Population Apocalypse

This is the world?

The human population is out of control. There are so many people on Earth that we are literally going to make the planet a desert. Much like marauding locusts we’ll strip everything bare, killing off entire species and large stretches of land. Eventually we will deplete all of our resources and die of horrible diseases and starvation. Much like too many rats in a much too small box end up eating each other, humans will soon be killing each other over any small trifle. At least, that’s what population alarmists tell us and, presumably, what they believe. But is this scenario really accurate? Recent history has given us a few overpopulation scares, yet strangely, here we are, living longer and being more productive with our limited resources than ever before. Could the scare be a myth?

A Simple Crisis

Thomas Malthus noticed in 1798 that the human population was growing at a faster rate than food production, leaving a gap between how much food humanity would need in the future vs. how much there would be. In fact, Malthus predicted that we would run out of food completely by 1890. When he wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus claimed that death and destruction would come to humanity due to this future lack of food. He lamented that medical advances were saving lives, and posited that poor and homeless people should be killed to make room for the better off. Mr. Malthus only lived until 1834, and never got to see if his prediction came true. We know, however, that 1890 came and went with no mass famines, huge food shortages, or any global population die-offs.

Malthus’ implications were false, but got the ball rolling and his disaster scarcity scenario lived on. Thus Paul Ehrlich, noticed a similar trend, and claimed that we were fast burning through available resources. In 1968 he warned that the population explosion we were experiencing would cause humanity to run out of food and resources by 1970, and that humans (again) would die off massively of disease, starvation and social upheaval. He predicted that in the best case scenario, Earth would see at least 20% of the human population disappear. After 1970 brought no disastrous famines, Ehrlich continued to stick to his dire predictions and made a bet with economist Julian Simon in 1980. It was based on the price increases of certain resources, since as resources become more scarce their price goes up. Simon allowed Ehrlich to choose the commodities and time frame of the wager, and put up $1000 to back up his theory that not only would the price not go up, but it would actually go down in the time frame chosen. Paul and his associates were encouraged to choose resources they thought would suffer most from scarcity within the time frame that they chose. With an “eco-disaster” imminent, one might think that basically any common resource could be picked at random and they would be able to win the bet. They chose common things like copper, tungsten, tin… resources that we were over-using and in danger of depleting in Ehrlich’s view. However, in the 10 year period chosen, those commodities went down in cost and became more common. Although we used up some of the resources, we also became better at acquiring these resources, using them more efficiently, substituting them with less rare resources and wasting them less.

At a current population of almost 7 Billion, the human population is bigger than it has ever been, and growing. Overpopulists and eco-alarmists such as Malthus and Ehrlich would claim that at our current population we are already way too big, and as we continue growing we are simply raping the planet more and more, eventually to the point of no return. We’ll run out of food. We’ll run out of water. We’ll fight wars over things that never would have mattered if we were actually at a sustainable point. None of these things have happened, and in the course of the last few decades, technology and scientific advances have made humanity’s lives easier, and our impact on our surroundings less. Consider the crop yield in 1866 (according to USDA Database) for wheat. 1 acre had an average 11 bushel yield. Today, that same acre produces 46 average bushels. As the human population increases, the technology and research behind crop yields and energy efficiency becomes more advanced, and those capabilities increase. Thus we now produce a greater amount of food on a smaller footprint of land. As that occurs, the physical ability of our species to live sustainably on this planet increases as well.

If we continued to live the same way as we did 100, 300, 500, even 1,000 years ago, Earth might not be able to sustain us, nor would we be able to sustain ourselves. But with technological advances and innovations we are able to stretch the resources that we already have, use them more sparingly, and make sure they last past our need for them. With modern innovations, deciding how many people the Earth can accommodate becomes a matter of physical space, not of depleting resources.

Japan's decline

In addition to our better ability to conserve and use resources, there is limit to our ability to grow. Currently there are many countries at below a replacement birthrate. A replacement birthrate is 2.1 children per woman in developed countries, and 3.3 in underdeveloped countries. A population needs to stay at least at replacement level to maintain stability. When the birthrate goes below replacement, the population will, of course, decrease. What this causes is insufficient working age people to support pensioners, leading to an unsustainable economy and underpopulation. Japan suffers from this issue at a birthrate of just 1.2, and the European Union suffers similarly with their highest birthrate at 2.02; in the next 50 to 100 years, there will be very few, if any, Europeans left (CIA World Fact book). Italy, Germany and Taiwan have government programs to pay couples to have kids to avoid the ravages of underpopulation. The UN estimates that our population will peak at 8.9 billion (middle estimate, PDF), and then begin declining.

Overpopulation has been a recurring fear for over 200 years, causing much concern and many government policies designed to prevent population growth and control birthrates. However, these fears are founded in theories that do not take in to account the natural progression of the human population towards a plateau and future decline, nor does it allow for the innovations that occur due to human ingenuity. Overpopulation is not an issue, nor is it a threat, in fact, quite the opposite: we even run the risk of underpopulation.

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~ by Nume on March 13, 2011.