*promote some good points.
It's a bit sad to me that he doesn't seem to know or care that overpopulation is the root cause of all these 'problems', because the earth can survive through all the different damages people have done to it if there was only less damage done. We can cut forests without damage, if we only cut as much as we replant AND grow, we can burn fossil fuels if we only burn as much as the forests can filter, etc. If we had <1/10 the number of people doing <1/10 the amount of damage, the planet would likely be fine.
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actually, its not at all like that. the planet has food and land in surplus for everyone, but there is huge waste. Some of it is the price of technology and the modern life style, some of it is avoidable, reckless waste, but its not only a matter of "if there were only less people". That wouldnt make trawling the ocean any less destructive, or nuclear waste any less toxic. The planet is going to survive no matter what, the question is in what form, reducing the number of people on the planet only changes the time it takes to ruin the planet if the people that remain are going to continue irresponsibly consuming and contaminating as before.

Why is there so much nuclear waste? Because we have so many people living in artificial environments that require tons of power.

Why is the Colorado river becoming almost drained and getting worse each year? Because of climate change, yes, but primarily because we have millions of people living in desert regions and agricultural crops like almonds that require laughable tons of water. Most of those almonds are turned into flour and milk products because people refuse to eat other food, or can't because they should be dead due to allergies.

Why are we overfishing and using such harmful methods as trawling? Because we have too many people that want a specific kind of food or can't afford a different type of food.

Could we switch everyone to insect proteins or other radical foods like spirulina? Yes, if you want riots. The technology doesn't exist that can make sustainable foods taste the same and people would go apeshit.

So to sum up, yes, we could feed people without damaging the environment, if you could get people to agree to it. Think of trying to force vegans to chomp on insects. As far as habitats, not so much. We don't have the room for the sheer numbers of people without either doing away with food producing land, destroying existing ecosystems like the rainforest, or putting them in artificially sustained areas like large cities or hot/cold desert terrain.

Nature used to take care of these situations via epidemics or natural selection. We have adapted to the point where we can beat most epidemics (although soon we will be hit with something bad if we look at the super bacteria we are creating) and we protect the people who should be dead against their own stupidity.

Climate change isn't going to kill this planet first, the sheer population rise will wipe it out much sooner than that. By 2030 it is estimated we will have 8+ billion people, by 2050 close to 10 billion. Exponential growth is going to suck this planet dry as a bone. The day is coming when we will HAVE to start supplementing food with non-standard food types and soon after that we will wipe out most of the living food items on this planet like a horde of locusts.

Pretty much what @Mordhaus said.

There's no way to sustain the numbers we have today without changing 99% of people's habits, most effectively starting with breeding habits.
With the need for only 10% the power required today, you would never need to use nuclear power at all, or hydro. You could supply it on wind and solar with a small fossil fuel peak power generator system.
The planet MAY survive....but I don't count only extremophile bacteria as really 'alive'. Worst case scenario, we could be Venus 2.0, in my eyes, that's not alive.

It doesn't require changing 99% of people's habits, only the top 9%. Our respective corners of the world are nowhere near the average. I agree the planet can't afford 10 billion north Americans, at least as they are now, but 10 billion Nepalis would be just fine with fairly minor changes.

In any case solving the 30% of food waste goes quite a long way, no riots required.

Well, you do have a point....but I think 10 billion Nepali would still overburden the biosphere. It probably would only take <2 billion Americans (or far less, I'm just blind guessing) to overburden it. Given my druthers, we would have a total population under 1 billion, and make it so those wanting >3 children have to commit suicide to let their baby be born, essentially stopping population growth permanently.

Yes, solving food waste without massive expense could go a long way....but how? Most food waste is a factor of transportation cost. If it costs more to ship the food than it's 'worth', it will be allowed to rot. Figuring out a distribution method for getting excess food products to the needy for free is going to make someone billions of dollars if it's ever done. Unfortunately, without energy free teleportation, I don't see it happening on a large scale. Small scale local solutions (such as http://videosift.com/video/Fridge-Outside-Restaurant-Turns-Leftovers-Into-Free-Meals ) can have impact, but won't solve the problem completely.

Food waste has different causes in different places.

For instance, 45% of tomatoes harvested in Nigeria are lost due to poor Food Supply Chain management. In Kenya 15-35% of their crops are wasted due to the high specifications on appearance by European Union supermarkets. In other places food is wasted because there's no easy way to transport it to markets. In most African nations most of the losses occur early in the food supply chain, but in Europe and North America the losses are more likely to occur much closer to home.

According to http://www.worldfooddayusa.org/food_waste_the_facts consumers in industrialised countries waste almost as much food every year as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (222 million vs. 230 million tons).

Australians discard 20% of the food we purchase (total waste is 4.06 million tonnes of food every year). This works out fairly similar to the 10kg per person per month in the link above for the USA.

There is no new technology required to dramatically improve on these figures, it mostly just requires a desire to do better (and perhaps a bit of education).

you have people living in artificial environments that use tons of power because they want to, because they like it, not because they REQUIRE it. native americans lived in southwest USA for a thousand years just fine without the need of AC or diverting rivers.

go read up on the absurd agricultural subsidies tied to the colorado river- that isnt a problem created because farmers need to produce food to feed the world, its a problem created because politicians want money making businesses to tax, and because people are willing to spend money to eat what they like instead of what there is, a lot of money is made.

same with trawling- nothing to do with feeding all those people, everything to do with money. trawling has been going on for over a hundred years, well before the world population was even a 3rd of what it is currently- fishermen trawl because they want to be efficient because that makes them more money, not because they are concerned about how they are going to feed undernourished people.

the problem isnt getting people to eat insects. the problem is getting the developed world to stop eating so much, especially so much meat. there is an obesity epidemic around the world, over 3000 tons of food are discarded every day, and you want to tell me the problem is not enough food?

and lets not be disingenuous about nuclear waste, nuclear technology was invented as a weapon, not an energy source. you're telling me that if tomorrow a terrible plague wiped out 90% of the earths population, that nuclear armed states would give up their nuclear weapons? bs.

the video is on point. the environmental crisis is caused by greed, not because there are too many people on the planet. and if you feel so strongly that there are too many people on the planet, I assume you are relieved when your family members die? Unless you are willing to volunteer yourself and your family to die for the greater good, overpopulation is a facile bogey man to mask what you really want to say- lets get rid of all those "other" people so *I* dont have to change my own lifestyle.

My point (I'll not speak for @Mordhaus ) was that all these terrible things people do could be 'absorbed' by the planet (with the possible exception of nuclear wastes) if there was only 1/10 of them.
Many would not be needed as they are today, that's not to say they would not be used. Today, many of those practices are the only way to produce the quantity needed to feed us, like heavy trawling, which now is almost a requirement in many cases since so many types of fish are scarce at best, and completely gone in most cases.
It's not likely that we'll manage to change the wasteful behavior of the average human enough to make a difference, but creating fewer of them could go a long way towards solving most problems we face....not all, but most.
I'm relieved when my family members decide to not have more children. I see the good in it for the planet when a family member dies, but I'm not 'relieved' as such. That's an ugly and disingenuous way to consider our point about overpopulation.

The mean estimate of the number of ALL North American tribes was around 8 million (8.5 if you consider the small amount in Canada). Want to know the population of LA? If you guess around 4 million, you are correct.

The population of the state of California is close to 40 million. About 1/3 to 1/2 of that number lives in what should be desert. Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico have about 20 million people, most of whom live in desert like conditions. You can't support that number of people in a desert region on existing resources.

As far as food waste and obesity, you are talking about a small handful of developed, affluent nations. The rest of the world is starving. Even if we magically moved that food waste daily to people in need around the world, we would still have people who didn't get enough. We are at our limit on supplying food for the population, as it continues to grow, even the food waste issue will need to be solved if we plan to keep people just in those first world nations fed.

Trawling today is different. It used to be about doing as little work as you needed to for the most return. Now it is about getting your quota before the season ends, because we are desperately trying to keep the marine population sustainable. Even so, we are running out of some types of fish. Wild catch salmon is going to be gone in a few years, it will mostly be farm raised, which will also impact the environment. Cod is harder to come by as well because it is being over fished.

I have to admit, I don't know where you are going with the nuclear issue and weapons. The amount of nuclear waste from decommissioned weapons is minimal. The amount from power, medical, and research is far greater. All three are fueled by a need to either provide power to a large population, keeping people alive, or researching future power/medical uses.

Am I relieved when friends or family members die? No, but those people are already here. They are already factored into the system, so to speak. What we need to do to fix our current looming nightmare is to prevent or persuade people to stop having kids. Population is not a data-in only situation, it's data-out also. People die, if you don't replace them then there are more resources available. My wife and I chose not to have kids, not because we wouldn't love them, but because it was the responsible thing to do. As @newtboy mentioned, we won't necessarily fix all the issues by reducing population growth, but it would be a huge help. It might also give us time to work out other solutions, because we are looking down the barrel of a loaded gun.