mod (Andy) note: "Blast from the past - Best of Eddie" - This one is originally from October 2011. If there's an old post from Eddie you'd like to see up again shoot me a message.
At a time when the last thing the world needs is more mouths to feed, our lamentable species is set to cross the 7 billion threshold this week. Even more disturbing is the expectation that we'll reach 8 billion in 2025 and that we'll be over 10 billion by the end of the century. For those looking to put these numbers into context, the number of humans on the planet has tripled since 1940.
The bulk of the projected growth is expected to come from sub-Saharan Africa followed by the Indian subcontinent; in other words, people who are already generally impoverished and lacking in resources. Setting food and other commodities aside for the moment, the dwindling supply of fresh water alone might be enough to lead to global instability with the projected population surge.
What are all these people going to eat and drink? In the past century, the US managed exponential increases in crop yields to become the bread basket of the world, but the same can't reasonably be expected of the coming century. For those inclined to profit from others' suffering, it appears Jim Rogers is right and commodities are the play for the future.
I've always been baffled as to why the people in the direst circumstances have the most kids. In many parts of the world, having tons of kids is a societal measure of (faux) wealth. Conversely, in the US having a lot of kids is a marker of relative poverty, generally speaking.
Even the staunchest global warming skeptics have to admit that humanity is a pox on the planet. I'm no tree-hugger, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the resource requirements of the average 75-year human lifespan, and then multiply that by 7 billion. It's pretty staggering. At some point, don't we have a responsibility as a sentient species to call it quits?
Not to mention the advances in life-extending technologies. If human lifespans average over 100 years in the next century and there are 10 billion of us, we'll blast through the tipping point like it was standing still.
Needless to say, crossing the 7 billion threshold this week is not something I'm celebrating. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Should there be some kind of population control? Are we morally absolved from profiting in human misery if people are too stupid to quit breeding? Should we all be planting a vegetable garden?
At what point do we in the developed world say enough is enough?
Ive always been a fan of this guy :
http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=_Nw5AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcov…
Thank you for this post.
There is no good reason to have 7 billion people on earth. We have people living in areas clearly unsuited to human settlement, such as Dubai and Moscow. Just keeping such cities running is a massive drain on resources. It would make much more sense for the bulk of humanity to be located around the Mediterranean, in temperate coastal regions in the US, etc.
Moreover, any humanitarian effort in a developing country is doomed to failure if two people are being born into poverty for every one we help.
I think in many cultures children are basically the retirement plan; having more increases the certainty that you will have somebody to care for you in old age. Offering some sort of incentive for not having children is a step in the right direction. At the very least, we should focus on making birth control ubiquitous, both in the USA and abroad.
Never been to Dubai, so can not comment, but what is wrong with Moscow? I go there quite a bit, and it is much suitable to live in than the majority of NY/NJ area? Not to mention there are absolutely no obese or even fat people there, everyone leads a very healthy life style for the most part. Can you explain the basis of your assesment of Moscow as an unsuitable place to live?
There are bears EVERYWHERE in Moscow. Sounds dangerous to me...
It's not that we can't live there; it is just comparatively expensive. In the summer Moscow is fine, but for a good chunk of the year it is a landlocked tundra. Armies have been stopped by Russian winters. NY at least has some rational basis for existing, being able to function as a port. Moscow is like if we decided to locate our largest city in North Dakota. In Russia, for instance, wouldn't it make sense for the largest population center to be Sochi?
You are right that the argument holds true for much of New England. Snow and ice destroy structures pretty quickly, and you need heating at least 6 months of the year. It is extremely resource intensive to occupy such areas, at least relative to those with Mediterranean climates and moderate weather.
[/quote] Can you explain the basis of your assesment of Moscow as an unsuitable place to live?[/quote]
Really?
And do what? Forcibly reduce the numbers, starting with countries we dislike the most ? :P
Actually I was thinking something a little more egalitarian, like a global limit of two children or whatever the appropriate replacement rate is. Not singling out any countries or races, just limiting everyone to replacement rate.
How about we stop paying welfare benefits for more than two children?
I think that you're morally absolved at least up to the point that you're simply hedging the resources to take care of yourself and your family. Remember that we all start life inherently short water, food, clothing, and oil/gas. Buying oil and resource stocks has made me less short on some of those resources. The fact that I get three hundred gallons of gasoline every year from dividends does not mean that I'm cheering when oil prices go up; it just means that if I drive my 30 mpg car 10500 miles this year, I only have to pay $4/gallon on the last 1500 miles.Malthusians believe that resources provide the foundation for any healthy economy. Thank God America has more arable land relative to population than any other country besides Canada. And thank God for the Great Lakes.
I copyright the Birth Exhange, each person is rationed 2 kid tickets and those in poverty may offer their tickets on the market, less my broker fee of course.
It's around 2.1, at least in the western world (where people don't have a 50% chance of dying before they are 15)
I don't want to get drawn into this argument, mostly because you perfectly know that a global consensus on anything is plainly impossibile...
Rather, where are ANT and Midas? I expected them to be already here screaming about personal freedom, creeping government and personal rights.
Norman Borlaug. If you're looking for a single scapegoat for the impending Malthusian squeeze, it's definitely him.
Thomas Malthus was ostensibly correct in his 1800 treatise "An Essay on the Principle of Population." He only really erred in his assumption on the rate of human technological advancement. We came close to reaching a Malthusian crisis in the 50s and 60s (and by 'we,' I mean humanity--the United States was fine, as we can feed ourselves...we have the Midwest). But Norman Borlaug came to the rescue. He created the dwarf wheat and saved more than 1 billion lives. And by saved, I mean 'postponed the inevitable demise of.'
No two ways about it: helicopter dropping technologies on people that are not ready for it tends to work out badly. In this case, enabling third world farmers to produce twice the amount of grain per hectare worked out poorly. It allowed largely undeveloped peoples to continuously breed at a rate their own technological prowess would not have otherwise allowed. That is a problem. While that may weigh heavily on the warm glow you get from helping the disadvantaged, sometimes, it just does not make long-term sense to help those less fortunate.
There is a saying that goes something like, "If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime." Unfortunately, we taught the world how to farm. And we gave them agricultural technologies they did not have the capacity to create for themselves (at least, not at that time). At the very least, they did not create the technology whether they had the capacity to do so or not. I say it is unfortunate, because we only taught the world how to feed, say, 7.5 or 8 billion people. There is enough arable land to feed perhaps 9 billion in total, but without substantial increases in farming technologies and a widespread adoption of US farming practices, we cannot feed many more people. In the end, we will either innovate our way out of the problem (hopefully, the solution will come from the billions of people that live in societies only made possible through cultivar innovations in which they played no part), or there will be a MASSIVE, MASSIVE famine. The world may go Lord of the Flies pretty quickly. Fortunately, none of the countries with massive populations have passable armies. Unfortunately, they do have nuclear weapons, and I imagine my trigger finger would get a bit unreliable if I were starving.
That said, we could afford to stop raising livestock. No one loves steak like I do. I'm going to Peter Luger's tomorrow. I preach the gospel of meat (only the second gayest thing I have written today). Bovines take nearly 10 tonnes of grain to produce 1 tonne of meat. That's not a great ratio. And it's definitely not sustainable when we are trying to feed 7 billion people. I think I may have to find something else on which to slather A-1.
On a side note, I love A-1. I get pissed off when people harass me about wanting to put it on a good steak. Fuck me--half the reason I ordered the steak in the first place was to have a good excuse to put A-1 on something. It's not even an option at Peter Luger's, and I wouldn't use it there anyway, but everywhere else can fucking blow me.
Okay--looks like I de-railed there. Back to the story...
The salient points are these:
1.) Thomas Malthus was basically correct in his argument if you adjust for an appropriate rate of technological advancement 2.) Norman Borlaug only postponed a Malthusian catastrophe. He did not provide us a panacea. 3.) A-1 is delicious 4.) I will be at Peter Luger's tomorrow, so it looks like victory is mine, bitches! 5.) If the world ever does revert to caveman-style, dog-eat-dog living conditions, we're going to need to pick teams. I'll go first. I choose you, Blastoise. I suspect your hydropump will come in handy when we need to hold the Chinese hostage over their lack of access to drinking water.
Ed, Africa is the key in regards to increasing farm production. Africa has unparalleled natural resources. For example, Zimbabwe and Zambia, prior to their self-destruction, exported enough food to feed 600 million people. Mozambique, Malawi, Angola, and Namibia are underpopulated and have never had their agricultural wealth tapped. The southern tip of Africa will become the new fertile crescent, as their despots and incompetent leaders die off and or become bought off by competent western interests. I don't have the same feelings for West Africa. During my junior year in college, I spent half a year in Ghana and working for in PE. Almost all of my work involved handling investments being made by the Chinese or Middle Eastern firms. Property rights are virtually non-existent, making it damn near impossible to invest in land. I think West Africa will become the world's next manufacturer for cheap goods.
Please people, this exact same argument line for line has been made every year for the past 100 years. Still no sign of imminent demise looming. Ed, all you did was say that a large future population needs a large amount of resources. Is that bad? You can't just assume there isn't enough to go around, you have to show that, especially in light of the vast amount of previous predictions of catastrophe that have never come to fruition. The reality is that there is plenty of untapped farming potential in the world, and no reason why rising food prices would not cause it to be put into use.
Ed, I agree that it WOULD BE NICE if people thought ahead a little bit, and the regions of the world where the population is exploding really are challenged to manage themselves well. Very sadly, the misery will likely intensify before they get their heads out of their collective asses. In the past, it has been easy to blame the USA for their own problems, but the magnitude is increasing at a rate that make it impossible for us to even make a dent.....this is THEIR problem, and they must come to terms with that.
The best thing that people can do is make it a public, political issue so that there will be basic infrastructure and framework of thought for people to push development forward. Cultural attitudes will also have to adjust to the changing reality: Religious and cultural leaders in particular must step up to the plate or face destruction at the hands of the monster they are egging on. I say this as a Catholic who's VERY vocal about critizing the Vatican's misguided attitudes towards reproduction. Islam, Hinduism, and the other religions as well must take it upon themselves to challege counterproductive ways of thinking and accept responsibility for their actions.....or risk being swept aside completely. 1900-2000 saw more death and destruction than any and all previous centuries combined: not learning from those mistakes is an inexcuseable crime.
I will remain optimistic and see opportunity there, while hedging with commodities because people tend to try every crappy option before just doing what works.
Where Malthus ran into trouble was that he was trying to model the behavior of irrational, unpredictable human beings. It's notoriously hard to predict population growth rates even over very short time periods. And what exactly is a "reasonable assumption" for the pace of technological innovation? Can you even quantify that?
As long as we have human ingenuity, I don't think population growth is such a huge deal.
Looks like life expectancies in sub-saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent are going down. Thank God we've kept population growth under better control in the West.
Hence why I reject Austrian and Keynesian economics in favor of Malthusianism.
The way it works in the US is that if you give a man a fish, he comes back tomorrow demanding two fish for him and his kids or you are a horrible person.Good time to invest in some desal technology.
Why all the confusion about poor people in developing countries having kids? Anyone ever heard of opportunity cost? If you guys all want the 3rd world to have less kids start supporting economic policies that improves the networth of your average dirt farmer in Sub-Saharan Africa or the Indian sub-continent.
That's a hell of a lot more feasible than Malthusian circle jerks and world-wide fertility limits.
Fair enough then, have all the kids you want, but then we wash our hands of your famines. This is basic math here; too many kids and not enough food means people go hungry, and it isn't sensible for the West to keep bailing out Africa when we have people in our own countries going hungry.
The fresh water supply of the Earth is a fixed resource. "Water supply", as mentioned above, should actually be called "water velocity", or the speed at which water moves through the sysyem. Water use is a flow variable, not stock. I know its an issue of semantics, but its an important one to understand as this problem grows.
It is a very important distinction. Commodities like wheat, oil, and natural gas all change their chemcial composition upon consumption. Water does not. It usually changes its state of matter, or it might be mixed with other chemicals, but its actual molecuar structure seldom changes. Where a drum of oil might be consumed and become energy + particulate emissions of a different chemical make-up, water, when consumed, will simply flow through the consumer, and back into the ecosystem. Here, it will be cleansed, either by nature or by man (even when it is cleansed by man, it is cleansed by nature. If you have ever visited a water treatment plant, you know that the only thing they really do is use bacteria to clean the water on a massive scale, which is just a controlled version of the same process nature uses to clean water).
Thus, thinking about water in the same terms as other commodities is irrelevant. If I buy one "barrell" of water, do I still own it after its been consumed and reprocessed through the system. Because at the end of the day, its the same water. This is one reason I do not think its possible to actually commoditize water. Personally, I feel all these fears about "water shortages" are overblown, as most people do not have a clear understanding of water in the first place.
Also, traditionally, poorer people had more kids to have more help to work and a greater chance of surviving to adulthood. By having more children, labor can be specialized, or all the kids could go work somewhere, thus increasing the amount of money made by the family to not only feed each child, but to buy clothing, shelter, and other necessities as well.
Finally, look at crop production in the U.S. over the last century. Its funny that people always think companies like Apple are the most innovative in the World, yet companies like DuPont, Monsanto and Dow Chemical are literally feeding millions of more people, and even allowing people to eat meat on a massive scale, through enormous innovations in crop production.
http://ahundredyearsago.com/2011/10/14/us-crop-yields-and-production-19…
Also, a lot of this agricultural technology that we developed between 1950 and 1980 depends on water from aquifers that was deposited over thousands of years, and we're running out of that in the Ogallala aquifer and appparently in India as well.
I don't want to inspire fear with this- the US has enough food in the Great Lakes- which does not require irrigation- to easily feed itself, but things are going to get very difficult in countries with more marginal food security.
When do we in the developing world say that enough is enough?
Why should we have to ratify the Kyoto protocol and pledge to reduce our energy consumption (thereby ensuring we're poorer for longer), while those in the US continue to use 16 times more energy than we do? (Indians consume 500 kgoe/a (kg of oil equivalent/annum) as composed to 8000 kgoe/a in the USA) Developed countries brought on global warming with irresponsible fossil fuel use over the last 3 centuries, and now they are putting leg-irons on developing countries to atone for their mistakes.
Rant over. But I'd like to mention that India has family-planning policy that recommends 2 children (the fertility rate is actually at 2.7). Unlike China's One-Child policy though, India cannot enforce it, because it is a democracy. When a slum stands in the way of a future highway, the Chinese government raze it to the ground. If the same situation occurs in India, the slum dwellers file claims and counter-claims that ensure the road will never be built.
beat me to it.
.....that is more important, yes?
Ok sure, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Sub-Continent have a population problem. For whatever reason the lower classes in the region breed at alarming rates, which will inevitably lead a strain on resources (actually, there is a good reason, keep reading).
But let's not forget the other side of the story. Even with their staggering populations, these regions of the world are not the biggest consumers of resources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#cite_note-energil…
The average American consumes 11 times the energy of the average African and almost 14 times that of the average Indian. Although I agree that overpopulation in these countries is a serious problem, before we start getting all high an mighty and condescending we need to realize 2 things:
1) People in poorer regions of the world have more children to help ensure their survival. While we can take for granted the fact that our children will survive to adulthood, this is not a valid assumption in many parts of the world. Combine this with the the lack of Social Security and retirement plans (meaning adult children are essentially retirement plans), and it makes perfect sense that these people have more children than us. Sorry, simply telling these people to "STOP BREEDING" is not a viable solution.
2) The "overpopulation problem" is really just an "over-consumption problem", isn't it? Well then keep in mind that a large part of the over-consumption problem isn't the result of over-population in the third world. It's the fact that we here in the first world KEEP BUYING A BUNCH OF USELESS SHIT. Yes Mr. Big Baller, your desire to buy a new BMW every two years, your up-to-date wardrobe, and cutting edge iPad/android or whatever is a huge part of the problem.
So yea... STOP BUYING USELESS SHIT.
Thank you.
The Indian government is actively trying to reduce populations through birth control and education.
All the USA and other developing nations have to do is cut off aid spending and allow nature to take its course. I am a big Malthusian and generally anti-human anyway. Go watch Solyent Green to get a picture of the future.
World War 3 Baby
That discussion was done over and over the past 500 years. The human mind has always find a way to increase resources exponentially.
As far as having kids, let's be clear that kids are an inferior good. You have less as you become richer. So, if you want Africa/India to stop reproducing, make them richer, stop trying artificial way, we are creating future wars
someone needs to introduce india/china to condoms...i'm just sayin...
In developing countries, a child is more of a source of income than a cost. It is another pair of hands to take care of the farm, a replacement for another child's death, and a retirement plan for when you grow older. It's really only in the developed world that a child is viewed primarily as a cost and another mouth to feed.
As a country becomes developed it takes time before the positive effects of development and industrialisation are felt. i.e. Population growth will skyrocket during this time because while death rates fall, birth rates remain at their historical highs.
Looking at the world before industrialisation, about 20% of the world's population was in the Americas and Europe. High growth rates in other parts of the world are simply returning the Earth to its historic distributions of people.
I have been saying it for years.... we need to go to Mars!
Latest population estimate shocks the academic world. 15 billion people by 2100:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/22/population-world-15bn-2100
[quote=Edmundo Braverman]Latest population estimate shocks the academic world. 15 billion people by 2100:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/22/population-world-15bn-2100[…]
I don't know of the authors of these estimates take into account that global prosperity increases over time, which in turn leads to better educated people, who have fewer kids. If that that condition holds true then the problem may be self-limiting.
It shouldn't be "Stop breeding" but "Breed responsibly."
“Oh, I enjoy watching my kids starve and have no future, let’s have more! That way, there will be less food to go around, and our circumstances will become progressively worse!”
Seriously, what the fuck is going through the minds of those responsible for kids getting pumped out in such high numbers, often in god-forsaken places? I can’t image how upset I would be if my child’s health and future was in the shitter. This is one of those things that make me very cynical about human nature. I imagine that the fathers are by and large responsible for this problem by initiating the sex (in many cases forcibly). My mother was born into a dirt-poor family with TEN kids, and their upbringing was terrible. So why not use protection, grandpa? The priest said the invisible man in the sky said not to. Wtf.
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