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The Unrecognized Malthusian Mistakes
Most people know the Reverend Thomas Malthus as the English clergyman and economist who wrote The Principle of Population, a work that went through six editions between 1798 and 1826 and that made the case that "The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race." In the more than two centuries since the publication of Malthus's first edition a raft of biological and social scientists have attempted to refute Malthus's basic theory, pointing out as the enviro-sceptic Bjorn Lomburg did, that food production has always increased faster than population growth.

For the moment, these "skeptics" have been correct. If population growth continues, in the long run, they will all be wrong. Why? Because even if our vaunted technology gets to the point of turning all matter and/or energy into the food and support necessary for human existence, the amount of matter on the planet is indeed finite, although in practical terms, it's far more likely that other aspects of civilization will collapse first, leading to a reduction in food supply... and population.


The larger mistake in dealing with Malthusian economics, however, lies in the failure of Malthus's critics to understand why Malthus did not seem to be correct in his own lifetime, or even in ours. Both Darwin and Wallace read The Principle of Population, and both commented to the effect that his work applied directly to the "natural world." What they meant was that, for example, there are always more prey than predators, because if there aren't, predator populations crash. The same is true of herbivores. One of the problems the giant panda faces is that it's a very picky eater and there is only so much of the bamboo it eats within its range, and that range is decreasing because the human population has been encroaching.


In overall terms, what the human species has done for roughly the last 8,000 years is to employ technology to transform the entire world ecology into anything but a "natural" world. Currently, there are between one and one and a half billion cows in the world, 15 billion chickens, 700 million pigs, over 100 million horses, mules, and donkeys, and close to half a billion domesticated turkeys and geese. None of these animal population levels are anything close to what these species could maintain without extensive human effort, and the impact of these animals is anything but insignificant, considering that, as just one example, a single cow produces 250-500 liters of methane every single day, and that methane tends to last in the atmosphere for up to 100 years. Fertilizer run-off from the Mississippi River has created algae blooms and large dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.


Years ago, when I was working at the EPA, research studies showed that the pesticide toxaphene, used primarily on cotton crops in the southern United States, was appearing in the tissues of northern arctic mammals -- not birds who might have flown over or through the USA, and in animals who did not prey on such birds. While its use is now banned in the United States, the world-wide spread and bioaccumulation is indicative of just how much human technology has changed and modified the planet.


This human-created "ecology" is not stable, nor can it be maintained without enormous investments of energy, resources, and effort. So, while the human species has been able to "thwart" Malthusian principles for two hundred years, the real question is not how and why Malthus was wrong, but for how long we will both allow unchecked human population increases and increasingly artificial ecological manipulation... and at what cost.


Comments:
An book that deals with the issue of population growth and Man's ability to solve it with technology is 'Tuf Voyaging', by George R. R. Martin. Very interesting example of relying on technology to solve problems that should be addressed socially.

In terms of your second point, I recall reading something similar in the Heinlein novel 'Farmer in the Sky', albeit presented somewhat differently. In short, the world inhabited by Man ceased to be 'natural' somewhere around the time we started making tools.

Hopefully we'll start learning better ways of doing things before we find out that Malthus was right after all.
 
Guess we better start researching terraforming.
 
"...he real question is not how and why Malthus was wrong, but for how long we will both allow unchecked human population increases and increasingly artificial ecological manipulation..."

The real question is who is we? Who will become the population gods? How will they acquire their powers?

New population projections are made annually. And, for decades, the population projections have been lower than projections made in earlier years. There is no inevitability of overpopulation. Europe's population is declining. So is Russia's. If it weren't for recent Hispanic immigrants with high birth rates, the US population would be declining. China's population is stable. India's population is growing, but much slower than in the 20th century. History shows that wealthier peoples have lower birth rates, and the world is becoming wealthier. I don't believe we will reach population levels that will destroy the planetary ecology.
 
Dr T

I hope that the trend of wealthier populations having lower birth rates continues but I'm not sure this will hold true for all cultures.

That was one of the points in Tuf Voyaging. The culture in question believed it was their duty to have as many children as possible. It was a religious and cultural imperative and when you start mixing religion into the discussion all bets are off.

The Parafaith War and The Ethos Effect books are excellent examples of this and they also incorporate the social implications that this has for other cultures who do have lower birth rates.
 
DB:

You are using fictional examples to debate a real problem. The topic of population growth has reams of data and real examples of changes in population growth rates. Using fictional examples is unpersuasive.

The United States is a Christian majority nation, but the command to "be fruitful and multiply" has been widely ignored. It's possible that a few nations will not follow the historical correlation of greater wealth = lower birth rate, but the overall trend has been followed by almost all nations (including Catholic majority nations such as Italy, Spain, and Poland whose population growth rates are essentially zero).

The table here (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_pop_gro_rat-people-population-growth-rate) shows that only one developed nation has a growth rate higher than 1.5% (Israel, 1.7%). Most developed nations have population growth rates of less than 1%, and some of that growth is from immigration rather than increased births. The table shows that poor African nations comprise most of the group with growth rates exceeding 3%.

For those who believe that overpopulation will destroy the planet, the solution is to find a way to bring wealth to Africa, the Mideast, and other poor nations. That will require stopping wars and eliminating kleptocratic governments, two tasks that have rarely been accomplished by a single nation or by multinational organizations.
 
It seems interesting to me that there is also the issue of the species imperative to generate or maintain "abundance" for itself or its offspring. We tend to hoard resources for ourselves in whichever "tribe" we self-identify. Until we as a species begin speaking consitently about the "we" rather than the "me," will positive change result. Also I agree with the earlier comment pertaining to religion - once you introduce fantastic notions into a society's set of imperatives - all bets are indeed off.
 
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