Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Daily we are deluged with gloom about how we are overwhelming the Earth’s ability to sustain and support our growing numbers. Increasing population is again being hailed as the catastrophe of the century. In addition, floods and droughts are said to be leading to widespread crop loss. The erosion of topsoil is claimed to be affecting production. It is said that we are overdrawing our resources, with more people going hungry. Paul Ehrlich and the late Stephen Schneider assure us that we are way past the tipping point, that widespread starvation is unavoidable.
Is this true? Is increasing hunger inevitable for our future? Are we really going downhill? Are climate changes (natural or anthropogenic) making things worse for the poorest of the poor? Are we running out of food? Is this what we have to face?
Figure 1. The apocalyptic future envisioned by climate alarmists. Image Source
Fortunately, we have real data regarding this question. The marvelous online resource, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) statistics database called FAOSTAT, has data on the amount of food that people have to eat.
Per capita (average per person) food consumption is a good measure of the welfare of a group of people because it is a broad-based indicator. Some kinds of measurements can be greatly skewed by a few outliers. Per capita wealth is an example. Since one person can be a million times wealthier than another person, per capita wealth can be distorted by a few wealthy individuals.
But no one can eat a million breakfasts per day. If the per capita food consumption goes up, it must perforce represent a broad-based change in the food consumption of a majority of the population. This makes it a good measure for our purposes.
The FAOSTAT database gives values for total food consumption in calories per day, as well as for protein and fat consumption in grams per day. (Fat in excess is justly maligned in the Western diet, but it is a vital component of a balanced diet, and an important dietary indicator.) Here is the change over the last fifty years:
Figure 2. Consumption of calories, protein, and fat as a global average (thin lines), and for the “LDCs”, the Least Developed Countries (thick lines) . See Appendix 1 for a list of LDCs.
To me, that simple chart represents an amazing accomplishment. What makes it amazing is that from 1960 to 2000, the world population doubled. It went from three billion to six billion. Simply to stay even, we needed to double production of all foodstuffs. We did that, we doubled global production, and more. The population in the LDCs grew even faster, it has more than tripled since 1961. But their food consumption stayed at least even until the early 1990s. And since then, food consumption has improved across the board for the LDCs.
Here’s the bad news for the doomsayers. At this moment in history, humans are better fed than at any time in the past. Ever. The rich are better fed. The middle class is better fed. The poor, and even the poorest of the poor are better fed than ever in history.
Yes, there’s still a heap of work left to do. Yes, there remain lots of real issues out there.
But while we are fighting the good fight, let’s remember that we are better fed than we have ever been, and take credit for an amazing feat. We have doubled the population and more, and yet we are better fed than ever. And in the process, we have proven, once and for all, that Malthus, Ehrlich, and their ilk were and are wrong. A larger population doesn’t necessarily mean less to eat.
Of course despite being proven wrong for the nth time, it won’t be the last we hear of the ineluctable Señor Malthus. He’s like your basic horror film villain, incapable of being killed even with a stake through the heart at a crossroads at midnight … or the last we hear of Paul Ehrlich, for that matter. He’s never been right yet, so why should he snap his unbeaten string?
APPENDIX 1: Least Developed Countries
Africa (33 countries)
Angola
Benin
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Central African Republic
Chad
Comoros
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Djibouti
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Gambia
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Lesotho
Liberia
Madagascar
Malawi
Mali
Mauritania
Mozambique
Niger
Rwanda
São Tomé and Príncipe
Senegal
Sierra Leone
Somalia
Sudan
Togo
Tanzania
Uganda
Zambia
Eurasia (10 countries)
Afghanistan
Bangladesh
Bhutan
Cambodia
East Timor
Laos
Maldives
Myanmar
Nepal
Yemen
Americas (1 country)
Haiti
Oceania (5 countries)
Kiribati
Samoa
Solomon Islands
Tuvalu
Vanuatu
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“Steve from Rockwood says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:31 am
Patrick says “Ethiopia is not the dust bowl people think it is.”
I spent a month in Ethiopia back in the 90s. Never saw so many Mercedes and Land Rovers – pretty expensive cars for such a poor country.”
Ethiopia, the Head of the African Union. Many many countries with embassies there, including the US. But I am surprised, Mercedes and Land Rovers? Surly you mean Fiat/Lada and Toyotas in terms of numbers. But wow, what an impression after only a month.
“Fat in excess is justly maligned in the Western diet”
Actually, it is unjustly maligned. The cause of the “diseases of civilization” (diabetes, obesity, cancer, heart disease, alzheimer’s, and other chronic diseases) is not dietary fat, but dietary carbohydrate. We’ve misdiagnosed the problem for the past 40 years thanks to low-fat advocates who twisted and tortured the science worse than anyone at CRU.
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=21216
Fat, *real* fat (not the trans fats in “I can’t believe it’s not butter”), is good for you, in any quantity. The killer is the carbohydrate we eat.
friendship says:
September 9, 2010 at 12:47 am
How about a volcanic winter with no preparations for 7 billions???
Agrarian pyramid populations COLLAPSE EVERY TIME because of this!
Better come here to WUWT and stop watching those channels!
Mike Haseler says:
September 9, 2010 at 1:45 am
“…Quite the contrary Tenuc, history shows there has been virtually no change in the basic forms of energy supply for over two centuries…”
Sorry Mike, but you are completely wrong about this!
The first Nuclear powered generator (Calder Hall at Windscale, UK) was connected to the grid and delivering electricity in 1956. Nuclear power stations currently produce around 15% of the worlds demand for electricity and it would be feasible to build enough new stations to provide for the energy needs of the world for the next several thousand years.
The only reasons we do not use the nuclear option are that it costs more than fossil fuel generation and there are political issues which need to be resolved. Safety and disposal of nuclear waste are no longer a serious problem regarding modern plant designs.
While fossil fuels remain plentiful and cheap, there is little interest in developing pf commercialising alternative energy generating technology. The current crop of uneconomic ‘green’ solutions are not suitable for base load generation and have only been introduced as a sop to liberal sentiment.
220 wrong predictions of the End of the World, mostly for religious reasons:
http://i51.tinypic.com/24b517p.jpg
“The oceans will shrink. Deserts expand. Crops will fail; there will be massive starvation Widespread emotional and mental collapse; increase in crime and violence. Changing weather patterns; basic laws of nature will be disrupted…”
I don’t see what the problem is. Given the fact that CO2 is a plant food and less than doubling it could create >35% crop yields and a doubling of pine tree growth
http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/EngrCritique.AGW-Science.v4.pdf
The answer seems simple to me. More CO2 = More food.
Now, how man can affect the atmospheric CO2 content to such an extent given his current, minuscule contribution in comparison to the natural is, quite frankly, one for the boffins to sort out. 😉
Food supply is adequate and growing. However, a global crop failure, most probably because of an abrupt cooling event, could wreak havoc with the world any time.
The market is inadequate for providing reasonable food security. It’s because food is a special commodity in that if consumers are denied of it for a couple of months, they get permanently removed from the market (because later on, even if food becomes available, they neither eat nor can make money any more). Therefore the time window to make up for a long time investment in food storage is very short.
World food stockpile is at an all time low, it can cover consumption only for two or three months. It means we are just a single major volcanic eruption away from a global disaster unprecedented in human history. Could be worse than the extreme weather events of 535–536.
This is because governments utterly fail to take due responsibility and neglect public food stockpiling recommendations described in this paper (stocks for seven years are needed).
There was a sign from the sun, the like of which had never been seen and reported before. The sun became dark and its darkness lasted for 18 months. Each day, it shone for about four hours, and still this light was only a feeble shadow. Everyone declared that the sun would never recover its full light again.
That’s how climate change looks like.
“We have had a winter without storms…” “a spring without mildness [and] a summer without heat… The months which should have been maturing the crops have been chilled by north winds,” “When can we hope for mild weather, now that the months that once ripened the crops have become deadly sick under the northern blasts? …Out of all the elements, we find these two against us: perpetual frost and unnatural drought”
“the stars were lost from view for three months. The sun dimmed, the rain failed, and snow fell in the summertime. Famine spread, and the emperor abandoned his capital…”
“Then came drought [or floods], famine, plague, death…” “Food is the basis of the Empire. Yellow gold and ten thousand strings of cash cannot cure hunger. What avails a thousand boxes of pearls to him who is starving of cold”
“At first, relatives and domestics attended to the burial of the dead, but as the violence of the plague increased this duty was neglected, and corpses lay forlorn narrow in the streets, but even in the houses of notable men whose servants were sick or dead. Aware of this, Justinian placed considerable sums at the disposal of Theodore, one of his private secretaries, to take measures for the disposal of the dead. Huge pits [that could hold up to 70,000 corpses] were dug at Sycae, on the other side of the Golden Horn, in which the bodies were laid in rows and tramped down tightly; but the men who were engaged on this work, unable to keep up with the number of the dying, mounted the towers of the wall of the suburb, tore off their roofs, and threw the bodies in. Virtually all the towers were filled with corpses, and as a result ‘an evil stench pervaded the city and distressed the inhabitants still more, and especially whenever the wind blew fresh from that quarter.’”
Today we have more obesity than hunger in the world. We also have a lot of government meals at schools and huge amounts of food are wasted.
Jimbo says:
September 9, 2010 at 2:27 am
Hi Willis,
You could also have added the vast tracts of un-cultivated land that is suitable for food production.
That is absolutely true: Hundred of thousand hectares have been cultivated along the former deserted lands of west South American coast where rainfall per year is ONE or two millimeter per year, and the majority of these crops are exported to the US.
This has been done with new irrigation technologies, where almost all nutrients for crops are dosified through the irrigation system, being quasi hydroponic systems.
Indeed. Ethiopia is the source of the Blue Nile and contains some of the most fertile land on the planet.
And despite the doomsayers claiming that the Ethiopian forest ( yes, forest, not desert) could be gone by 2020
(BBC 2000) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1766717.stm
The forest cover today is in fact very healthy and 3 times what it was when those comments were made.
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0721-hance_ethiopia_trees.html
It’s not a lack of arable land that halts the progress of the poor. It’s the governments who deny them use of, and access to it.
“Jere Krischel says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:50 am
Fat, *real* fat (not the trans fats in “I can’t believe it’s not butter”), is good for you, in any quantity. The killer is the carbohydrate we eat.”
This post is so accurate it’s almost unreal to see on a webpage! *THUMBS UP*
the oil situation is gonna put a big dent in people’s idea that we are going to just keep breeding like rabbits
the “green revolution” wasn’t green at all, we simply convert petroleum into food
Philip, thanks for the article ref. Glad to see the aboitic oil issues gradually surfacing. However the article’s still making too many assertions I don’t trust. For instance, I think there is a time issue involved in abiotic oil… it seems to recover but pretty slowly… and this affects its economic power directly.
Could you do your own article perhaps?? Would WUWT be able to handle it?
Jimbo, it would be nice to see you do a whole article on this.
Thanks a million EMS, just the key info on “no shortage” I wanted. Now can we have this as a thread at WUWT?
I beg to disagree. I see pioneers here, opening up a new way of doing Science, and sure, it will take time to catch on. See the above for evidence.
“Craig says:
September 9, 2010 at 6:07 am
It’s not a lack of arable land that halts the progress of the poor. It’s the governments who deny them use of, and access to it.”
Totally agree with your entire post. I snip this bit out, and agree with you. However, what you see in rural areas, like the source of the Blue Nile, feeding the Nile in Egypt, the Whispering Falls, which 75% of flow is diverted to hydro power generation, is brand new, shiny galvanised steel mobile network radio towers amoung mud hutts. I agree with this, in terms of communication. In recent times, since about 2005, the “Govn’t” blocked text messages, recently that block has been removed. People can communicate at great distances.
I am so tired of [snip] who criticize Malthus with statistics about how much food we are producing right now, rather than how much food we will be able to produce in the future and how overconsumption contributes to the degradation of the commons. I suggest you read my book Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change for real insight into this issue.
To anyone who pays attention to recent trends in global fertility rates know that over-population will not be a problem. Quite to the contrary, de-population is and will continue to be a problem through-out most of the world. According to figures posted by both Wiki and the CIA Factbook, almost all of the G20 nations (including China, but excluding India) have TFRs (Total Fertility Rate) below replacement levels. As a matter of fact, nations like Japan, Russia, Italy, Greece, and Spain have had TFRs below 1.5/female for a decade or more. Even in the more fecund East Asia, nations like Turkey and Iran have seen decreasing fertility rates in recent decades. Yes, Yeman and Afghanistan have TFRs in excess of 4/female. But they are the exceptions. In Africa, war, famine, and AIDs are devestating populations. And even in Central and South America, the rate of population growth is slowing.
And for the first time in world history, large segments of global populations will age to levels not dreamnt of even 50 years ago. This means that in the short term our populations will continue to grow, as fewer eldery will die at younger ages. That is, the median age will go up. But, all of these grand parents and great grand parents will have a much smaller legacy. And thier grand children and great grand children will have even less offspring.
The UN has global populations peaking sometime around 2050. I cannot remember the exact numbers; but, like the IPCC the UN tends to over-estimate things.
@ur momisugly Baa Humbug. Your point about the Pacific Islands is interesting. Sure, they’re not paradise (cf Thor Heyerdahl on Fatu Hiva), but they’re not so bad either. The best indicator is people movements. When we were being told that East Germany was all hunky dory, they had to build barbed wire fences to keep the people in. Today we look at countries whose nationals hide inside shipping containers to get into the US or UK. The Pacific Islands are not in that category. As far as I know, the Pacific countries on the list are poor, but the people aren’t escaping in desperation. From what I’ve heard, they just enjoy life. It’s different to your choice and my choice, but it’s still their free choice. Hooray for diversity, and I’m sure they’re not bothered by some accountant in Washington who says that they live an awful life.
I planted 75 vines of Cabernet Franc this spring, just doing my part. Its growing but has been struggling against the cold. Oh well, waiting and counting on some warming.
Under Malthus’s Theory would it be likely that plants would consume so much of the CO2 in the atmosphere that it would reach historic lows unless there was another intervention to restore CO2 to optimal levels?
the oil situation is gonna put a big dent in people’s idea that we are going to just keep breeding like rabbits
No, the “oil situation” is going to put a big dent in environmentalist’s idea that we are going to just shut off all oil exploration and development, and shrink as a people and economy.
We have over a century worth of oil in the Green River shale formation. We have centuries worth of energy that can be converted into oil and auto fuels sitting in our coal deposits. When living standards start to seriously decline because of the artificial restraints placed on oil extraction and use, people in the U.S. are going to become an angry mob. They are going to learn about the readily available and easily extracted alternatives we have. When they do, any environmentalist or politician in their way is going to be removed from power if not physically harmed.
We need nuclear power and we need to continue to research ways to use electricity to power our vehicles. While we work on that, we must have oil. Not having it is simply not an option. I’m guessing we’re a good 40-50 years away from an electrically powered auto fleet. Until then, we must have and we will have oil.
Right now we have a green bubble, no different from the housing or education bubbles, a malinvestment of resources and political power into a given area, group, or ideology. Environmentalist policies have dragged on the U.S. economy, but there hasn’t been a shock to the system that causes the average apathetic voter to clearly link green policies and lower living standards. When that shock comes and the bubble bursts, watch out. Right now it’s popular to say you’re green. After the bubble bursts telling someone you’re green will likely endanger your well being. No politician will touch the phrase or the policies. It’s like anything else in American politics. A good idea is converted to a rigid ideology that then goes too far and is pulled back by the voter. It happens every election cycle.
Keep dreaming that government can place restriction upon restriction on fossil fuel use to “save the Earth.” You think Americans are mad at their government now? Wait until gasoline hits $6 a gallon, THEN you will see mad. And you will see every politician who doesn’t promise shale and coal fuel development sent packing to the unemployment line.
I was just reflecting on the fact that Malthusians have hundreds of years of failure without any decline in popularity. Can we expect a hundred years of failed prediction by climate doomsayers?
Misanthropy is to be wiped out.
Keith Battye says:
September 8, 2010 at 11:59 pm
The real threat to people is poor governance.
I would modify that a bit – the real threat to people is OVER-governance. Less government = more freedom, more prosperity, less wastage, less laws, less tax. Less politicians. Less BS.
People often say that we’re addicted to oil. It’s rather silly. Like saying we’re addicted to water… in the sense that were physiologically incapable of surviving without it yes, in a way, we’re addicted. But it’s not an “addiction” we can give up. Oil is civilisational water. It’s not a teenage angsty “cannot survive” issue, where you scream “I’ll die if I don’t get my sugar-laden snacks!”; we literally cannot survive without it.
Exactly the same doom and gloom statments have been made for the last thousand years.
Here in Britain they pay farmers not to produce food.
I think the best metric is number of acres per person required to feed that person. A figure that has been going down with a vengeance for the last 200 years.
Mr. Catton people like you have been so wrong for so long that its hard to take anything the likes of you or Holdren or Ehrlich say with any sort of seriousness. Ehrlich and Holdren made fun of some poor guy for suggesting that societies transform their birth rates voluntarily and naturally. They were of course wrong and this guy was right. Ehrlich has been wrong so much that he has stopped putting dates on his dire predictions. Didn’t he lose a bet with, was it Julian Flood, about the future cost of minerals. Just give it a rest or make an accurate prediction.