Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I see that there’s another neo-Malthusian trying to convince us that global starvation and food riots are just around the corner. This time it’s David Archibald right here on WUWT. Anthony had posted a graph showing gains in various human indicators, viz:
But David disagrees, showing various looks at wheat production.
Now, back in 2010, I wrote a post called “I Am So Tired of Malthus” … and I am. For those not born before 1800, a bit of history is in order. Thomas Robert Malthus was an English cleric who made a famous claim in 1798. His claim was that population increases geometrically, doubling every 25 years. But the food supply only increases arithmetically. If you are a fan of original documents as I am, you can find his claim here. In it he says;
Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.
To him, this meant inevitable starvation was provably true … hey, it’s mathematics. However, in the event the population disagreed and kept growing … and we didn’t all die from lack of food. Go figure.
But this colossal failure did not kill Malthus’s idea, oh, no. In the 1960s the cudgel was taken up by the failed serial doomcaster, Paul R. Ehrlich. In 1968 he wrote “The Population Bomb”, which starts as follows:
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate …”
His solution?
“We must have population control at home, hopefully through a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail. We must use our political power to push other countries into programs which combine agricultural development and population control.”
Charming fellow, compulsory population control in the US … of course, he’s a tenured Professor at Stanford so he must be right.
Riight … but once the 1970s were over and he had been proven just as wrong as Malthus, did he change his tune? Oh, no … in 1990 he wrote another book called “The Population Explosion” in which he claimed that there would be widespread food riots by the turn of the century.
Riight … but once the 1990s were over and Ehrlich had been proven just as wrong as Malthus for a second time, did he change his tune? Oh, no. He now says he was 100% correct, but he just got the timing wrong. It’s all gonna happen any day now, he says.
And David Archibald agrees with him.
The Limits To Growth isn’t discredited, just a couple of generations too early.
Riight … so I decided to take another look, as I did seven years ago, at how much food the world actually has. Per capita food consumption is the best indicator for this. A man can own a thousand automobiles on a given day … but he cannot eat a thousand breakfasts on a given day. So there is no distortion of average food consumption by a few rich people as there would be of average car ownership. Here are the latest figures from the FAO, the UN Food and Agriculture Association. I’ve shown the poorest groups of countries, along with the EU countries and the world average for comparison. First, total food consumption in calories per person:
As you can see, people are eating better than ever. The poorest of the poor, the Least Developed Countries (“LDCs”, including the Solomon Islands where I’m writing this) get more food now than the global average in 1961, the first year for which we have data. And in turn, the world average is nearly up to where the EU countries were in 1961 … “widespread starvation”? Hardly …
Note also that the EU countries have leveled off. They are now eating as much as they want.
Nor is this just “empty calories”. Here is the corresponding graph, this time for protein consumption:
Again, we see the same pattern. The LDCs are up to the 1961 world average; the world is approaching the 1961 EU average; and the EU protein consumption has levelled out.
So while Malthus, Paul Ehrlich, and David Archibald all assure us that global starvation and food collapse is just around the corner … well, not this corner but the next corner … well, no, I didn’t mean that corner, I meant the corner after that … meanwhile, the people of the world pay no attention to failed doomcasters and grow more food per capita year after year after year.
Now, the increase in food is usually attributed to the “green revolution” of Norman Borlaug. And while this had a huge effect starting in the 1940s and increasing in the 1960s, Borlaug got the Nobel Prize in 1970 for his work. However, a corollary of that is that by 1995 the further gains from the Green Revolution would have been minimal. Paul Ehrlich specifically said that the Green Revolution is what screwed up his predictions, but with the Green Revolution behind us, he reiterated that we’re all doomed to starvation … not.
Are there still problems regarding food? Assuredly, although these days they are more problems of distribution and storage, not problems of production.
Are people working to solve those problems? Again, assuredly, it’s important work.
But while no one knows what tomorrow may bring, me, I’m not going to concern myself with people feeding themselves. Seems like we’re doing rather well on that score, with no sign of an impending disaster.
Best to all from the warm climes, join me over on my blog for my further adventures in a Least Developed but Most Interesting Country, the Solomon Islands.
w.
1- That Malthus and Ehrlich were wrong doesn’t tell us anything about the future.
2- That a fear is well founded doesn’t mean that catastrophe will follow. The fear of a nuclear war was (is) well founded yet the nuclear war hasn’t happened (yet).
3- David Archibald’s post is about specific countries situation. David fear would be less well founded if no problem has ever come to those countries due to food crises. However they have had problems arising from food crises. In countries were food and fuel consume most of average people income, a spike in food prices or fuel prices, or commonly both as they are related, quickly turns into a food riot. If the political situation is volatile, a food riot can turn into a revolution (French and Russian revolutions). If powerful countries want to seize the opportunity a civil war and regime change follows.
Relation between food price and oil price.
The Arab spring was in origin a food riot due to a spike in food prices amid high oil prices in 2011. Stable countries (Morocco, Tunis) were less affected or quickly solved it. Less stable countries with lots of money (Saudi Arabia) bought their way out of it. Less stable countries without money (Egypt) suffered a great deal of instability. Countries with a minority rule against the wishes of a majority of the population, that also have geo-strategic importance (Libya and Syria), quickly saw foreign intervention and a civil war. Yemen is also in this category due to the interest of Saudi Arabia.
Food price and food riots.
So it doesn’t matter that food production can be increased and will be increased. The situation that David describes of a large number of countries with an explosive demographic growth, a deficient food production, and little means of paying for food imports, is real and dead serious. The next time oil prices spike, or a couple of years of bad crops, the situation will explode again and it will spill over to many other countries.
Let’s remember that the EU is in a serious crisis fueled by immigration that is coming from Syria, Libya, and other African and Asian countries.
Predicting that the situation is bound to become worse due to worsening trends is an easy prediction. Malthus and Ehrlich being wrong has nothing to do with it.
There seems to be a correlation here with world temperatures. Pick your dates and you can draw some pretty poor conclusions. Look at the dates for the charts above.
Anyone who looks seriously at grain prices knows how cheap they currently are. 2008-2012 represents the very top of, at least with corn, a roughly thirty year cycle. There were major tops in 1917-20, 1946-48, 1973-74, and now again in 2008-12. If we look at Javier’s choice of dates, it is clear what he is doing. Again, with corn, now that we have rolled over the cycle high once again, if history is any guide, it should be twelve years from where we rolled over to the point, not where prices have recovered, but to where prices finally find their cash low. To get to the point where prices historically are once again going higher, we need to get to the year 2038, give or take.
Now, this does not even take into account plotting grain prices with anything resembling a constant dollar. Grain, when plotted against an adjusted dollar is incredibly cheap. Cash corn is currently about $3.00/bushel. To match the 1816 high (the “year without a summer”), cash corn today would have to be over $28/bushel.
And, this is true even though we are burning about 40% of production in our automobiles.
Seems to me:
We had a really bad drought at that time, which cut into food production, at the same time ethanol mandates were drawing from what was produced and diverting food to fuel.
One of those factors was avoidable, and one was largely mitigated by irrigation. In past centuries the sort of drought which occurred in the US may have resulted in a famine, although without grain being exported it is likely there would have been plenty for our own needs here in the US.
In subsequent years, farmers expanded production, livestock and poultry herds were reduced, people ate less meat and eggs when the prices spiked, huge numbers of new wells were drilled, and quickly (I know this is true because well pumps and motors became sold out…something that pretty much never happens) … and the rains returned and bumper harvests resumed. Since demand had been reduced, there was oversupply and prices fell rapidly.
I do not see how oil price had much to do with it.
Or why such a confluence is limited to one event in several decades. Sure, such a confluence of factors is rare to begin with, and hence unlikely, but it does not seem to be time constrained to occur on some regular schedule.
What am I missing here?
Javier,
Something else to consider is that some claim that human ingenuity has, in the past, prevented the predictions of Malthus (and subsequent Neo-Malthusians) from taking place, and ingenuity will likewise prevent future catastrophes. It is evident that the claim for the past is true. However, it seems to me that the claim for the future requires a ‘Leap of Faith.’ That is because the obvious and easy solutions were applied already. Might we be at a point of diminishing returns? For example, we eliminated the Passenger Pigeon, American Bison, and Plains Indian tribes, thus allowing large-scale agriculture to be practiced in the heartland of the USA. The agriculture is supplemented to a large extent by withdrawing water from the Ogallala Aquifer [ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ogallala-aquifer/ ]. There are serious concerns about the future of water supplies for the Great Plains agriculture.
At the same time, the prodigious use of fertilizers has resulted in nitrates running off and contaminating streams and lakes (leading to algae blooms), and even contaminating wells used for drinking water, leading to ‘Blue Baby’ syndrome. We are expanding corn production into marginal lands on the west by terracing the hilly country. In California, all the prime Central Valley agricultural land is pretty well being used optimally for walnuts, almonds, strawberries, and the myriad vegetables that the rest of the country depends on. The marginal lands are being pressed into service for vineyards. Fine agricultural land has been paved over in in what has come to be called Silicon Valley, to accommodate the many Information Age workers. The point being, that over the past 50 years our solution to increasing food production has been to plant almost all of the arable land (including places like in California where the aridity causes selenium to rise to the surface with evaporation). We have used up all of the prime locations for reservoirs for supplying water for agriculture. The legal battles over Colorado River water are legendary.
So, the question becomes, is it reasonable to expect that we can continue to expand food production by doing more of the same? While we may currently have a glut of grain, the point that Malthus made was that human population growth has the capacity to outpace food production from finite acreage. Might it be prudent to examine this issue carefully, and not just assume that humans can solve all problems expeditiously? After all, where is the cure for cancer, or for that matter, the common cold?
I agree, Clyde. While we don’t know how future discoveries will change food production it is clear that the progress made cannot be simply extrapolated to the future. It is as wrong to assume that there are no limits as it is to assume that we are about to reach the limits.
We will reach a day when less oil will be produced from then on, not more, and we might have a suitable substitute by then or not. All we know is we don’t have it now.
But with food production, as Andy says in his article, we have the advantage that we have the right population trend. We are growing more slowly and if we manage to continue in that direction we will need to increase less our food production. Obviously that doesn’t mean that we cannot run into very serious problems. A severe world economic depression could plunge the world into widespread hunger, simply because few people would have the means to pay for food.
After a couple of generations of things improving most people assume things are going to continue that way. That’s a failure of our way of thinking. History teaches us that it is at the best of times when things start to go worse, and at the worst of times when they start to go better. To arrive to the modern world we had to go through the dark ages. Progress is not linear and knowledge can be lost. It has happened before.
Just up the coast, from CA. tremendous quantities of water flow unused to the sea every day of the year.
It would be a simple feat of engineering to build a huge pipeline to bring that water south to where it is needed.
The resource is there, we have the technical ability and the money to do it if the will existed and opposition was ignored.
That such will never happen is a political matter, and has more to do with provincial concerns than anything else.
In 2017, it is impossible that the Hoover or Glen canyon dams could be built.
My understanding is that several sites where huge dams could be constructed exist in California, but for political reasons it is simply not happening and likely will not happen, not unless priorities and sensibilities are greatly altered.
Even in the recent drought in CA, it came on the heels of a very wet year, but much of the surplus was squandered for a few bucketful’s of some tiny fish (that many dispute if they are even native or endangered), and I seem to recall dams have even been deconstructed in that water starved place with way to many people.
Every year in the US are huge floods, tremendous ones, and no provisions exist, no infrastructure even planned, for storing and transporting such inevitable excessive amounts for use in the inevitably dry times and places.
The problems are not lack of water or land, or even energy, but of lack of big thinking, or willingness to spend for future needs, or to agree to solve big problems with big solutions.
We could have a network of huge pipes around the US on the scale of the interstate highway system.
But no…oho!
We will just let all the floods pour into the sea, and wring our hands uselessly when droughts cause crops to wither.
The Ogallala could be easily recharged with a large scale effort to build rapid infiltration basins that made use of water that gets wasted during flood years. We could tap the Great Lakes and irrigate the whole country if we really wanted to. But we would not even need to do that, if floodwaters were diverted and stored.
Lack of big thinking is our main scarcity.
Vast acreages in the US have been taken out of production. There is no shortage of arable land. The huge share of the corn crop now burned as ethanol could be used as food or feed. If Canada, Russia, Manchuria and the Ukraine were devastated by a cold snap, the next year cotton growers in the US SE would plant corn. Current surpluses would carry the world through the first bad year.
In southeastern PA is another place that prime farmland has been taken out of production, although in that case it has been built up with entire towns and office parks as well as expansion of towns that already existed.
Me,
I should have clarified. I meant by government programs. The land isn’t built up. Just in pasture grass, able to be turned back into cropland.
http://www.ifif.org/pages/t/The+global+feed+industry
“World compound feed production is fast approaching an estimated 1 billion tonnes annually”
That’s what we give to chicken, pigs and cows, on top of what they graze themselves, or are directly given by farmers who grow their own feed for their animals.
And we do this, just because humans can afford, and can eat meat almost every day (instead of like a day in a week).
http://www.fao.org/3/a-I5003E.pdf
To put things in perspective, ~2.5 billion tonnes of cereals (rice included) were consumed in 2015, of which
~1.1 billion to food
~0.9 billion to animal feed (the fastest growing segment)
~0.5 billion to “other use” (ethanol, starch, brewing, etc.)
Obviously the world can easily cope even if some dramatic event cut the cereal production to less than half of what it is, just by stopping industry use and cutting animal feeding (no big deal to eat meat not every day).
OR we could, right now, feed twice as many people, even before any growth of the food production.
Now, we cannot rule out a really dramatic event, but short of an asteroid hitting really hard, food supply is not endangered.
paqyfelyc,
There is also the threat of those advocating the banning of fossil fuel use. Agriculture is highly dependent on diesel-fueled farm machinery, diesel-fueled trucks to haul the raw and processed products, and local distribution systems dependent on gasoline-powered vehicles.
Yes, we might be able to “cope,” as those of us old enough to remember WWII food coupons did, but I would prefer an optimal system where we plan for such contingencies, to avoid them.
watermelons lunatics will indeed kill us more likely than an asteroid by starving our energy supply.
However, USSR and other government plans shows us that “we plan” for “optimal system” is a sure recipe for failure. Everybody planning for his own optimality is the way to go, as this is the way it ends anyway, screwing the global optimal plan.
I met a PhD in geography back in the 70s who noted that the two factors that explained over 90% of the famine in the world were: war and government corruption (i.e. stealing, whether by outright graft or communist collectivizing). I am willing to bet the same holds true today.
Definitely. The stereotypic famine was Ethiopia, which was a direct result of Mengistu Haile Mariam’s “land reform” program.
The basic principle is that there may be a drought in one place, but that is almost always accompanied by an excess of water somewhere not far away.
If everyone was perfectly efficient and little food was wasted, more could be stored for lean years.
But such is not human nature.
And would it even work, if not sustained forever, to simply send food to where people have seemingly no will to produce what is needed?
Likely not.
Why is it that some entire countries and even an entire continent never muster the will to put down the guns and stop killing each other and start building some infrastructure?
And why are there other places where people do so in large numbers and unbidden?
Places where everything has at one time or another been wrecked, burned down, blown up, parched dry, flooded out…and as soon as possible the people there build it back up, dry it out, wet it down, and replant, and everything is back to good times very rapidly?
Just look what Israel manages to do on a sliver of once parched land with few resources, while all around are places where everyone is devoted to destruction of even that which they have?
There is a reason why 80% of the Canadian population lives within 300 miles of the US border. That’s where the food is, as the comedian said about the starvation in the Sahara, no food there, move where the food is. Seriously though, a couple of degrees average global temperature decrease and Canada would be out of the food growing business and Russia would have a bigger problem as well. Cold is what we should be worried about, if we worry about anything, not warm. And yes, I am aware of the progress in agricultural sciences which has allowed crops to be more cold resistant. And I don’t think we’re in imminent danger, but too many of our scientists are looking at the wrong issue in terms of food security. I like cabbage and spinach but appreciate some bread and meat as well.
JimG1,
But plants can’t grow in ice!
JimG1 December 11, 2017 at 6:59 am
Man, I get tired of doing other people’s homework. This is an example.
I went to the FAO site and got the yield data for Canadian grain production since 1961. I went to Berkeley Earth and got Canadian temperatures for the same period. I detrended both to eliminate the “green revolution” and the like causing overall yield increases during a time of general warming, which would lead to false results.
The result shows what happens to Canadian cereal yields as a result of year-to-year temperature changes.
Ooops … turns out the Canadian farmers are not so stupid as to plant and harvest at the same time each year, or to not plant different varieties in colder years … and JimG1 is so stupid as to shoot off his mouth without doing his homework.
Seriously, folks, DO YOUR DAMN HOMEWORK BEFORE MAKING YOUR CLAIMS!!! And if you don’t know enough to run the actual numbers, at least PROVIDE A CITATION FOR WHAT YOU SAY!!!
Sorry for the screaming, and I’m not picking on JimG1, he’s one among many, but like I said … I get tired of picking spitballs off the wall.
w.
The latest FAO forecast for world cereal production for 2017/18 is 2.726 billion metric tonnes. This compares to 2007/08 production of about 2.050 billion metric tonnes. Inventories are estimated at 726 million metric tonnes, the highest stock to use ratio since 2001.Inventories have increased from about 350 million metric tonnes in 2007/08. see: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en/
I blame global warming …
w.
At the weekend I watched a movie called “What Happened to Monday” (aka 7 Sisters) where Noomi Rapace played a set of septuplets hidden by their grandfather in a dystopian future where only one child was allowed per family. It was actually a good movie – once you get past the Malthusian doom-mongering and obligatory scare story about genetically modified food. Noomi Rapace does a great job and the technology is such that you forget very quickly that this is one actress being replicated across the set. Some nice action scenes, obligatory bit of nudity (it was a European movie, but it was relevant to the plot), the odd bit of violence, but mostly cut away very quickly (as I said, a European movie).
In the end, the basic inhumanity of controlling people’s lives by forcibly removing children simply cannot be sustained and the regime collapses. All nice good triumphing over evil stuff.
Even at the end, however, the baddy (Glenn Close) gets to give her speech that she only did it for the future and repealing the “sibling” law will only mean the end of the world as we know it. This whole concept (that we have left our “golden age’ behind and now everything is getting worse) has become so ingrained that it pervades all social thinking. I linked here a couple of days ago (on Anthony’s original story) to Hans Rosling’s legacy program: http://www.gapminder.org/
The most relevant part to me is his illustration of how poorly most people see the world – something referred to as “The Ignorance Project”:
http://www.gapminder.org/ignorance/
Please watch the video and remember how badly journalists score the next time you read a scare story in any media outlet. Journalists are probably the worst group for seeing the bad in everything and I appreciate that this is all they see – it isn’t just the case that “if it bleeds – it leads” but that journalists only ever get sent to cover bad news in the first place so of course this is what they think of the world. I feel sorry for them that this is their experience, but while I try hard to understand where they are coming from I really see don’t too many journalists clearly don’t try to see beyond their own experience.
Willis, as usual I enjoy your pieces.
It would not be good for the environment to have humans covering every square inch of the planet but the data indicates birth rates drop when the economy is good enough. Caucasians are actually on the decline in Europe and America. The problem is in countries like Africa where the population is exploding and they don’t have the ability to increase food production much.
I covered the general problems linked below, although I doubt you have the time to reach this far down in the comments. If you do I would appreciate your comments.
“Startling look into the future; we need change”
http://www.delcotimes.com/opinion/20171026/guest-column-a-startling-look-into-the-future-we-need-change
Well, I’m not Willis, but I do find myself questioning your direction.
First, the UBI. You do understand that such a scheme would create an underclass of permanent serfs whose life would be held to the whim of whichever party found itself in power? There would be no incentives for a good education, no incentives for being productive and no incentives for good workmanship. The result would be no social mobility, crumbling infrastructure and elimination of the middle class.
Second, machine proliferation. I would be the first to look into the future and see a society where the majority of functions can and would be performed by intelligent machines. This does not limit human ingenuity nor does it limit human ability. There will never be a 100% implementation across all employment platforms. Actually, I doubt it will be even 25%, at least in the short to medium term. Now this may mean that a large number of people may still find themselves without a traditional job from the industrial age but there are many ways to make money.
Third, the primary assertion; change. It all depends upon the type of change you want.
Andrew,
Hank you for your comments. Comments hep me learn.
Re UBI.
1. The few trials that have been held have been successful.
2. It will not cure the income inequality. Something I expect to get worse until there are riots. As shown by history. But it would give a certain percentage the chance to start their own business.
3. The amount paid would be decided by both those working and those who are not.
There is a danger of paying more than the country can afford as with Socialism.4. Why do you say there would be no incentive for education? Any one that wants more than the basic UBI would need education to get a job or start their own.
4. I’m no suggesting UBI is the perfect answer. What I said was the looming growth in unemployment needs to be discussed. The existing Capitalist system will not work. UBI should be tried out in, say, a Sate to see what the snags are. Do you have a better solution?
Re robotics & AI.
I don’t agree it will be only 25% lose there jobs although that would be bad enough. There is virtually nothing that couldn’t be done by AI except human contact. Give me one example and I will show you how it could be done.
The current problem is that good, well paying jobs are disappearing and being replaced by low paying service jobs. The official employment data doesn’t differentiate between the two. The economy is not as good as the government makes out and we are due for a recession. A country can’t survive on just service jobs .
“It all depends upon the type of change you want.”
I’m saying the government is not looking ahead and see trouble as a result.
It may be relevant to note that the world population growth rate maxed out 50 years ago [at just over 2% annually] and has been falling ever since [to about 1.1% now]. This would be consistent with a logistic growth function and is utterly inconsistent with an exponential growth function. http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/
Randy Bork,
You said, “It may be relevant to note that the world population growth rate maxed out 50 years ago …” That is just a few years after the introduction of The Pill. There has to me a will and a MEANS for a family to keep reproduction at a level that is smaller than what would happen in the absence of options.
Willis
Careful.
We have an example in history proving a point. In the early 1930’s food inflation in Germany rose to such heights that it resulted in the call for a strong man (i.e. Hitler, the fore runner of the Anti Christ). You needed a wheel barrow full of money just to buy a bread….Hitler brought the idea [complete with a new ‘science’ ] that there must be a scape goat for all the bad in the world {i.e. the Jews}. It was not only the German debt that caused this inflation. There was a general scarcity of food at that time, even in America.
It coincides with my calculation of the Gleissberg SC which I calculate at 87 years.
We had the dust bowl drought 1932-1939
We also had a drought starting 87 years earlier, namely 1845, which is believed to have wiped out a large portion of the bison population.
That said, it seems logical for me to conclude that the next decade might bring drought to the great plains of America.
That area is apparently the current bread basket of the whole world….
“If you are a fan of original documents as I am”
Well, this one at least is a good read! As entertainment and as a historical document.
As for the science, it’s more like philosophy, and it’s rather dated.
Anyone today should see that he proposes what we would now call a model. A very simple model.
Do you believe the model or do you believe the facts? We have a lot of facts since Malthus.
Like any model, it has assumptions that are unstated and missing factors and Unknowns.
His model was just one part of an argument about the “perfectibility of man”.
That last quote, taken out of context, just about sums it up.
http://www.esp.org/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf
Toto,
It seems to me that Malthus is arguing for a citizenry that acts from a logical and enlightened concern about their welfare, rather than accept whatever befalls them through ignorance and inaction.
I am wondering what happened to my comment,
that was apparently in moderation?
Willis,
Insofar as you are/were in the Solomon Islands, you may be interested in this:
Geomythology
Take the example of Teonimenu, which probably disappeared about 400 years ago, between the islands of Makira and Ulawa in the central Solomon Islands.
Interesting, for those of you who were not born before Marx died, classical Marx and the Marxists also thought Malthus was BS given the revolution in the “means of production” and “forces of production”.
Another thing that negates the alarmist theory s the fact that much of the food consumed in the developed world is garbage in terms of nutritional value. If a shortage is ever truly looming, people in the West could easily eliminate large portions of their consumption and add to (or maintain) their nutritious intake, and continue to thrive as a society. Sure, the weakest spirits among us would complain endlessly about losing their junk food and individual restaurant entrees that could feed two or three people. But they’ll survive.
Thanks as always, Willis, for your trenchant facts and analysis. I can’t believe Archibald has never seen/ read Hans Gosling who I think presents a virtually open-and-shut case that global population growth is one of the least concerning problems of mankind, so long as we allow our economic interests to be, for the most part, unimpeded by government regulation.
The coming biotech revolution will dwarf Borlaug’s wonderful “green revolution.” Sadly, too many folks who have enough education to know better seem not to understand that GMO is likely to be a much greater force for good than disaster…although it will have its undesirable impacts as almost all technologies have had, yet with net benefit to humankind.
Enjoy your South Sea adventures. I, like you, realize there are many things I may be doing “for the last time.” The good news is: there’s lots more of those to come, and new things as well. Keep your loved ones close and your dreams ever-present.
So willis, what will a world with 100 trillion people living on it look like. If there are no limits to growth?
Thanks, Leo. Since the only place such a trillion-person world exists is inside your mind, you’ll have to tell us what it looks like.
Next, are there “limits to growth”? It is conceivable that humans could eventually populate the nearby stars, or build gigantic habitable structures in space. It just takes enough energy. But that’s not the question at hand.
The question at hand is, can the earth feed and house 50% more people than it has now, because that’s the best estimate of likely future population growth. And the answer to that one is … sure. We doubled the population in my own lifetime and people are better off now than they’ve ever been, after all, and people said that was totally impossible …
w.