Opinion: There is no overpopulation in Eugene or America, only an unsustainable lifestyle incompatible with continued human existence.
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It is almost inevitable that in any discussion of housing, healthcare, or welfare, overpopulation is brought up. This argument will only get more popular as the effects of climate change become more apparent and financial collapse makes our lives more precarious. However, this country and our city, have enough resources for everyone. The real issue is the distribution and culture of overconsumption. Overpopulation, at best, is a blatantly false cop-out, and at worst, it is a fascist dog whistle to protect “our” resources from an “other.”

Our local Eugene papers, like the Register-Guard, love to publish overpopulation fear-mongering. Readers frequently write in complaining about “too many people” and the need to “cut housing demand by decreasing population.” Real ghoulish stuff. The latter community member actually quotes Greta Thunberg’s condemnation of endless growth, thinking it refers to populations instead of “eternal economic growth.”

These birdbrained rubes are ignorant reactionaries lashing out at an attractive narrative and — subconsciously or not — attaching themselves to a growing right-wing ecology movement.

Yes, our local population has grown, but Eugene could not be a small town forever. The answer to such growth is not draconian deportations but increased public investment and the building of more housing. Our city is not overpopulated; it is underdeveloped.

Moreover, we must understand that the American standard of living: car ownership — no matter how fuel-efficient — a single-family home and continual consumption is incompatible with reality. Earth currently has a population of 7.9 billion people with an estimated carrying capacity of 10 billion. Yet, if every person lived like an American, we would need 5 Earths worth of resources. Our country accounts for 5% of the world’s population, but it consumes 24% of the world’s energy, with the average American’s consumption equal to 370 Ethiopians. America discards 40% of its food supply, 13 million homes sit vacant*, and the top 1% holds more wealth than the entire middle class.

Despite this, 48% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, 30 million families report not having enough to eat, and over half a million people are homeless. But this is not because there are too many people, as it’s clear we have enough “stuff” for everyone; we just choose to waste it.

Blaming families who are simply looking for affordable housing in your community solves nothing; they are not the ones making your life more difficult. Instead, it’s the corporate entities recording record profits while gouging gas prices and an uncaring government that allows free school lunches to expire for 10 million hungry kids.

We live in a post-scarcity age. We are not a fragile city-state on the banks of the Fertile Crescent but the most advanced, wealthy human empire in the history of the world. If we wanted to, everybody could enjoy this fact.

At the end of the day, it is not the American citizen’s fault because we are just products of our environment, and our overconsumption is just the meager treats of laboring under corporate oligarchs.

As I’ve written about before: failing to address declining material conditions allows conservative grifters to peddle their false narratives that blame economic woes on marginalized communities.

By continuing to fail to act on climate change, we embolden right-wing ecology that attributes tangible problems to an unseen other.

The right has pushed climate denial since science began attributing a warming planet to human activity, but inevitably this will have to shift to acceptance — probably when Florida is underwater. But the right’s solutions will not call for renewable energy, carbon tax, or a more sustainable lifestyle. Instead, it will call for tough border laws, reduced immigration, and population control in the global south— all to limit our resources to those who deserve them. It will do nothing to stop the actual drivers of climate change.

Our suburbias will be floating long before we even consider taking cars off the road.

Similar articles like to bookend these frightening statistics with a cutesy appeal to more sustainable shopping, but voting with your dollars will not solve such problems.

Overpopulation is a dangerous myth propagated to make you hate your neighbor while the elite take whatever scraps you still have. The solutions to quell this insidious rhetoric are the same as combating climate change: steering industries away from gross overproduction, redistributing wealth and resources and ensuring decent living standards for all.

A better future is possible, one that can sustainably support everyone. Only by reckoning with our society’s incompatibility with reality can that be achieved.

 
*Calculated by multiplying total US units by vacancy rate.