Sprouts

Curses and our Carrying Capacity

The 18th Century philosopher, Thomas Malthus, pronounced what is called the “Malthus Curse,” which says that since human population growth is exponential and increases in our ability to grow food only linear,  we are eventually going to exceed the number of humans that the earth can support (the carrying capacity).  The author, Jared Diamond, in an essay titled “The worst mistake humans have ever made (agriculture)” essentially agrees with Malthus. 

As of October, 2011, it was predicted that the population of the earth would hit 7 Billion.  If you look at the population growth, it shows that there were fewer than 1 Billion of us in 1800, 3 Billion in 1960 and between 1950 and 1990, the world’s population doubled.  Computer models predict  the growth of the population doubling every 40 years (the U.N. population division says that 5 babies are born every second) and that, with technological advances, we will have better birth control, fertility rates will fall and we will eventually get to zero population growth.  If technology works well, we may level off at 9 Billion by 2050. 

But can the earth keep up?  Can it debunk the Malthusian curse?  If we get to zero population growth and have figured out how to squeeze Mother Earth to produce more food, maybe the curse will be discredited.  But even now, 1 Billion of us already go to bed hungry.  If agriculture hadn’t been introduced, the capacity of the earth to support humans would have  been reached at 100 million or so, since there are only so many animals and berries naturally occurring.

Today we have experienced the green revolution where we use technology to feed ourselves; we maximize crop yields with fertilizer and pesticides which extend the capacity of the earth to produce food for us.  The current estimate of the earth’s carrying capacity is 2 to 40 billion people.  Why the wide estimates, you ask.  Life style.  Middle class Americans (you and I) consume 3.3 times the subsistence level of food required to sustain life, and 250 times the subsistence level of water.  Put another way, if everyone were like us, the earth could only support about a billion people. 

To support  40 billion people, every square inch of land would be  maximally farmed, we would be living in high rises, mining other planets and consuming  300kg  of food,and 400 liters of  water, the minimum required to sustain a life.  We would be using technology not to get more for less, but more for more.  Ideally we should be using sustainable resources, but our technology such as  fracking, is just about figuring out how to deplete things faster.  Technology is destroying out habitat.

So what is the conclusion:  optimists say Malthus was incorrect because he failed to take into account human ingenuity; but they are missing the  point of  corporate greed which  doesn’t take into account sustainability and misdirects technical advancement only to the bottom line.  Why must sustainability pay the price of the stock?  The fatal flaw in the optimists rosy picture is human greed; we are greedy and rarely want to sacrifice for a greater good.  Please think about this.