Seattle's Population Blows Past 800,000 in Latest State Estimates

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

For the first time ever, Seattle has officially surpassed the 800,000 population mark. The state Office of Financial Management (OFM) pegged Seattle at 816,600 residents in April 1, 2025 population estimates released Friday. This year marks the fifth straight that Seattle’s growth rate has exceeded 2%, making Seattle one of the fastest-growing cities in the country.

As of April 2024, OFM estimated Seattle’s population was 797,700. The new estimates would indicate that Seattle added 18,900 residents in one year, growing 2.4% over the previous year. Over half of King County’s overall annual population increase — 33,600 new residents — were in the City of Seattle.

Suburban growth leaders

Other Puget Sound cities added population as well, though generally at a slower rate than Seattle, with a few exceptions. Bellevue went from 155,000 to 158,000 residents, a 1.9% growth rate. Tacoma grew from 225,100 residents to 228,400, a 1.5% growth rate. Lynnwood’s population expanded from 74,390 to 75,640, a 1.7% gain.

-snip-

Another set of cities in the region lost residents in the OFM estimate or were nearly flat. Everett shrink from 114,800 residents to 114,700. Kent shrunk from 140,400 to 140,100, losing 300 residents.

https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/06/27/seattles-population-blows-past-800000-in-latest-state-estimates/

[jfz9580m]

1. Population Connection had a decent piece

On the environmental crisis caused by population explosion the globe over:

https://populationconnection.org/blog/world-environment-day-2025/

Looking at that list I wondered if this industry friendly/pronatalist media culture picked the least viscerally/intuitively clear environmental issue over others to obscure the realities of unchecked population growth.

Authoritarianism also seems to go hand in hand with the chaos that go with too many damn people fighting for what at the end of the day are are constrained resources on a finite planet .

However equitably distributed, there is in the end going to be a carrying capacity to be considered and we are already blowing past all planetary boundaries.

I would have thought homeostasis would be a more intuitive concept than cornucopian economic nonsense. Economics is not a hard science and it is subject to human manipulation unlike physics, biology, ecology, climate science etc. It also only recently started even factoring in the environment which is absurd.

It’s kinda nuts how the environment has dropped out of the news entirely along with women’s rights.

Two of the best pieces I have seen countering the glut of bogus Pronatalist alarmism in places like The Atlantic were in Current Affairs:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/excuse-me-but-i-am-a-utopian

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/there-are-many-threats-to-humanity.-a-low-birth-rate-isnt-one-of-them

I have lately started realizing that population explosion is not just our most pressing environmental issue but also social. Educating and informing these many people gets so hard that it directly results in authoritarianism. Most people’s brains can process some essential fallacies of arguments for unchecked growth, but they attribute it to the wrong things.

And it’s driving extremism in many ways-like that anti-natalist extremist who bombed that fertility clinic. Mental health crises unsurprisingly spiral in a society with strained services. Every war is also at its root a product of the resource strain which is then cynically exploited by a conscienceless, amoral military industrial/defense contracting complex.

It’s good to see some direct/indirect pushback against this crap celebrating population explosion from William Rees, Nandita Bajaj, Kirsten Stade, Christopher Packham, Jane Goodall, David Attenborough etc and more indirectly Christopher Ketcham.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/06/04/making-more-babies-to-drive-economic-growth/

https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/10/06/the-rise-of-pronatalism/

https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/855-Article-Text-4479-1-10-20230131.pdf

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/26/the-unbearable-anthropocentrism-of-our-world-in-data/

Most of our economy is such worthless rot too. So much tech really is the rot economy this tech writer Ed Zitron bashes. It is churning out bs jobs, making products which rot human brains.
We have cheap baubles destroying the planet for shopaholics while so many humans go without access to basic needs distinct from food alone (a good education, healthcare and stable/worthwhile employment rather than bs jobs)

It’s all kinda connected. Julian Simon is an ass.
This rather mordantly funny doctor Warren Hern has a thesis that humans are kinda behaving like a cancer on the planet, but we don’t have to. We just have to not be in denial about it and stop refusing to make connections while clinging to outdated views ignoring reality

https://www.salon.com/2023/08/05/are-humans-a-cancer-on-the-planet-a-physician-argues-that-civilization-is-truly-carcinogenic/

Of course the National Review etc started huffing and puffing with faux outrage. Their feigned humanism would be more believable in people who were not in general for the most anti-human policies in every real way.

Environmentalists are not really misanthropic. We are just pointing out the stuff left unsaid or cloaked in the faux humanism of the cornucopians of Cato/National Review etc.

If anything we are trying to check the rise of anti-natalism.

And most childfree people (including me) are actually happy to support parents (just not to insanely unreasonable extents as that’s not good for the planet or humans in the long run).

I actually like kids. I was looking up The Little Prince the other day..It really captures the world of a child.. It makes me sad that kids get deprived (of among other things the joy of nature, a childhood not spent poisoned by pollution etc.) thanks to the lousy decisions made by thoughtless adults.