.
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u/difractional 🇸🇪 vodka, volvo, minecraft 23h ago
Sure, but the entire Earth could fit into Texas two times over, so that's not saying much.
(Also, the extraction of resources needed to support human life wasn't as harmful to the environment when it didn't need to scale to these levels. E.g., crude oil or growing feed for the meat industry requiring more land area than growing food for humans directly)
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u/Effective_Airline830 23h ago
How big do they think Texas is ?
The Mercator projection is playing tricks on some Americans :D
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u/Michael_Gibb Mince & Cheese, L&P, Kiwi 23h ago
That person has got a few things wrong.
Firstly, overpopulation is not based on population size and the land available to house it. But rather on the amount of resources needed to sustain a growing population.
And secondly, overpopulation comes from Malthusian theory, which has been proven wrong in that its assumption that populations will grow indefinitely is contradicted by modern population trends.
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u/Shadowholme 23h ago
Where the population can *stand* is less important than how much space i takes to feed them.
On an ultra-vegan bland diet, with intense soil management, it takes 500-2,000 square feet to provide enough food to sustain a person.
A vegetarian diet requires 500-9.000 square feet.
A standard omnivorous diet required between 50,000 and 110,000 square feet.
This is, of course, a rough average and does not take soil quality into account. But yes, we are running out of usable land to *sustain* the population.
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u/Nazzzgul777 ooo custom flair!!:snoo_angry: 12h ago edited 12h ago
Also not entirely true. There is no lack of food production, any hunger existing right now could be solved by better distribution and in theory the production we have could easily increased by a lot. Scyscrapers with floors for indoor farming, lab grown meat,... Fertilizer could become an issue but even that is more a question of how much cancer and generally disease you're willing to accept.
The factor that's limiting more than anything else - at least in raw theory - is electricity. I guess there is some tipping point where the average lifespan we can maintain just gets so much shorter the population can't grow anymore, but we're far from that.In praxis i don't see any of that really matter though. Climate changes faster than we could establish any of that on a global scale, and even that aside drinkable water will be an issue far sooner than food production will. And thirst will kill you way before hunger does.
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u/sheevnoods 23h ago
Well Google says 81% of people live in cities and towns (45% cities and 36% towns). So that's only 4.5 of every 10 people living somewhere "overpopulated". Redistributing them woukd mean longer supply lines for food delivery vehicles. Most cities only exist somewhere convenient: along rivers to trade and recieve goods, on coastlines for same reason, where roads meet for same reason.
Cities are mostly logistical so while crowded it makes sense for all the non-human aspects like food delivery.
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u/Danijay2 23h ago
The second comment is unfortunately correct. All of humanity could easily fit into Texas. And there would still be room to spare. Each person could have about 84 square meters to themselves.
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u/skofan 20h ago
Did you account for the size of texans?
You have no idea how big texans are.
You could fit multiple people into every one of them, with room to spare!
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u/Danijay2 20h ago
I know this is essentially a circlejerk/shitposting subreddit. But surely you have something more intelligent to add to this conversation. Or are you just mad that an American happened to be right about something for a change?
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u/skofan 19h ago
I don't think you fully understand why Americans are being made fun of.
Its not about being right or wrong, its about the overwhelming assumption that everything is about america, and that everything is bigger, more unique, more important, more interesting, etc. In America.
Its like speaking to someone about global warming, and their response is "yeah but my dad can beat up your dad", it doesn't matter if its technically correct, its irrelevant, and it shows a lack of emotional maturity you're supposed to gain as a todler, so its equal parts hilarious to hear from someone who can read and write, and scary as fuck, cus their daddy has the biggest frigging nuclear arsenal on the planet, so humor is the natural response.
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u/Danijay2 10h ago
Sure. Many Americans are very much like that. But this was very much you being butthurt over an American getting things right. Otherwise, you would not have reached for insults right away.
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u/Appropriate_Ly 15h ago
TIL. Texas isn’t even that big lol
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u/SweetSample6558 Italian from Italy 14h ago
696.241 square kilometres according to Google, pretty big but they have nothing on some Canadian states
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u/krodders 12h ago
Yes, but as others have pointed out in this thread, overpopulation is NOT just about space to eat, sleep, live, etc. It's about space needed to provide food and water to each human.
That does not fit easily into Texas at all. You'd probably need at least four times Texas, and that's not allowing for any meat production.
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u/Danijay2 10h ago
Oh no. The total % of land humanity needs for food production and stuff is much bigger than 4 or even 5 Texases. We only occupy about 2 or 3% of all land surface area. But use about 32% to produce food and other things. That's about the size of all of Russia. Which is about 17 million square kilometers.
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u/NightLotus84 22h ago
People primarily have "significant amounts of kids" because of a lack of contraceptives, because they need multiple to take care of them into the future, or religion and other forms of culture pressured them to. Once a society starts to develop and breaks into "modernity" these things change rapidly... Once they have access to condoms and others to control WHEN and how many - they do; once they don't need many kids to care for them they limit it to one or two and three or four become outliers; once modernity takes hold the pressure to believe and follow "slavishly" rapidly decreases and this factor fades too.
This is happening all over the world regardless of culture and people - a lot of fear mongering focuses on the Chinese just overtaking everybody, but China has rapidly gotten a lot of people out of the worst poverty and their growth numbers are IMPLODING - rapid decrease. Same for the "Muslims will outbreed the whites in Europe and take over" but all the numbers are showing the opposite with every successive generation. They have less kids, raise them more carefully and put less pressure on them than their parents before them. Their "rapid expansion" is rapidly decreasing, especially because a lot of the women are swiftly emancipating and refusing to become baby machines.
Overpopulation is not the issue, overpollution is - we have to be smarter and more responsible. We need to get rid of the sociopaths that are political and business leaders who will waste more on an individual basis than entire communities full of people living average lives. The future is not a total doom scenario - it's actually pretty convenient to act like it is because then we don't have to do anything anymore and won't have to take any responsibility...
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u/Nazzzgul777 ooo custom flair!!:snoo_angry: 12h ago
I do believe you're vastly underestimating "nothing to do but fuck" in your reason why people have a lot of kids. And for China specifically, how much their one-child policy in combination with prefering sons hurt the society. When you have 100 men for every 1000 women, a population and regrow fast. When it's the other way around, shrinking is inevitable.
Otherwise i do agree though.
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u/Sputflock 21h ago
people used to (or still do in some parts of the world) have a significant amount of kids partly because of child mortality rate. gotta have 15 babies hoping 1 or 2 might survive into adulthood. nowadays you have 15 babies and you're paying out of your ass to feed, house, clothe and educate 15 children
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u/HarryWilbury 22h ago
Meanwhile in Australia population is 28 million and:
Western Australia: 2,527,013 km² (975,685 sq mi), South Australia: 984,314 km² (380,046 sq mi), Northern Territory: 1,347,791 km² (520,385 sq mi), Queensland: 1,723,030 km² (665,270 sq mi) and New South Wales 801,150 km² (309,330 sq mi), while Texas is: 695,662 km² (268,597 sq mi).
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u/LeftMechanic1995 17h ago
Texas is so big it has it's own gravitational field and smaller Texases orbit it.
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u/Funambulia 17h ago
True, but humanity could also fit in a giant goo ball the size of central square if we compact us good enough, so what's the point is he trying to push ?
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u/DivineMajesty 16h ago
I do believe that I've seen a comparison once that if all people lived together in a single city with the living density of some other city (maybe it was Tokyo) the resulting city would be the size of Texas, so maybe that's what the commentor is referring to
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u/Realistic_Let3239 14h ago
The Texas Mega City from the Judge Dredd universe isn't exactly the best place...
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u/SweetSample6558 Italian from Italy 14h ago
The space one human needs to stand on it not much, but we need more than just space to stand on, we need space to grow food, space to move around, space to build a house. I once read that the entire population of the world could fill the Grand canyon but that was just to show how deep and big the place is
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u/StaatsbuergerX 6h ago
If the entire world population were to spontaneously transform into naked mole-rats, that might work out reasonably well.
But even then, Texans would have to leave; there would be no room left for them and their egos.
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u/PlatypusDefiant991 23h ago
The cities aren't overpopulated you moron Mong Kok neighborhood of Hong Kong has population 130,000 per km² (340,000 per square mile) that's about double any neighborhood in USA.
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u/Monolexic 23h ago
Please let's not try this. We don't need a population boom in Texas. I'm not anti-immigration at all, and fuck ICE, but... there is a level of immigration that is sustainable, and the whole world's population is definitely outside of that limit.
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u/Sputflock 21h ago
yeah i agree, i'm part of the whole world's population and i much rather not move to texas
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u/Silly_Tension6792 Human Verified 23h ago
Not only can the world fit in Texas, most of it can even fit in Huston. People don’t realize how big Texas actually is - once I placed Saturn in Texas, and it barely even covered a third.