ONE ALL-IMPORTANT NOTE: Understanding of all 4 definitions of overpopulation below must include a realization (you can't avoid it) that too many people need a HUMAN ENCAMPMENT that takes more space and weighs more heavily on the eco-system than its billions of tenants.

Definition of the word world:
    The word world, in the context of a discussion of overpopulation, means NOT the planet we live on (which isn't what needs "saving"), OR the globe (which is NOT warming), but the eco-system we live within (i.e. humanity's eco-world), which rides the planet a little above and below the surface like a passenger (as we do), which must be what may be warming along the planet's surface (on average) - among other things going wrong with it that Al Gore finds it inconvenient to mention, including, seemingy at least, some currently drastic climatic irregularity AND ALSO a LOT of other phenomena not yet put TOGETHER by embedded media (though obviously more important together than separately as each subject finally becomes p.c.), which obviously (not just seemingly but certainly) ADD UP TO
               A COMPREHENSIVE COLLAPSE OF OUR ECOWORLD,
i.e. the world we actually live in, rather than on. Understanding of this definition and the next four definitions in carefully correct English is critically important.

FOUR DEFINITIONS of the word overpopulation, all emphasizing and clarifying the phrase, too many people - Overpopulation is:

    (1) TOO MANY PEOPLE to balance and interact harmoniously with the other species and elements in an eco-system which, to remain healthy and viable, requires all the elements in its make-up to balance and interact with all the other elements harmoniously;
     (2) TOO MANY PEOPLE to provide each and every one of them the best life practically possible in a less populated world, just in case we ever have a one-world Civilized State that actually tries to do that.
     (3) TOO MANY PEOPLE for the world to be as aesthetically comfortable as it once was and still could be - or as beautiful as it once was and still could be - or to leave room outside their way-overgrown, over-crowded, noisy, tasteless, poisonous encampment for the luxuriously spacious natural world of clean air and soil and water and mountains and vast empty plains and forests and streams and seas teeming with abundant wild life that I WANT IN MY WORLD.

     Right now, ALL OF THOSE DEFINITIONS AND THE LINES THEY DRAW ARE ALREADY ACADEMIC, since, to anybody but an insensitive entrepreneur with a vested interest in growth, a politician trying to be all things to all and especially all rich constituents, a pseudo progressive trying to be politically correct, a dolt suckered by the insiders' media, or a religious person in rigid denial of a real world with actual spacial size and limitations, ALL THREE OF THOSE LINES HAVE OBVIOUSLY ALREADY BEEN CROSSED. The first two lines were crossed hundreds or even thousands of years ago, for sure before Columbus was pushed west by population pressure but probably way before that. The third line was crossed over 100 years ago and too obviously not to notice it in the last 50 years - so that, right now, overpopulation clearly enough means:

    (4) NOW (8.045) BILLION PEOPLE in a world just right for a fraction of that number, i.e. l/60th to l/100th of that number, by which I mean that there are currently 60 to 100 X too many people on Earth ALREADY.

      Of course, there are other definitions not worth numbering: 


    (0) MORE THAN THE OPTIMUM POPULATION. This definition (to which, as a double entendre, I'm assigning a zero - 0) was adopted by pseudo progressives in the early 90's and apparently meant either: all we can get in, as if a not quite critical mass would be ideal, OR: as many as we can stand before everyone finally realizes the world is overpopulated and is democratically willing to finally do something about it. 
    Of all the politically correct garbage smothering us since 1990, that has to be the closest to actually insane. It has to be technically mad to WANT to live in a world any MORE crowded than this - or to suppose that any crazy cosmic ethic requires that we go for the most the world can stand or the most it is politically correct to stand. The optimum population idea was and is nothing more respectable than a politically correct concession made by pseudo progressives to minorities they fear offending, who are hypocritically presumed to be culturally incapable of growing past their tradition of proliferating quail-like families.
        (0+) A REALISTIC OPTIMUM POPULATION would be a number comfortably and safely BELOW definitions #1 and #2 above - a ceiling that would provide a comfortable buffer zone obviously. But the optimum population concept is fundamentally flaky since, in fact, while there clearly can be and are too many people, there's no sensible reason to strive for as many people as we can supposedly accomodate, and there is no such thing as too few people. If the human population were to die out, so what? I won't waste space on any of the loony-tunes population theories of religious lumpen resisting science. -Glen Roberts