There are a few debates in our political discourse that seem cursed to polarisation. Take, for example, discussion of overpopulation, resource constraints, and environmentalism. The two options appear to be either the belief that the world is or will soon be catastrophically overpopulated, that our natural resources will soon be depleted, and Malthus was basically right; or, alternatively, the attitude that overpopulation can literally never happen, that there is no such thing as resource constraint, and that any concern whatsoever about the carrying capacity of the planet is really just a stalking horse for racism and nihilism. Neither of these options seems appealing to me, but my efforts to carve out a third space have not borne fruit.
