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Page added on July 7, 2013
Population Growth: Malthus Rolls Over
Last week, Oxford Computer Science Professor Steven Emmott published an excerpt of his book, Ten Billion, in The Guardian. The tone of his excerpt breaks all of the rules about communication on environmental issues. It uniformly grim and offers no solutions—verboten on two counts if you actually want people to listen, hear the message, and take actions. However, the article, and presumably the book, deals head on with the foundation of environmental destruction—population growth—from which so many environmental groups and writers shy away. The article correctly points out that the constraints are not just climate, but water, waste, and concentrated populations combined with contaminated environments that lead to elevated risks of disease.
The Green Revolution caused the Malthusian crisis to go out of fashion. But Malthus was not wrong, but rather too narrow in his analysis; he identified food as a single, inflexible constraint. He didn’t allow for the expanding effects of technology and didn’t consider the ecosystem’s other limits. He should have identified multiple constraint that represent the ecosystem as a whole.
E.O. Wilson coined the term ‘technological prosthesis’ for pesticides, fertilizers, de-salinization, fossil fuels—anything that allows the population to continue to expand beyond what it would without technology. But these prostheses come at the cost of the complexity and resilience of the natural environment. Each prosthetic fix that allows us to go beyond natural carrying capacity also creates a point of weakness at which our built environment can fail.
The Earth has a carrying capacity. Technology and its continual advancement make that capacity hard to pinpoint, but it does not vitiate it all together. If the capacity is met, human population will inevitably be curtailed. The question now is merely whether the curtailment comes about humanely through policy and planning, or painfully, through ecosystem collapse.
Emmott’s article rightly states, “The fact is that they – we – are not being well informed. And that’s part of the problem. We’re not getting the information we need. The scale and the nature of the problem is simply not being communicated to us. And when we are advised to do something, it barely makes a dent in the problem.” But beyond this, Emmott’s prescription become confused. He says that it makes no sense to tell people not to have children, but insists that population control is necessary. He rightly dismisses ‘green lifestyle’ choices as ineffective, but goes on to insist that curtailing consumption is necessary. Ultimately he calls for behavioral change writ large. The prescription is neither new nor actionable. And the final line in the article—that children should be taught to use guns—is bracing, theatrical, but unhelpful.
But Emmott is right about information. Most people, even those concerned about the environment, do not think about the gravity of environmental projects or the consequences of those problems’ trajectories. Mobile technology and the Internet now present unprecedented opportunities for people to have real-time information on the state of not just their own environment, but the health of far flung ecosystems that are being deforested, degraded or acidified. Technology can also allow for people to understand, with a swipe of a barcode, the embedded carbon or water in the products that they are using. But just providing information on the frightening state and trajectories of our environment is well known to merely create panic and causes people to turn away or simply disbelieve.
So what if this mobile information were coupled with information on how our legislators were voting, on critical issues, and how their votes had the power to impact, either positively or negatively, the environmental data that was scrolling across our screens? What if the data tracked our lifestyle choice—including having children—and told us both the immediate and likely future impact of those choices on the environment, ten, fifteen, and twenty years in the future? Now that might just have the chance of bringing about powerful behavioral change.
29 Comments on "Population Growth: Malthus Rolls Over"
J-Gav on Sun, 7th Jul 2013 10:29 pm
Hmmm, yes, well, behavioral change … That would be cool. Do you see it on the horizon at this juncture? Not sayin’ it can’t happen. In fact it WILL happen, eventually, but probably not in the people-friendly fashion that most cornucopian, utopian, happy-ending believing folks out there think it will.
Ricardo on Sun, 7th Jul 2013 11:01 pm
Put pictures of crowned asian and african places who cause most of the problems, another proof that peak oilers and evironmentalist are leftist and nihilist.
GregT on Sun, 7th Jul 2013 11:13 pm
Environmentalists are concerned with, wait for it, the environment, without which we will become extinct. Which, by the way, is now a very real possibility. Peak oilers believe that a finite resource is not……..infinite. It doesn’t take much in the way of intelligence to figure that one out.
Asians and Africans aren’t the people that have created all of the predicaments that we as humans now face on this planet. It was the people like you and me, the whites.
Asians and Africans aren’t invading your shores, forcing you into slavery, destroying your culture, and waging war on your people.
WAKE UP!
DC on Sun, 7th Jul 2013 11:23 pm
Actually guys, Im pretty that blurry pic is a bunch of obese, corn fed(white) amerikans, hard to tell exactly what they are doing, but most likely watching some absurd yankeee ‘sport’ like so-called ‘pro-football’ or something equally stupid.
But hey, they over-breed too, even if bible-thumping, gun-tot’n mericans would likely disagree with that assessment. If they didnt overbreed, how else would they fill those 100k seat arenas to watch some a bunch of overweight, roided cons run around for 15 seconds before the play gets whistled down(so they can rest up for the next 15 second burst of activity)?
Anyhow, if Malthus could visit us know, and had a full understanding of what we we doing, and plan to do( aka nothing except more of the same), he would likely be horrified I would think.
Plantagenet on Sun, 7th Jul 2013 11:41 pm
Its silly for DC to blame “white amerikans” (sic) for population growth when the population of white Americans isn’t growing—its actually shrinking.
The places where population growth is occurring today are Africa, South America, and Asia.
Ricardo on Sun, 7th Jul 2013 11:41 pm
@GregT: No one forced the indians and chinese to overbreed, we just shared the technology and they choose to be part of this fossil fuel world all by themselves.
GregT on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 12:14 am
Ricardo,
You do not have any more of a right to be part of this world than anybody else. You are not special.
BillT on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 1:08 am
LOL. It’s not the 3rd worlders that are killing the planet, it is the 1st worlders like you and me that are.
More than 1/2 of the 7 billion of us live on LESS than $2 per day. How much do THEY consume on that income?
Then consider that Western countries live on $25 per day, average. (~1/6 the population) NOW do you see the problems bulls-eye? It not them, it’s the West.
The US consumes more than the entire country of China but is less than 1/4 the population.
The US consumes 3 times that of India with about 1/4 the population.
NOW do you see where the problem lay?
Get rid of the 1st world and there would be plenty for the rest…
GregT on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 1:37 am
As the entire issue of overpopulation, resource depletion, and environmental destruction runs it’s course, it is the west that will suffer the most. Asians and Africans already know how to live with abject poverty. North Americans and Europeans, not so much. With the ignorance displayed not only on this forum, but everywhere I turn in day to day life, I strongly suspect that Arthur is correct. The US will most likely explode into ethnic and societal violence. I doubt very much that us whites will be the ‘winners’ this time.
Ricardo on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 1:38 am
Greg: neither you are, but I can see that you imply my race is the problem, your anti white BS is typical from mad individuals.
Ricardo on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 1:38 am
Bill please, you get rid of white people and nobody else exist, you are so sick…
Ricardo on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 1:42 am
Greg, sweety please tell me why you hate whitey so much, who makes you feel that guilty with yourself?. Aipac? The B’nai B’rith? You have not any common sense left.
Frank Kling on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 1:44 am
Ricardo:
You make sense at all. All you can provide is anti-white regurgitated gibberish.
Frank Kling on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 1:45 am
BillT:
Than why not start with yourself as a bold first step.
GregT on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 1:46 am
Ricardo,
In case something has been lost for you in the translation, I am white. That doesn’t give me the right to point fingers at every other racial group on the planet for the problems that we all collectively face. Especially when it is my race that has caused most of the problems to begin with.
Ricardo on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 1:59 am
tha´ts why I asked you who cause you to feel guilt, you put other races in an altar because they live in poverty, almost like doing of poverty something to feel proud about, my race have created airplanes, cars, computers, buildings, high civilizations, only on the effeminized west they can feel guilt for such a rich history, the salvation of the west will come from russia, almost sure about it.
Ricardo on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 2:06 am
Look at america now, the servant of zion, that is what america has become, a decapitated giant controlled by dark forces, I actually pity you, but maybe america must be destroyed in order to save the european race.
GregT on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 2:21 am
My apologies Ricardo,
I do not believe that racial discrimination is going to solve the world’s current dilemmas.
Technology is what has been the root cause of all of our problems, including overpopulation. OUR race is responsible for much of that technology. If salvation is going to come from anywhere, it will not come from mankind. I am absolutely sure of that.
Ricardo on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 2:27 am
You definetely have no blood in your veins, you can sit and wait for the aliens to save you, real men outside are actually working to fix the current state of things.
GregT on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 2:35 am
I have already taken the steps necessary to take care of myself, my family, and some of my good friends.
I am not waiting for the ‘real men outside’ to save me. How about you? What are you doing?
Arthur on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 4:15 am
I am very sceptical about the utility of searching for someone to blame (most) for the situation. It is true that [drumroll]ze white race[/drumroll] is responsible for the creation of all these technologies that’s causing the problems we here are all familiar with, but it is also true that the problems are the unintended consequences of these inventions. Henry Ford came up with his TFord stinker, not because he wanted to destroy the planet, but because there was an appeal of freedom that came with car ownership. I myself enjoyed that freedom to the max., to the tune that I drove to Scotland, Gibraltar, Norwegian North Cape and the Crimea, to mention a few destinations. But now it becomes clear to anyone with a sorry excuse of a brain that the situation is quickly becoming a nightmare. And btw, surprise, surprise, it were the same white people who are sounding the alarm bells, starting with the Club of Rome, ca. 1970. Sure, westerners consume most by far, but non-whites are all to eager to copy that life-style… if they could. And it is also true that high non-white birthrates are enabled by the productive capacity of the western economic machine. If the West would disappear over night, a massive dieoff would result in the ‘third world’, not the other way around. For the same reason I do not expect at all that the ‘westerners’ are going to be hit as much as the rest, for the reason that the former have far more resources and methods to cope with the situation.
GregT on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 5:00 am
Arthur,
If the oil age ended tomorrow, I doubt very much that western ‘civilization’ would last much longer than a couple of months before it became just like the third world. On the other hand, much of the third world would notice very little difference at all.
I never said that the white race deliberately set out to destroy the world, after all “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”, and I am more than sure that Henry Ford would be rolling over in his grave, if he knew what the outcome of his dream had become.
In so far as resources are concerned, we westerners have exploited the closest, easiest to extract resources available first. What remains is mostly in far away places, in ever diminishing returns on energy and capital invested.
One of the biggest hurdles to overcome in a scenario of major change is a psychological one. Most people in western societies would be devastated if their worldview was so drastically changed. Add to that the hardship and reality of actually having to physically work to survive, I seriously doubt that most would make it. Especially the generation of teenagers about to enter into the ‘workforce’ today.
GregT on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 5:18 am
Oh, and another case in point; there still remains tribal cultures in South America that have had little to no outside intervention from western influence. If it weren’t for climate change, deforestation, loss of biodiversity and ecosystems due to our technologies, they wouldn’t have a clue as to whether the oil age ended or not. It would have made no difference to them whether we even existed or not. Some of them have survived for tens of thousands of years, and probably would have survived for tens of thousands more, if we hadn’t of fucked up the planet so badly.
Arthur on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 9:53 am
“If the oil age ended tomorrow”
Yes, but you and I know that is not going to happen.
Refering to the tribes mentioned in SA… these are stone age people in contrast to the billions in the ‘third world’, who all enjoy some sort of very modest ‘prosperity’. Most Africans have mobile phones.
http://www.kantar.com/media/mobile/mobile-phone-use-in-africa/
In big African cities there are some buses, electricity…
www . ecopowerafrica . com / Electricity%20in%20Africa.html
If the West would withdraw (like after the great default) all the elementary infrastructure that is kept afloat by ‘development aid’ and western competence would evaporate and the people of the third world would be thrown back into the stone age. Most of them would not survive that experience. In contrast western people have layers upon layers of reserves, most important the competence reserves. Any western fool can scratch a few potatoes out of the soil if he has to (he won’t). We are not going to fall back below 1950 pre-car era.
tinyurl . com / avdtdm7
Since 1950 global energy use has grown fivefold. OK, there is Asia and population growth, but hardly in the West. So, I am guessing here… maybe western energy consumption tripled since 1950? We in Europe will be the first to achieve a renewable energy transition by and large replacing electricity generation completely by 2030, meaning we would be back at 1950 levels. Cars will be gone. That’s fine. I am looking forward to it.
Amsterdam 1952:
tinyurl . com / azku8mv
Last week I saw the movie “A Dangerous Method” about the lives and interaction of Carl Jung and Sigmund ‘sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’ Fraud, made by the “Canadian” David Cronenberg. The point here is not the (predictable) substance of the movie, but the pictures of the splendour of European cities like Zuerich and Vienna around 1920… WITHOUT CARS.
Sometimes I can’t wait for peakoil to finally set in and finish off oldschool industrial society, that expects people to lock themselves up 9/5-5/7-11/12 in some workplace, so that at the end of month one is expected to buy useless ‘stuff’ or ‘go places’. Yesterday I enjoyed the gorgeous weather in my favorite garden restaurant, 25 bicycle minutes from my home, overhearing some very unimpressive average middle class baby boomer woman of 60 telling her friends how she planned to go to… Katmandu next month. That’s the kind of reserves western society still has and we could easily do without in the future.
BillT on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 2:10 pm
Arthur, I know we agree to disagree, but your statement about the 3rd world returning to the stone age is BS. They would return to the 1800s, maybe, but nothing farther back. The stone age was, oh, at least 20,000 years or so in the past. A lot of civilization existed without tech. We still would have problems building the Great Pyramid and many other sites from antiquity and some we could not, even with today’s methods/machines.
As far as tech being missed, for example:
Africans might miss their cell phones until they realized that they didn’t need them before and don’t need them now. Want and need are two entirely different things.
I have downsized significantly in the last 10 years (from a 2,800 sf home to a 300 sf apartment that I rent) and have a ways to go, but I saw the birth of cell phones, as did you, and I will see their death.
Kenz300 on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 2:35 pm
THe worlds poorest people are having the most children……. they have not figured out the connection between family size and their poverty.
If you can not provide for yourself you can not provide for a child.
Access to family planning services needs to be available to all that want it.
The world adds 75 million more mouths to feed, clothe and provide energy for every year. This is not sustainable.
GregT on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 3:55 pm
KenZ,
Many in the 3rd world rely on their children to provide for them in their old age. They do not have investments, mutual funds, or retirement savings plans. There are a lot of western companies that exploit child labour in underdeveloped parts of the world, so that we can have cheap consumer goods.
If they cannot provide for themselves, and they have no one else to take care of them, they will die.
YOU can make a difference, stop buying consumer goods that are being manufactured in underdeveloped, and emerging countries. Stop using energy transported from developing nations and stop wearing clothes that are manufactured in sweat shops in far away places.
It is your lifestyle that is causing a huge part of the problem, it is your lifestyle that is unsustainable.
Arthur on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 5:19 pm
“I saw the birth of cell phones, as did you, and I will see their death.”
I do not think so, not in the west:
http://deepresource.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/global-renewable-energy-targets/
Cars could be gone, but not these devices.
Juan Pueblo on Mon, 8th Jul 2013 6:47 pm
I had a Vasectomy and no children. People like me are part of the solution, not the problem. But everyone is entitled to their opinions.