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Page added on November 1, 2011
7 Billion Reasons Malthus Was Wrong
You’d think after 200 years, folks would eventually say, “That Malthus guy? Kind of wrong.” Yet, with the (projected) birth today of the world’s 7 billionth occupant, there’s no shortage of media hand-wringingabout the dim prospects of our world from here.
Thomas Malthus is famous (or infamous, depending on your view) for his belief that human population growth would outpace food production—and fast—which would lead to societal ruin. He was downright dismissive of the idea of “unlimited progress” in food production.
Can there be “unlimited progress” in food production? Not sure. But Malthus would never imagine that, with 6 billion more people than in his day, we have a holiday dedicated to handing total strangers handfuls of free food. Utterly non-nutritional food at that!
You can’t really blame Malthus for getting this so wrong. Long-term forecasts are right devilish. Example, the London Times columnist who predicted in 1894 that by 1950, London would be buried under 9 feet of manure likely died before he could have any egg on his face. (Though, no doubt, he had enough time to surmise that the horse-dropping build-up was going awfully slowly.) There was no way for him to know in a few short years, the combustion engine would make horse-drawn transport a cute relic for honeymooners.
And that’s how these long-term forecasts go. The peak oil date certain (the point at which oil production hits an apex and starts falling) has come and gone multiple times over the past decades. Yet, since the concept of “peak oil” was first popularized by Marion Hubbert in 1956, the amount of oil we produce has increased vastly. So too has the amount of known reserves in the ground. There was just no way for him to predict we’d be drilling in thousands of feet of water—or “fracking”! (Heck, in 1956, “frack” was still what polite Dads said after their thumbs got in the way of their hammers.) Or that we’d even have the technology to find the oil (or gas) to deep-water drill (or frack).
The popular 1968 book the Population Bomb posited that in the 1970s, hundreds of millions would starve to death. The theory was that if food production is growing at X rate and the population growing at much faster Y rate, that could pose quite a problem. But then, along came Norman Borlaug, who invented high-yielding, disease-resistant dwarf wheat. (Thank goodness Norman’s mom wasn’t a Malthusian.) Now, dwarf wheat may make those who shun “frankenfoods” mad, but it also meant the emerging world’s burgeoning populations didn’t all starve.
(Not too mention that sticky question, if you buy whole-hog into Malthus’s [long-disproven] concept, of how exactly you get the population to that lower, appropriate level. Let’s move on.)
I don’t care what it’s on—economies, capital markets, wheat yields, hemline trends—long-term forecasts are fraught with peril. And ones that underestimate humanity’s ingenuity and ability to problem-solve are particularly faulty. Yes, pockets of the world face famine—usually in regions with corrupt, despotic governments. But overall, the world hasn’t outgrown its ability to feed itself. Someone invented the steel plow, the tractor, the threshing machine, better fertilizers. Handily, someone also discovered penicillin, the pasteurization process, the Polio vaccine and DDT so we have a better shot at getting past age 5. (And the iPhone too, so we can live, not starve and be entertained all the while.) Malthus didn’t think about the iPhone anymore than he thought about dwarf wheat or the MMR vaccine. That doesn’t make him a bad person, just rather unimaginative.
And while global population has grown, life expectancies keep increasing, quality of life keeps improving, and per capita GDP keeps expanding. So bring on number 8 billion! (Malthus will still be wrong then.)
9 Comments on "7 Billion Reasons Malthus Was Wrong"
Alan Cecil on Tue, 1st Nov 2011 12:52 pm
Malthus did not figure in the glut-fest of petroleum-fueled agriculture. But don’t worry; when we start to run out of cheap oil, we’ll run out of cheap food, and the “green revolution” will become a distant memory. The folks that will be proven wrong are the imbeciles such as the editors of Forbes, who foolishly think that the economy is going to keep growing at 3% a year cheap energy or no…
MikeB on Tue, 1st Nov 2011 6:24 pm
“Malthus did not figure in the glut-fest of petroleum-fueled agriculture.”
Alan, that’s just another way of saying “Malthus was wrong.” So why not just say “Malthus was wrong”?
“…when we start to run out of cheap oil, we’ll run out of cheap food, and the “green revolution” will become a distant memory. The folks that will be proven wrong are the imbeciles such as the editors of Forbes…”
Spoken like a True Believer. When the end hasn’t come, just push the end off to the future. And call your opponents names.
“Peak oil” has become a pathetic movement.
SimplifyIt on Tue, 1st Nov 2011 8:43 pm
She is “not sure” if there can be unlimited progress in food production? This is not a matter of opinion to be debated; it is a cold, uncaring fact that there is a hard ceiling to food production, one that is now predicated on the availability and use of cheap oil.
Why does Peakoil.com post this fantasy-land nonsense here?
scas on Tue, 1st Nov 2011 9:01 pm
No mention of energy, no mention of global warming, fungi and pests. No mention of erosion or peak phosphorous and gas fertilizer. No mention of petrochemical pesticides and an evolutionary race with the bugs. All in all, a shit writeup by a moron for dimwits. Keep cheerleading “malthus is wrong therefore he will be wrong forever”.
Kenz300 on Tue, 1st Nov 2011 10:09 pm
We have a food crisis, a water crisis, an oil crisis, a financial crisis, an environmental crisis, an over population crisis and a jobs crisis. Every problem is harder to solve with the ever growing world population. The pain, suffering, hunger and despair continues in many parts of the world. Like musical chairs — if you have a chair it is not so bad, for the one without is is the end.
DC on Tue, 1st Nov 2011 11:39 pm
They should just change the name from Forbes to ‘The Cornucopian’. How can someone actually say they are ‘not sure’ if food production, can grow forever? Are they not hiring educated people at that magazine? Maybe someone should tell forbes that in principle, we could cover they entire planet with farms, what were not useing for roads and houseing, to grow food. That does not mean its the kind of world I would live in.
SilentRunning on Wed, 2nd Nov 2011 3:38 am
Forbes is a media mouthpiece for “Business as Usual”. It can be counted upon to defend the status quo, even as the status quo is self-evidently becoming unglued at the seams.
I can imagine that had the Easter Islanders had a “Forbes Magazine” just prior to their civilization’s collapse, they would have crowed about how there were now a record number of boats plying the ocean for food, a record number of Easter Islanders, record harvests, etc, etc. Even though the forests had been reduced to only a few remaining trees, new technology plus the help of the ever larger religious statues will eliminate any potential timber shortage……
Beery on Wed, 2nd Nov 2011 11:24 am
How can any serious article argue that Malthus was wrong? The world’s surface has a limited surface area – as long as that’s the case, food production and consequent population must be finite.
Malthus’s estimate of peak population was based on a world without advanced technology, so it turned out to be an underestimate. But the underlying theory is perfectly sound.
rebecca on Wed, 2nd Nov 2011 6:53 pm
I am reminded of a conversation I had once while working at an animal shelter and explaining to a woman why we would prefer she try to keep the cat she was adopting as indoor only. She said “We had a cat that went outside for 12 years and he was fine, nothing happened to him” My thought was “Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t”
The fact that we have managed to deal with the ever rising population so far is no indication that we will be able to do so indefinately. As resourceful, intellegent animals, we humans have figured out ways around tricky problems like limited food production by infusing ever more fossil fuel energy into food production. Eventually the cost of this energy will exceed our ability to pay for it and the house of cards will come down.