To avoid wasting another 3 hours of my life volunteering in the Shands ER, I brought Beyond Malthus: Ninteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge to horrify me more than the bloody trauma patients being wheeled in by paramedics. Really, purchasing this book was an accident; ISIS said this was required reading for my Thermal Biology class, which our professor politely told us on the first day of class was not true. By then, I had already purchased it.
In the interest of not wasting money, I saved BM for a rainy Sunday afternoon. And what I read only made today that much more depressing. Brown, Gardner, and Halweil draw a stark picture of the future, a world burdened by the presence of its own inhabitants. Since 1950, the world population has more than doubled, and by 2050, we will have added yet another 3.6 billion warm bodies. The result, according to the authors is a crisis that is stretching our water supply thin, destroying the Earth’s biodiversity, and compounding unemployment, among 16 other imminent disasters. They’ve even coined something called demographic fatigue.
Among these prospects is a disappearing food supply. To support this assertion, they point to a contention by the 19th century demographer Thomas Malthus saying that “population grows exponentially while food supply grows arithmetically.” Let’s develop a model for this.
Say the world population is 100 people, each of whom consume 1 unit of food per day (careful how we define unit). Suppose population grows by a factor of r, and food production grows by p units each year. Then, by Malthus’ own arithmetic/exponential statement:
This is how much our food supply must grow each year in order to satisfy humanity’s needs. In order to apply this model to the real world, simply replace 100 with 6 billion, or whatever the current UN estimate of world population is.
The authors, all members of the alarmist Worldwatch Institute in Washington D.C., propose for world governments to provide their citizenry with family planning in order to curb this population explosion. They say “governments (will) struggle with the need to educate children, create jobs, and deal with the environmental effects of population growth.” As if educating children and providing every person with a job is really the burden of the taxpayer.
My take: Teenage mothers aside, the cost of raising a child is factored into the parent’s decision to conceive one. But as governments in effect provide subsidies for children via free health insurance (think the SCHIP program), K-12 education, etc., they lower the cost facing adults to have a child. So expect more tots based on these policies. Moreover, in developing countries, the constant threats of war and poverty instigated by government foreign and economic policy forces parents to give birth to 8 children, in the hope that at least 4-5 of them survive to adulthood. So, in effect, the government is at fault. End government welfare and war, and let the invisible hand arrange the rest. Just what every libertarian wants to hear.
In an effort to procrastinate from HW again today, I scanned CNN.com and there was an article on “overpopulation”, although I didn’t ready it, for obvious reasons.
Here is a quote from that book description: “The burden of enormous populations is making itself felt: as governments struggle with the need to educate children, create jobs…”
This quote sounds like it could have come straight from Malthus’ 1800. The Division of Labor blog posts text from newspapers 100 years ago which they think parallel issues today, or things we hear about today.
The U.S. government clearly provides subsidies for raising children (e.g. education), but there are probably other government disincentives as well (taxes maybe?). I’d guess that the net effect is to increase demand for kids, but that’s just a guess.
A side note: About 30 minutes ago I wanted ice cream, but then when I looked up the nutrition information I changed my mind in favor of a smoothie. I went to Planet smoothie only to find they were closed. What was I to do? Well thankfully, planet smoothie has competitors, and TCBY was open (until 1 am), and I got some good soft serve at a lower price than had I gone to planet smoothie. Praise the market.
LOL, the TCBY went to Matt’s head! He’s tipsy.
Anyway, Vake, your analysis is impeccable. I’d cast one more point into the waters here: if you applied those equations to the world 20 years ago, you would think that we would be dead by now. If you even applied it 10 years ago, you would have been led devastatingly astray.
Just as one should apply an equation as a hypothesis to explain various data, one should apply this equation to data we already have. If we do, my guess is that it doesn’t just fail to explain the data, it miserably fails to do. As such, the alarmists have not carried the day just yet — which is why, incidentally, they have mostly veered off course toward the Global Warming excuse for making government do crazy things.
Or so says my paranoia.
Spoken like a true empiricist Admiral. Although I do agree with the idea that the population will at some point reach a critical mass of sorts (at which any further increases would be unsustainable ceteris paribus) I must disagree with the timing. Although I have not read the book, I suspect the author misses to account for the “technological advancement” variable, for example in genetic engineering, that may lead to higher output levels in the production of food and drinking water. There is also a trend in more developed countries of couples having fewer children than their previous generation. It is my unfounded opinion that this trend may already be starting to spread to lesser developed nations.
In fact, I am almost certain there are more unaccounted-for variables that would work counter his argument than those for which he has accounted for.
It is my principle that as a society we can do no better in the use of resources than can he who has through honesty and hard work acquired those resources. Because of of this, I can’t help but be wary when one man (or a group) urges us to immediately take governmental action in order to prevent the impending disaster. Before I forfeit my principles, I’d like to see this “demographic fatigue” for myself. Until then Uncle Sam, keep those filthy hands away from my pockets!
Nice to have you aboard, Frank.
I don’t really think there is such a thing as too many people or “overpopulation.” I lived in the place with one of the highest human densities on the face of the earth (Java) and while there are tremendous challenges to that place, it’s not like people think the population should be culled.
When the population expands, the market will adjust. When too many people want cars, the price of cars goes up, pollution goes down. When too many people want property, property prices go up, and innovative three dimensional apartment complexes will go up, LOL. I mean, it’s not the end of the world although it doesn’t sound appealing to us.
We will always want what we can’t have. In the future, it may be that we most desire rolling, bucolic pastures. But at what price?
Everything will work out.
Unless there’s a nuclear holocaust. In that case, we’re really screwed.
Thanks! Your “market will adjust” comment was exactly what I had in mind before mentioning the “critical mass.” I argue people will reproduce beyond the point of equilibrium - creating a temporary shortage of resources. At that point, while the market adjusts, those on the fringe of the curve (ie poorest nations) will be impacted the hardest, and the manifestation of the adjustment may very well be in the form of sporadic wars.
However, I don’t see it as apocalyptic as the author would suggest. Given the importance of food and water in sustaining life, I can’t imagine how a population would stray too far from equilibrium.
Another point is that as food/water becomes scarcer, people will migrate closer to rural areas - creating the reserve effect of what we have witnessed within the last century. So I suspect we’ll be dawning our cowboy hats and blue Wranglers long before we start dueling for a bottle of Zephyrhills.