In his famous “Essay on the Principle of Population”, first published in 1798, Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus portrayed a grim future for humankind: “The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race”. In order to prevent the horrors of famine, plagues, and wars Malthus proposed preventive measures, including abortion, birth control, prostitution, postponement of marriage, and celibacy. Malthus criticized the notion that agricultural improvements could expand limitlessly and predicted disastrous consequences even if the population grew by 10%: “The food therefore which before supported 7 millions must now be divided among 7.5 or 8 millions”. And these apocalyptic predictions were made when there were only 150 million people in Europe and the global population was 750 million, less than the current population of Europe. Malthusianism influenced many generations of economists, politicians, social thinkers, and scientists, including Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, in developing their ideas of natural selection. Malthus was not the first to express these concerns, and certainly not the last. Benjamin Franklin suggested in 1751 that the British should increase their population and power by expanding across the Americas, assuming that Europe was already too crowded. A more recent version of the Malthusian prophecy, “The Limits to Growth” (LtG, 1972), gained broad popularity, selling 30 million copies in 30 languages. The book argues, “If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next 100 years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.” The LtG theoretical model is very elegant and mathematically coherent; the simulations seem to make a great deal of sense, they are easy to explain and easy to understand, and they are absolutely wrong. LtG is wrong for the same reasons John Malthus was wrong, along with many other doomsday prophets, including those who occasionally pronounce the end of the world from atop a stool in the Hyde Park Speakers Corner. It is quite understandable why these rather na ve ideas made much sense at end of the 18th century, when almost everybody was busy producing agricultural goods. It is much less clear why these views have retained so much popularity over two centuries after a population growth of about 1000%, when most indicators of global development of the past 60 years point in the opposite direction. Not only have life expectancy and living standards increased steadily, but also world gross domestic product per capita, food production per capita, accessibility to safe water, public health, personal freedom, and human dignity. At the same time, adverse indicators have declined steeply, including world adult illiteracy, war deaths, and extreme poverty. For example, the world s poor population living on less than $1 per day has dropped from 40% to 20% between 1980 and 2001. In our day and age only 2% of the population in the developed countries produces agricultural goods, supporting not only their societies but also those of the less developed countries. Malthus couldn t have predicted that turf grass would become the largest irrigated crop in the USA, with over 40 million acres (1.9% of the land) being occupied by lawn at homes, golf courses, and parks. In fact, lawn takes up more USA land and water than all other irrigated crops combined, including corn, vegetables, soybeans, fruit trees, vineyards, alfalfa, hay, pastureland, and cotton. Evidently, this is not an indicator of a starving world.
Read full abstract
Jun 3, 2019
Quanbao Jiang + 3
Open Access