Malthus was right (but methyl alcohol is still a good idea)

I've been updating a section of my web site concerning the game of
Chess, and, as it happens, a version of three-player Chess was
developed by Robert Zubrin in his youth.

In associated web searches, I came across the article in which he
noted that, while we don't yet know how to make ethyl alcohol from
waste biomass composed chiefly of cellulose, we *can* easily make
methyl alcohol (also known as "wood alcohol", for that very reason)
from it.

Unlike ethyl alcohol, however, using it requires significant changes
in engine design.

I think that's a great idea, although relying exclusively on
electricity generated by nuclear power would be even better, since
that would avoid combustion entirely, and we could actually sequester
the carbon in the waste biomass to be carbon-negative rather than
carbon-neutral. However, unlike methyl alcohol fuel, the technology
isn't quite here yet for electric cars that can be used for driving
out to the country on the weekend.

But the article also claimed that Malthusianism was "bankrupt" because
it had been consistently proven wrong.

It's true that humanity hasn't been wiped out by global plague or
famine, and that the human population has steadily increased, thanks
to technological advance. However, concluding from the fact that the
glass is half full that the glass is full is a mistake.

Malthus said that population has an inherent tendency to grow
exponentially, and that the ability of the world to provide for people
grows linearly. Therefore, the consequence is that population will,
sooner or later, collide with limits set by the environment.

He was wrong that the ability of the world to provide for people grows
linearly. In fact, it also grows exponentially, *but with a much
smaller exponent* than population, so the rest of his thesis still
follows.

What is the natural rate at which human population grows?

In the province of Quebec, where European settlers came to lands which
had been sparsely inhabited (by people who had but bows and arrows to
defend themselves as well) a population of peasant farmers was able,
for a considerable period of time, to live in prosperity instead of
misery, being freed from limits on the amount of available arable
land.

Families of ten children were common during the early years of
Quebec's development.

Anatomically modern humans, not Neanderthals or H. erectus, existed on
this Earth some 40,000 years ago.

Let us take ten children as a somewhat extreme figure. Instead, under
good conditions, let us say that the average married couple will have
*four* children. These will chiefly be born when their parents are
between the ages of 20 and 30; let us simplify our calculations, and
moderate the result of our calculation, by supposing they are all born
to their parents when they are 30 years old.

Thus, two parents in one generation give rise to four children in the
next generation after 30 years.

Dividing 40,000 by 30, we get 1,333. Starting with a population of 2,
therefore, we get a value for the world's present population of 2 *
(2^1333), or 2^1334.

2^10 (1,024) is about 10^3 (1,000), so this is about 10^399.

Thus, if Malthusianism is intellectually bankrupt, proven to be
rubbish by the experience of history,

- the current population of the world would be 1 followed by 399
zeroes, or at least something in that ballpark;

- except for a few bizarre and pathological incidents, peace and
prosperity would have been the nearly universal lot of mankind from
ancient times to the present.

In fact, as we know, the world's population is not even 1 followed by
199 zeroes.

As we also know, in nearly all times and places, the lot of humanity
has been this: for those men lucky enough to have a plot of farmland
and a wife, back-breaking labor for 16 hours a day on a plot of land
too small to manage on, combined with heavy taxation by a repressive
government; for the other men, the younger brothers, service in the
armed forces of the brutal repressive government, eating food "taxed"
from the farmers, and with the only chance of eventual mating coming
from participation in a successful war of aggression.

Thus, continuously throughout history, human populations have been in
collision with Malthusian limits, which meant that, instead of people
living in peace, prosperity, and comfort as they would wish to, they
lived in misery, hunger, and often endured war.

Of course, perhaps it is merely being argued that the Industrial
Revolution has emancipated us from this cycle of misery. The world's
rich countries, after all, have undergone a "demographic transition"
due to their prosperity.

In fact, though, we still have wars, we still have economic downturns.
It's true that we have governments so insulated from reality that they
encourage immigration when high unemployment levels are depressing the
country's birthrate - instead of ensuring full employment, like we had
back in the early 1960s, and letting the birthrate take care of
itself.

Stimulating the economy enough to have full employment, without
plunging the nation into debt, of course, means that imports have to
be limited to what export earnings allow, rather than being allowed to
increase as more people have more money from stimulation of the
domestic economy. And we have a world trade system that obstructs
countries from doing what is necessary to adopt sound economic policy.

Instead of having a world in which advancing technology has caused the
limits to population growth to continually recede in the distance,
faster than we need to worry about them - which is the world in which
Malthus was wrong that Robert Zubrin claims we're living in - all that
is happening is that, thanks to contraception, and, more importantly,
thanks to the ability of women to hold paid employment themselves, the
level of misery at which people stop having as many children as they
would like to have has become less severe. So instead of children
starving to death, we merely have men who can't afford the mortgage on
a house in the suburbs - or, at least, a car back when they were
teenagers - remaining single.

It's still the same thing. A finite environment, at a given level of
technology, results in any desired standard of living only for a
limited number of people. Whether reproduction is depressed when the
pressure of human bodies squeezing against those limits becomes
acutely painful, or just gently uncomfortable, the same principle
enunciated by Malthus applies.

Of course, the distinction still has public policy implications. If
the emancipation of women has meant that population growth checks
itself when the encounter between humans and environmental limits as
manifested in the economy is still only mildly uncomfortable, then
indeed we don't need to start massive campaigns to encourage people to
have smaller families, or have Draconian laws limiting family size,
since the situation is taking care of itself. So it is possible to say
that Malthus, even if he was not wrong, is also not right in any sense
that calls for an extreme panic reaction.

Of course, there is still the question of slow economic feedback.
Fossil fuel resources are limited and finite, and fossil fuel is used
to make fertilizers. Insects become resistant to pesticides, and birds
are poisoned by eating insects exposed to pesticides.

So only the level of agricultural production achievable without
recourse to fertilizers and pesticides is, at the current level of
technology, sustainable almost indefinitely (until the Sun leaves the
Main Sequence), and it is _not_ true that the world's population, at
present, is at a level consistent with eating a nutritious diet of the
generally preferred type - that is, one including meat consumption at
U.S. levels - at that level of agricultural production.

Organically grown Grade A beef, for China's billion, at least, if not
India's.

Of course, if one lowers one's standards, *then* one can claim that
the world is not now, at present, overpopulated.

But, again, one can validly claim things are getting better and not
worse. India and China are both experiencing economic growth, and our
acceptance of imports from those countries, although it has
constrained our own economic flexibility, has helped to trigger this
growth. While humanity may not be headed, in the short term, for the
kind of bliss that would exist if all environmental limits were
removed from it, the world's standard of living is heading towards a
tolerable level for the world's largest groups of poor people. It can
be argued that the remaining pockets of poverty owe more to misrule
than genuine limits of the environment.

But what the good news means is not that "Malthus was wrong", it is
simply that although Malthusian limits to population growth are
definitely a factor, they are not necessarily the dominating reality -
population growth is currently being limited, fairly gently, to a
level below the expansion of production. If it weren't limited at all,
it would outpace the possible expansion of production - so Malthus was
right - but since gentle limits suffice to let production expand
faster, provided this expansion can be sustained and isn't made to
collapse due to soil erosion, global warming, and the like, we have a
situation of steady, if slower than might be wished, progress - not a
headlong rush to disaster that requires any drastic changes.

John Savard