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Have We Reached Maximum Sustainable Population Size?
Hugh Pickens writes "Pulitzer prize winning writer Thomas Friedman writes that in few years we may be looking back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? 'We're currently caught in two loops,' writes Friedman. 'One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability.' According to the Global Footprint Network we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth's resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. 'Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,' says Paul Gilding. 'We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter. We may be slow, but we're not stupid.'"
No.
The Earth wasn't supposed to be able to support half the current global population.
Then Norman Borlaug came along, and turns out we could support more. Who knows this time around?
It's a little early to include the tornadoes as part of a discussion on global climate change. Just like one hot summer doesn't prove it and one cold winter doesn't disprove it (even ignoring the false notion that global climate change != getting warmer everywhere all the time) we'd need to see evidence of increased storm activity for multiple years in close succession before we could draw any conclusions. In general i'm a "believer" in global climate change, but i'm not in favor of using incorrect data to try and prop up the idea.
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Norman Borlaug beat him to death with his dwarf wheat.
He has a 9.6 million dollar, 11,400 square foot home.
Oh and his wife used to own a company developing mall properties, those high square foot, poorly insulated buildings surrounded by heat absorbing asphalt.
See: tragedy of the commons...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Didn't we all learn about Malthus in school? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus
don't eat meat. That alone alleviates the largest part of the problems mentioned, as 1) much less crop will be needed to feed the same population and 2) CO2 emissions from animal farming will disappear. These are actually the reasons this anonymous coward turned vegetarian.
is the cause of the higher prices.
Perhaps we'll become extinct. Perhaps we won't. In the grand scale of things, either outcome, in light of the Earth's roughly 5 billion year lifespan bears less significance than we'd like to believe
This gets me wondering how long we can cheat Malthus, until we have a big population die-off?
When it happens, it will be a chain reaction. Famine, disease, and wars tend to go hand in hand, and if a population of an otherwise stable country starts starving essentially in toto, they will be doing desperate means to find a food source, even if it means overrunning a neighbor.
We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter.
I wish I could be as sure. Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed does a nice job of documenting societies that, when faced with the same choice, picked collapse. Granted, they didn't have Jared Diamond's book to read beforehand, but neither did they have our capacity for self-immolation.
. 'One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability.'
- well that's plenty of nonsense.
Prices today are pushed up by artificial demand, created by the inflated currencies of the world. US Fed is printing like a maniac, buying up its own debt and is giving the US dollars to all the banks (and likely central banks) around the world, so that they would also buy US debt - this is an attempt to trick the bond market into believing there is an actual demand for US bonds, but all of this is designed to prolong the day of reckoning - when the US bonds are no longer bought and US dollar plunges ahead of all currencies and US is in hyper inflation, because Fed will likely buy out all the debt and default that way, rather than let the market restructure US debt and rebuild the economy.
The prices for food and energy around the world are going up as US is creating inflation around the world, but for now US is still shielding itself from the ultimate catastrophe - currency crisis, but who knows how much longer it can do this? Of-course the oil production will continue declining, as OPEC cannot actually bring more and more production on line, even though it pretends to say that it can, but it can't.
Cartels do not work, because the members have only incentives to cheat. They agree on quotas, and then they produce as much as they can, since they see high prices (even though in reality, the oil and gas are lowest price ever in history if counted in gold.)
As to the population size - the only problem with population size today, is that the governments of the world are distorting the free market and not letting the businesses provide everything the growing populations need in real competitive market. There are a small number of largest companies, that work with government to make sure they keep their monopolies, but of-course monopolies have about as much incentive to maximize their efficiency and compete on price/quality, as any government, which means zilch.
Do not lose the sight of what is really going on: globally the world's central banks are engaged in destruction of currencies in order to maintain the US currency high relative to their own, since there is likely political and personal profit in it for them. This is causing the massive inflation and then prices rise around the world, only so that they stay relatively stable in USA. Do not be fooled by the so called economists, that the government calls 'main stream' and who work for the governments - they are no different than the shamans and witch doctors of yesteryear, who also worked for their kings.
As to the global warming, etc. - how about getting government hands off the energy policy of the world, allowing the businesses to compete on best ways to provide energy, be it nuclear or whatever it is? And how about getting rid of the subsidies to the auto-industries via government sponsored infrastructure, which create the energy policy that we are observing around the world today, complete with wars and pollution?
I am sure this opinion will be highly popular on this site.
Good night.
You can't handle the truth.
When you get past the big, scary headlines to the inside of the Times article, you see statements like this:
"We are now using so many resources and putting out so much waste into the Earth that we have reached some kind of limit, given current technologies. The economy is going to have to get smaller in terms of physical impact.” (Emphasis added)
Wait, we're gonna have to come up some new technologies to lessen our environmental footprint?! Help!
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi
Can you give some examples that affected more than 0.001% of the population?
Because while those were sensational and revealing, they're not nearly on the scale we're talking about here. They indicate that someone was stupid, but not necessarily that we are all stupid.
"Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for mankind to keep all its eggs in."
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
we need to let go of. Most of the so called economic growth of the last few hundred years has been entirely based on digging things out of the ground and consuming them. Nothing grew, we just reduced the value of our asset base in favour of revenue to spend. Yes we could find other assets to strip that would keep us 'growing' a while longer but really, can we keep pretending?
Korma: Good
A guy fell off the Empire State Building. As he passed the 30th floor, he said to himself, "I'm okay so far!"
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
I was forced to read "The Earth is Round" as part of my MBA. When it comes to amazing him, the bar is set pretty low. He could probably write a column on how the sun rises in the east
"Empire of Debt" has a delicious and well-deserved excoriation of Friedman. If it wasn't such a great book in and of itself, it would be worth reading just for that.
In 1971, Paul Ehrlich predicted a maximum sustainable world population of 1.2 billion people. By 1994 Ehrlich raised his estimate to 2 billion saying, "the present population of 5.5 billion [..] has clearly exceeded the capacity of Earth to sustain it." Two decades later we're closing in on 7 billion souls the overwhelming majority of which are not expected to starve to death or otherwise suffer a Malthusian catastrophe.
Overpopulation alarmism has become trite and hackneyed.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I think any post referencing Thomas Friedman requires a link to Matt Taibbi's classic article:
Thomas Friedman does not get these things right even by accident. It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that's guaranteed, every single time. He never misses....
According to the mathematics of the book, if you add an IPac to your offshoring, you go from running to sprinting with gazelles and from eating with lions to devouring with them.
A better question is "have we reached the maximum sustainable resource consumption/conversion rate per person times population".
A US citizen is responsible for 10 to 20 times more resource and energy consumption than a Chinese or Indian citizen, for example.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Club of Rome, Paul Ehrlich, peak oil, etc, etc. Now Friedman.
A succession of people saying all will be disaster unless you immediately do X that, by the way they consider wise to do for other reasons.
In the reign of Emperor Augustus, historian Livey claimed that if Rome did not return to its founding values (which didn't really exist during its founding by a pretty savage lot) it would surely fall.
He was right. 500 years later for the western part of the empire, and 1000 for the eastern part.
One day such doomsayers will be right. But thus far they have been wrong so many times.
Has anyone noticed how similar this is to the preacher that was saying the world would end on May 22nd?
Like him, when the world fails to end, they say they didn't account for something and set a new date. Now in October, I think?
Similarly, it's now not 1975 or 1980 when it falls apart and we all starve. It's 20xx and we've really got it right this time. We think...
Yeah. Uh huh.
(Note I don't think wasting resources, unending population increase or not conserving energy is wise. I'm highly in favor of efficiency increases. But the claim the gas tank is empty hasn't agreed with what actually happened.)
And what if those claims of how cheap and plentiful solar/renewables are really work?
The same shining lights of this game, Ehrlich, Lovins etc. have stated that a truly cheap clean, plentiful energy source/sources would be a disaster for the world. Mankind would use it to further destroy nature and thus should be limited in energy availability.
Overpopulation alarmism has become trite and hackneyed.
Yes, you are correct. We should continue on our present course without considering the consequences. We will never run out of anything.
I personally think that unless some steps are taken to bring world population growth to zero fairly quickly that there are going to be some truly horrible wars in fifty to one hundred years. First world countries will be very reluctant to give up all their modern amenities, and developing countries will be unwilling to curb their population growth to keep competition for resources to a minimum. At some point, there are going to be some very serious shortages, and the wars that result will not be conducted around the traditional goal of military conquest for resources, but rather the goal of making the world population much smaller in a very short time. I certainlly hope that doesn't happen, but there are enough despotic people in power around the world that I think it might.
The fact is that there are not infinite resources. If there are too many people using those resources, you will run out. The problem is that when this happens, it will basically be like an inflection point on a graph, where change will happen very quickly.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The UN estimates of world population now indicate an increase until around 2075 (9.2 billion), and then a decrease after that.
Birth rates in all developed nations are falling fast, many are under replacement rate already. The US population would be lower than the replacement rate right now if it weren't for immigration.
The problem with Malthus is not the math, it's the model. Anyone can pick assumptions and make a model, and from there make predictions. Mathus erred in assuming that things would not change. An exponential curve is indistinguishable from a bell curve at the long tail beginning, so the evidence seemed to support his prediction.
What's changing is the demographics. Once raised out of poverty, people naturally start having fewer children. There are a variety of proposed reasons for this, and the evidence is very strong.
The prediction now is that once everyone is reasonably above the poverty line (mostly Africa, with some contribution from SE Asia) population growth will reverse.
Interestingly enough, in 75 years time there may be the reverse problem - population *shrinkage*.
Places with these high populations and high deathrates have little per capita income and no social safety nets. In such places, the primary social support is from extended families. The social mores of most of these places require taking care of the elderly or at least the elders. So everyone aspires to live long enough to have lots of kids of their own in case they survive to old age and need taking care of. And of course they have lots of kids since they expect many to die young.
Condoms and pills won't keep birthrates down in such places. Economic opportunity will. Career oriented societies make children costly but are able to ensure their survival better. So wealthier societies try to create legacies to leave smaller numbers of children.
As for how to make this happen.... Oh! Send all the western manufacturing to them. It should do the trick in a generation or three.
e.g. will we start letting the excess die in a gutter? The question isn't, can we feed these people? It's: Will we? We don't need these people. There's no jobs for them. Should we just let them starve? Capitalism says yes, socialism says no. I don't know of a third answer (that doesn't boil down to one or the other in practical terms).
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You're disgusting. Bake at 375 F until crisp and BBQ sauce.
First world countries all have below zero population growth rates, or would if it wasn't for immigration. In a rich country, children cost more to raise, and increased women's rights mean that women don't get used as baby factories to increase the status of men.
This is a non-issue for just about anyone who would actually be reading this.
Food corn is generally just hybrid corn coming out of the same breeding populations as corn for feed. At the late stages it's shown to food companies like lays chips for approval. Corn that is approved generally has a thicker seed coat, and more hard starch, making the kernel have a round crown when mature rather than flat or dented. In other words is shows more traits of flint than dent. (Most modern hybrid corn comes from inbred lines originally isolated in flint or dent corn populations) Such traits make it more resistant to insect and fungal damage. Feed corn has a then thiner seed coat more soft starch, and the crown is flat or dented upon maturity. These traits make is easier for cows and pigs to digest fully.
I noticed that this website is in English, German, Spanish, French, and Italian--meaning it is mostly directed to the west. The fact that it doesn't even have Mandarin or Cantonese despite China's 1.3 Billion tells you that he is more interested in extracting money from guilt-laden westerners than solving any problems. French! Less than 2% of the earth speak French as their native language. Heck, more people speak Bengali or Telugu or even Marathi than the entire population of France!
Most of the western countries are stable or have declining populations. The United States is an exception, however much of that is due to immigration. Yet you have India with 1.2 Billion and growing, Indonesia with 237 million and growing, Nigeria with 158 million and growing, Bangladesh with 150 million and growing---and the site is dedicated to telling Westerners why it is all their fault. Solving the real problem, 3rd world population growth, isn't going to get done by telling Westerners to reduce their "footprint".
It's meaningless to ask if we have reached maximum sustainable population size unless you also specify what standard of living you are talking about. I can recall reading about 20 years ago that we had already passed the point where it was possible to give everyone on Earth the same standard of living as the average American.
But standard of living really is a proxy for resource consumption and not a very good one because as technology advances it can produce more from less. Eventually you reach a wall though. Pick a resource utilization number and multiply by population. Is it greater than the available resources? If yes then we have passed the sustainable population. OTOH divide available resources by population and you have the allowed resource utilization to maintain that population.
Of course that all becomes more complicated when you treat resources as finite.
Of course that all becomes more complicated when you try to factor in the effects of growing technological capabilities.
Of course that all becomes more complicated when you try to factor in the effects of human nature.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Yep, for every 100 gallons of ethanol based fuel I use to farm my corn field, they produce 90 gallons of ethanol fuel with the amount of corn I provide for that spent 100 gallons. Although with subsidies, I am living fine. The idea is to make us less fossil fuel dependent.
http://zfacts.com/p/63.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_States
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
So, like, if I was to copy and paste the entire contents of Friedman's article, and pretend I said it, you'll suddenly change your mind? Your argument sounds a lot like an excuse.
"The question isn't, can we feed these people? It's: Will we? We don't need these people. There's no jobs for them. Should we just let them starve? Capitalism says yes, socialism says no."
So please tell me: Has starvation historically been most prevalent in socialist or market economies?
In other words, it's the same discussion we have had in the 1950's, and the 1900's, and the 1830's, 1870's, and ...
There really isn't anything to add here. Really.
The short version : This specific prediction has been made as often as the end of the world predictions. Needless to say, most dates of "civilizational collapse" have passed, and nobody noticed. Every time something appears to go wrong, whether it's the real fucking great depression (1870, just not felt that hard in America because America played the role China plays today), WWI, the spanish flu, the great depression, WWII, the conflict with Japan, the oil crisis, the various crisises in the 80's, 90's and even the 2000's (how do you even call those ? The 00's ?) there is a new cohort of Malthusians that predict that "this time" it's really going to happen !
Let's now all mention the corollaries : peak oil, peak grain, peak food, peak corn, peak water, peak God's goodwill (this was the original version : God's "good will" will only support about 800 million people, so we'll never exceed that population), peak cows, ... and, to some Global Warming is just another version of the Malthusian argument (given that we don't actually know very well what will happen with Global warming, there is something to be said for this : Global warming won't kill us even if we just let it happen, we'll have to move a few cities. You could say that's simply "stimulating the economy". Perhaps that's even true)
Should we let that poor starving man and his wife die? Bleeding heart liberals say no, others say yes since otherwise we'll come back in 20 years and have their five starving children to deal with with the exact same problem.
Wondering how many of Friedman's prediction have turned out to be true so far? Is he able to beat even a zeroR prediction model?
I no longer have any respect for this Friedman. His only claim to fame are insightful sound bites (mainly for the daytime talk show crowd) that he carefully crafts for one sole reason: moving product. Seriously; if you see him on TV for more than fifteen seconds, he will spew out some BS phrase like 'The Lexus and the Olive Tree'.
That is totally false. We have socialism right now, not capitalism. Socialism has destroyed the jobs that those people could be doing, and is feeding them, allowing them to not work. Further, it imposes minimum wage requirements, meaning that jobs that need to be done go undone because they don't produce enough productivity to support someone at minimum wage.
The truth is that socialism only supports those people until it has no more "other people's money" to steal, then it lets them die. Capitalism hands them a shovel and tells them to get to work.
What is the mechanism that will rectify this? Zambian miners forming a union and demanding jobs at the Glory Hole in Alaska?
It's a bit of a wild idea and would have huge ramifications, but applying a COLA pegged labor adjustment tarrif on all imports could. If it take 10 man hours for a pound of sellable material, and the COLA in Zimbabwe was ~$10 US ($0.005/hr) compared to similar labor costs of $60,000 (~$30/hr) in the US, then the tarrif would be just shy of $300 per pound.
It would be a huge equalizing for as it would give international vendors a choice: Sell cheap, but pay a huge tarrif, or pay your employees comprable rates to the US labor force, and get no tarrif. The impact though, is that prices for cheap stuff in the US would skyrocket, and that international vendors would look at automating as much of their labor as possible.
I'm not sure if it would be a good idea, as it would have some huge ramifications, but I think it would be an interesting idea to have some economist debate over.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
As long as the EU can still spend 500 million € every year to destroy surplus food, I'm not worried about overpopulation. What we may have reached is the maximum sustainable imbalance between first and third world. How much longer do we think the third world will tolerate it?
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Who cares? Thomas L Friedman is an obnoxious windbag mostly famous for being wrong about pretty much everything.
Should we just let them starve? Capitalism says yes, socialism says no
- free market capitalism wouldn't waste resources like that, that's just stupid.
These people would have jobs if government wasn't preventing them from having those jobs by driving capital investment out of the country, by destroying the value of the currency, by regulating businesses till all competition is destroyed and only the government preferred monopolies stay in power.
Since when is the government + monopolies government creates is capitalism? It's fascism.
You can't handle the truth.