In 1798, the British reverend-economist Thomas Robert Malthus published his magnum opus, An Essay On The Principle of Population, which became an immediate succès de scandale. His arguments were simple yet controversial. Malthus postulated that since growth in human population is geometric while the growth in food production is arithmetic, population growth will outstrip food supply, and that growing population rates contribute to a rising supply of labour and inevitably lowers wages, leading to poverty. A simple and logical theory, but so controversial that Malthus found himself attacked on all sides - Romantic poets, utopian thinkers and the religious establishment - as he argued that nature is niggardly and that societies, both human and animal, tend to overstep the limits of natural resources in “perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery”. Hence either nature caps our population via “positive checks” - the four horsemen of war, famine, disease and death, or we cap it via “preventive checks” by reducing our birth rate.
More than two centuries later, it is easy to, with hindsight, proclaim that Malthus was wrong. Or that ironically at the very least, he seemed to be right for the entirety of history before him, but not whatever came after. The 19th century saw the Industrial Revolution which prompted massive urbanisation, while the 20th century saw the Green Revolution which substantially increased agricultural yields, all accompanied by the advancements in medicine which reduced death rates. Prima facie, it is easy to dismiss Malthus and any concerns about population, as while the world population was 1 billion in 1804 (during Malthus’s lifetime), it hit 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, 6 billion in 1999, 7 billion in 2011, and now in 2020, 7.8 billion. Such statistics are terrifying indeed, but most people are not particularly bothered - after all, our standard of living has improved leaps and bounds too, why should we care?
Well, the fact that humanity is still somewhat sustaining itself today and that we are all still alive may reassure some of us, but Malthus and his fundamental theory on population isn’t wrong. The technological advancements of the last two centuries merely delay the “Malthusian catastrophe” rather than avert it. Even Norman Borlaug, the Nobel laureate considered the pioneer of the Green Revolution, himself admitted that all that he had done is to give humanity a breathing space in which to stabilise our numbers, not pave the way for indefinite growth which by its very definition is utterly impossible. As Kenneth Boulding brilliantly put it, “Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad or an economist.”
The Ill Effects of Overpopulation
It is also a common misconception that overpopulation is not a pertinent issue because there is more than enough space on Earth. Indeed, the entire world’s population could fit into the size of Texas. If put side by side, into the size of Los Angeles. But that is not the problem at hand, but rather, an issue of food, water, energy and other resources vital to our survival. Imagine having 15 people stay in a house designed for 5. Even if there is sufficient space, you won’t want to live like that. If we are looking at resources and energy consumption, if the entire world lived like the average Frenchman, we would need 2.5 Earths, if we lived like the average American, more than 4 Earths - not the size of Texas. Even if it is not apparently obvious to one sheltered by a privileged life in a developed country, it is clear that overpopulation puts severe yet unnecessary strain on our planet and we people too, a vexatious concern that has been espoused by esteemed names like sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov and naturalist David Attenborough.
According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, 821 million people lack access to food, 790 million people lack access to clean water, and by 2025, 1.8 billion people are expected to live in regions of extreme water scarcity. Inability to access the rudiments of survival will put this large fraction of the world population in a vicious cycle of immiseration which takes a Herculean feat to break. In a 1988 interview, Asimov said that the Earth could not even sustain the population then (5 billion) in the long run, because it is impossible to raise the entire world to the average standard of living in the developed world, as we lack the resources and the ability to distribute well enough, linking neating to the Malthusian theory of poverty. He said, “We have condemned right now as it is, most of the world to a miserable starvation level of existence, and that will just get worse as the population continues to go up.”. He isn’t wrong, as over the years we witness a widening of inequality between and within countries, and while global poverty has fallen, the majority of it is attributed to China, achieved in part due to its one-child policy. By allowing population to grow unsustainably and poverty to persist, Asimov also believed it compromises our fundamental human dignity, saying, “Democracy cannot survive overpopulation, human dignity cannot survive it, the more and more people on the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears.”
Not to mention the deleterious impacts that our ever-expanding population - one fed by affluence and consumerism that raises the demand for energy, manufactured goods and infrastructure - has on our natural environment, something that David Attenborough has spoken passionately about. Greater population growth is accompanied by industrialisation, which has altered the chemical consistency of the atmosphere, acidified and polluted oceans, and caused additional problems in agriculture such as soil erosion, depletion of aquifers, plant diseases, etcetera. And above all, a warming planet, which also exacerbates the aforementioned problems of food and water scarcity. More extreme weather conditions such as droughts, desertification and natural disasters reduce the amount of arable land available for farming, as well as decrease water supply. In 2014, the IPCC issued a report that warned of the potential for warmer temperatures to restrict food supplies in the face of growing demand. It claimed that rising temperatures had already diminished wheat production by 2% in a decade, while demand for food rose by 14% in the same period. Food prices, which had been declining steadily until 2007, have been volatile since then, sometimes leading to famines and other times political unrest. Not to mention how the rise in food prices is most detrimental to poorer countries that have lower purchasing power and less access to technology, worsening poverty. If one finds the idea of conflict arising from overpopulation to be far-fetched, remember that it was a commonly cited reason that resulted in German and Japanese expansionism in the 1930s. Conflicts over water play out between Egypt and Ethiopia, Turkey and Iraq, and control of this precious resource explains China’s geopolitical interest in holding Tibet. In the words of physicist Albert Einstein, “Overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organize peace on this planet.”
The Overpopulation Taboo, Breaking It And What’s Next
Recognising how all the aforementioned issues have one element that connects them, that of unprecedented population increase, why do people not say that it is obviously easier to feed a lower population, or speak about family planning and empowerment of women as a central tenet of any programme to seeks to secure an adequate food supply for humanity? You could read the score of reports concerned with global problems, and while population is a key driver, no reference to it is made in any of them. This is because overpopulation is one of those issues that we seem to have as a species decided not to talk about. In fact, it has been a taboo subject from Malthus’s day all right to the present. When Malthus published his Essay, the romantics (a dominant movement of his era) regarded his ideas as a sham. The mathematical language in which he clothed his argument was a cover for its inhumanity; he was an apostle of the rich who justified their selfishness while taking away the right to marry, have sex and rear familes, without which the life of the poor was intolerable and meaningless.
Today, the taboo has many sources. For many, they perceive such fears as denying them the right to life, which includes the freedom of reproduction and growth. People are afraid that policies with an anti-natalist direction will circumscribe their right to have children. Because far too long we have inculcated this notion that equates big families with happy families, and that only children lead lonely lives, and couples without kids are “childless” rather than “childfree”. This made sense when we had to procreate for our survival (according to human nature, our primary evolutionary mission) but no longer because now our population depends on stabilising population to a reasonable level. We often associate population decline with a gloomy future (take modern Russia or Japan, or 19th century France, for instance), because capitalism is based on eternal growth. Will the population suffer in the short run? Yes, but in the long run we do less to compromise our survival with a lower population. Hence there is a need to rewire our opinions of a one-child family, as there indeed are many merits we overlook.
It is also an understandable concern about rights, since obviously people dislike the government interfering in the bedroom department. Especially regarding the right to life, which is an argument that takes on religious undertones. Coupled with associations with colonialism, government sterilisation policies and eugenics, it is not a subject easy to have discourse. But what people need to understand is that it doesn’t take away one’s rights, but it is actually a matter of empowerment. Empowering women by giving them education and jobs is one of the best methods of reducing the fertility rate. And empowering families, giving them knowledge of family planning, is imperative for their livelihoods and finances. And empowering the future generations, by taking them out of poverty to lead more prosperous and meaningful lives. And no, it does not circumscribe the right of developing countries to growth, rather it assists them. The most successful nation in the developing world has been China for the past 40 years, and I could not imagine how they could have done it without the one-child policy.
The taboo stymies solving the problem, which is an issue that affects all departments, but it seems for which no one is responsible. The end result of all this is that in a finite planet, the human population will definitely stop at some point. That can happen in 1 of 2 ways. Either sooner via fewer births (the Malthusian preventive check) or later via an increased death rate which is the natural process for all other creatures (the Malthusian positive check). It is pretty apparent to any rational mind which option is better. We should not wait for catastrophe to happen, or wait for some magical technology to save us, but rather act now, since it is one of the unique capabilities of humans, through the cerebral cortex of our brain, to think beyond the present and have a vision for the future. I am sure our vision is not a Thanos snap.
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