The Causes of Poverty (36): Overpopulation (Because the Extent of Wrongness in Overpopulation Discourse is an Infinite Number)

(source)

I never cease to be amazed by the persistence of overpopulation discourse in the face of irrefutable counter-evidence. The coming explosion of the population bomb is predicted time and again, with the same accuracy as the Christian Apocalypse. The spectacular failure of Paul Ehrlich‘s predictions in 1968, for example, seems to have had the same dissuasive effect on overpopulation discourse as Obama’s birth certificate on a large part of the Republican Party. Look at some of these statements:

Paul Ehrlich

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate … India couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980 … One general prediction can be made with confidence: the cost of feeding yourself and your family will continue to increase. There may be minor fluctuations in food prices, but the overall trend will be up … The United States would see its life expectancy drop to 42 years by 1980 because of pesticide usage, and the nation’s population would drop to 22.6 million by 1999. (source)

Most of these statements are regularly repeated in some form or other, even today. Now, confront this with the following basic facts:

When Paul Ehrlich wrote his famous book ["The Population Bomb"], women were having an average around the world of five or six children; now they’re having an average of 2.6. Fertility rates around the world have halved. That’s not just true in Europe and North America; they’re way below replacement levels in most of East Asia now. Not just China but Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Burma have replacement rates of fertility or below. Around the world, fertility rates have been coming down really sharply. So the population bomb as we’ve conceived it before really isn’t there. There’s still population growth going on, but that’s going to stabilize. … birthrates are coming down fast, with Indian women, for instance, having fewer than three children on average today; and even African women have falling fertility. Fred Pearce (source)

What’s causing this population bust?

[T]hanks to advances in sanitation and medicine, women no longer need to have five or six children to make sure that two of them will live to adulthood. … Urbanization is a factor. When you’re in the countryside, your kids are an economic resource very early. They can help in the fields, they can look after the animals; there are piles of stuff they can do from the age of 4 or 5. Kids are an economic resource, which is why rural families tend to be larger. Fred Pearce (source)

More on fertility rates and overpopulation is here. Now, you could argue that even with falling fertility rates overpopulation can still be a problem. Heck, even with falling population rates you could say that there’s still overpopulation. Overpopulation is then a problem of relative population numbers rather than absolute numbers: if there are more people than the number that can be fed, then you have overpopulation. But this is also wrong: planet earth could feed a number of people that’s a lot higher than the current number.

Africa faces a food crisis, but it’s not because the continent’s population is growing faster than its potential to produce food, as vintage Malthusians such as environmental advocate Lester Brown and advocacy organizations such as Population Action International would have it. Food production in Africa is vastly less than the region’s known potential, and that is why so many millions are going hungry there. African farmers still use almost no fertilizer; only 4 percent of cropland has been improved with irrigation; and most of the continent’s cropped area is not planted with seeds improved through scientific plant breeding, so cereal yields are only a fraction of what they could be. Africa is failing to keep up with population growth not because it has exhausted its potential, but instead because too little has been invested in reaching that potential. (source, source)

Famines in general have causes that are completely unrelated to overpopulation. Read more here.

Overpopulation discourse isn’t just the proverbial barking up the wrong tree; it’s keeping company with some seriously rotten fruit. Look who else worried about overpopulation:

What was Hitler’s argument for attacking other countries? You might think he didn’t have one, but he did. His argument is frankly Malthusian: Our population is growing, and we will run out of food unless we get more land. …

The annual increase of population in Germany amounts to almost 900,000 souls. The difficulties of providing for this army of new citizens must grow from year to year and must finally lead to a catastrophe, unless ways and means are found which will forestall the danger of misery and hunger. Hitler in Mein Kampf

Hitler then reviews various policies to deal with the threat of over-population:

1. Artificial birth control. Hitler rejects this because it short-circuits natural selection. Furthermore, there is an international prisoners’ dilemma: The one country that lets its numbers rise will outnumber and militarily dominate the rest…

2. Increasing productivity via “internal colonization.” Hitler rejects this on a priori Malthusian grounds – there is no way for productivity to permanently outpace population growth:

Adolf Hitler

It is certainly true that the productivity of the soil can be increased within certain limits; but only within defined limits and not indefinitely. By increasing the productive powers of the soil it will be possible to balance the effect of a surplus birth-rate in Germany for a certain period of time, without running any danger of hunger. But we have to face the fact that the general standard of living is rising more quickly than even the birth rate. The requirements of food and clothing are becoming greater from year to year and are out of proportion to those of our ancestors of, let us say, a hundred years ago. It would, therefore, be a mistaken view that every increase in the productive powers of the soil will supply the requisite conditions for an increase in the population. Hitler in Mein Kampf

3. Acquire new territory outside of Europe. The problem with this plan, says Hitler, is that other European countries have already taken the good non-European land. So you would have to attack European countries to get the land:

In the nineteenth century it was no longer possible to acquire such colonies by peaceful means. Therefore any attempt at such a colonial expansion would have meant an enormous military struggle. Consequently it would have been more practical to undertake that military struggle for new territory in Europe rather than to wage war for the acquisition of possessions abroad. Hitler in Mein Kampf

4. Acquire new territory inside Europe. At last, a solution to the imbalance between people and land that Hitler likes! And of course, he doesn’t contemplate buying the land:

Of course people will not voluntarily make that accommodation. At this point the right of self-preservation comes into effect. And when attempts to settle the difficulty in an amicable way are rejected the clenched hand must take by force that which was refused to the open hand of friendship. If in the past our ancestors had based their political decisions on similar pacifist nonsense as our present generation does, we should not possess more than one-third of the national territory that we possess to-day and probably there would be no German nation to worry about its future in Europe. Hitler in Mein Kampf (source)

Of course, you can’t judge people by the company they keep, especially not if it’s involuntary company. One wouldn’t want to commit the error of reductio ad hitlerum or fall into the trap of Godwin’s Law. It’s not because a stupid or despicable person happens to believe something that it’s necessarily wrong and that other people should feel the need to reject their beliefs simply because they are shared by someone like Hitler (I am and will continue to be a vegetarian for instance).

However, I think it should at least worry those who talk about overpopulation that they share the same concerns with a genocidal fool who was genocidal precisely because of those concerns. Maybe there is some kind of link between those concerns and genocide. Also, it should worry them that genocidal war for Lebensraum is only the most unlikely perverse effect of concerns about overpopulation. Look for example at the effects of the one-child policy in China on gender balances (something which has been called a kind of genocide, not without reason).

Jonathan Swift

As a throwaway, a satirical quote from Jonathan Swift’s 1729 work “A Modest Proposal“, suggesting feeding the children of poor Roman Catholic families to wealthy Protestant landowners to deal with Ireland’s unsustainable population growth:

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.

More on overpopulation is here.

The Causes of Poverty (32): Overpopulation

overpopulation cartoon by Sutton Impact

(source)

How can I say, as I so often do on this blog, that overpopulation isn’t a very important problem, and certainly not the main cause of such human rights violations as famine, war, poverty etc.? Especially when we know that there will be 9 billion people on the earth in 2050, that with the almost 7 billion living now we can’t manage to properly feed one billion everyday, that many resources (water, fish, arable land in certain places etc.) are already overexploited, that rising incomes will mean rising consumption of food and water (especially meat, a water-intensive commodity), and that because of all of this green house gases will increase?

How can you be so stupid not to believe that overpopulation is a problem, I’m often asked in comments on this blog. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that people have been sounding the alarm about the “population bomb” for over 200 years now, and it still hasn’t gone off. Of course, it’s not because people have been wrong for 200 years that they will continue to be wrong. But there are some indications in this paper that they will continue to be wrong.

The paper explains how we can feed 9 billion people, and argues that we’ll need to change the food system (something I also advocated on this blog before). Agricultural waste is a huge problem. Up to 40% of the world’s food ends up in the garbage bin, because of deficiencies in the food-chain infrastructure, transportation and storage. Farmers produce more than they can sell because they receive financial penalties from wholesalers when they can’t deliver fixed quantities throughout the year irrespective of climate conditions. Add to this excessive quality selection (shops throw away perfectly edible food because it’s not visually appealing, and apply overly zealous use-by dates) and consumer waste, and you have mountain ranges of wasted food that could be used to feed many more billions of people.

We could also promote vegetarianism, or at least a reduction in meat consumption, since meat production is very costly in terms of water use, land use, deforestation, green house gases etc. (see here). A side effect would be that we reduce factory farming and are a bit nicer to animals.

Stricter systems to reduce overfishing are also required. And let’s not forget that on a global level, the arable land is underused.

Most countries are only using a bare fraction of their available agricultural land. The United States, for example – one of the world’s top producers – is using only 5.5 percent of its available agricultural land. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, only 5.6 percent of the world’s arable and permanent cropland and permanent pasture is under irrigation. That gives humanity a lot of room to grow.

Mother Earth actually has the capacity to feed her people, even the billions that live on her now. As more and more people need to be fed, more and more people can be put to work farming, planting, and engineering new food management solutions. (source)

But not just the quantity of agriculture can be boosted, also its quality. Crop yields can be improved, perhaps by way of genetically modified crops but other techniques are also available: farmer training and financing for example, or more efficient irrigation, which would also solve the problem of water shortages, another “consequence” of overpopulation.

This shows that when you improve the food system, you automatically lessen other types of environmental population impact: not only water shortages but also global warming (because of less waste and less meat production), desertification (because of more efficient land use and again less meat production) etc.

Of course, focusing on food production and consumption is just part of the job. An increasing population also means increasing energy consumption. But here as well, there are many things that can be done short of population control. It’s the way energy is used, not the number of people using it, that is the problem. 85% of the people living on this planet consume below the world’s average energy use. Adding many more people isn’t likely to add substantially to energy use.

More on overpopulation here.

The Causes of Poverty (17): Overpopulation

(source)

I’ve written about the population problem before on this blog (see here). It’s quite common to hear the claim that many human rights violations, such as wars, genocides, famines, poverty and unemployment, are caused by the fact that there are too many people in the world.

This simplistic explanation of the world’s problems is popular since at least the 18th century when Thomas Malthus published his works.

Thomas Malthus

According to Malthus, food and other resources are limited, and a population growth that exceeds a certain pace will inevitably hit a resource ceiling, and will result in decreasing standards of living, poverty, conflict over scarce resources, famine etc. (This is called a Malthusian catastrophe). Ultimately, population growth will halt because if this, and population levels will return to the “normal” equilibrium possible within the limits offered by nature (the so-called “carrying capacity”).

And if these disasters aren’t enough, active population control is necessary, including measures such as the abolition of social security (social security doesn’t incite people to birth control, see here) and even more extreme policies (many of which proposed by Malthus’ more enthusiastic followers rather than by himself).

(source)

Malthus agreed that humanity was capable of increasing its productivity, but believed that population growth would necessarily outpace this increase. The facts are, however, different. Standards of living have risen enormously over the last centuries, notwithstanding large increases in population numbers. GDP growth has even been faster than population growth, giving, on average, every human being more resources than ever before in history. Of course, these resources aren’t equally distributed, but that’s a problem of justice, not of population.

(source)

Blaming everything on overpopulation is simplistic. All major problems in life are multi-causal, and population isn’t a real or major cause in many cases (bad governance is often a more important cause). And when it is, population control isn’t the answer. Technology, productivity, consumer adaptation, better governance etc. are more promising solutions.

And three more cartoons (it’s incredible how popular this topic is):

(image source, image source, image source)

Cultural Rights (11): Genocide

(photo showing the excavation of mass graves in Srebrenica)

What is genocide?

Genocide is the deliberate, systematic and violent destruction of a group (an ethnic, racial, religious, national or political group). This destruction can take many forms:

• the outright murder of (the majority of) the members of the group
• inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction
• measures intended to prevent births
• systematic rape as a means of terror and a means to “dilute” the identity of the group
• forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
• destroying the (cultural) identity of the group (forceful assimilation; imposition of a language, religion etc.)

“Systematic” is important here. Short-term outburst or pogrom type actions will probably not amount to genocide.

The “intent to destroy” is also crucial when labeling actions or campaigns as genocidal. The destruction, however, doesn’t have to be physical (i.e. large-scale murder). As is obvious from the list above, cultural destruction or destruction of the groups’ separate identity is also genocide.

Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide states that genocide is

“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group…”

The “in part” bit has led to some confusion. When is the part of the group that is being destroyed big enough to warrant the label of genocide? There is still some discussion about absolute numbers of victims, percentages of the total population of the group, degree of killing in the territory controlled by the killers etc.

Of all the generally recognized genocides that have taken place throughout human history, the most infamous ones occured in the 20th century (the Holocaust, Rwanda, Armenia, Cambodia, Stalin’s forced famines, Mao’s Great Leap Forward etc.).

Stages of genocide

Before a genocide is actually carried out, the perpetrators usually take a number of “preparatory” steps:

• dehumanization of a group (vermin, insects or diseases…)
• promotion of narratives of “us and them“
• hate propaganda, polarization
• criminalization of a group (group has to be eliminated “in order that we may live”; them or us)
• identification of victims (“yellow star”)
• concentration of victims (ghettos)
• mobilization of large numbers of perpetrators
• state support and logistical organization (arms, transport, training of militias etc.)

Causes of genocide

The causes of genocide are often hard to pin down. They include:

• long-lasting tensions
• imbalances in political power
• imbalances in wealth or economic power
• scarcity
• religious incompatibilities
• indoctrination and propaganda
• civil war
• ideals of cultural purity and autonomy
• ethnological constructs (e.g. the creation of “hutuness” in Rwanda) which get a life of their own
• colonial heritage
• outside indifference
• etc.

Intervention to stop genocide

Here’s a post on humanitarian intervention, and here’s another. Most people around the world agree that the international community should intervene to stop a genocide:

(source)

Plato, Democracy, and “Human Rights” (4): Real Theoretical Life

Plato

(please read part 1, part 2 and part 3 first)

In the ideal Platonic society, led by thinking people who use force to train others to become like them, there will be wellbeing because spiritual life, free from the slavery of nature and desires, is the only good life. It means freedom, the satisfaction of knowledge, and peace because the desires and passions of people are the main reason for strife. Also other reasons for strife, such as scarcity, will be eliminated by a planning state taking care of population and birth control. The number of citizens will no longer cause scarcity, envy, territorial expansion and other reasons to go to war. (More on population control).

So Plato started from an initially attractive premise, the importance of a thinking life compared to consumerism, but then issued a whole range of proposals to protect and promote this life which invariably lead to dictatorship. In all this, he is perhaps the classic example of the way in which the combined hostility to nature, materialism and the plurality of society causes hatred for democracy.

But even his premise is questionable. Is solitary reflection of the general, free from appearances and the particular, really the road to wisdom? Perhaps it is more correct to say that sense perception, expression, and hence the use of one’s body and the interaction with other bodies is the best way to gain knowledge. Much of science is still very material, and discussion, argumentation, deliberation and the testing of opinions through expression and discussion protected by human rights can radically improve our opinions.

We need interaction and communication with other people in order to think correctly, and even to think at all. Would we think without our parents and teachers, without speaking and listening to anyone, without engaging in the world of appearances? And would we be able to think more or less correctly without public interaction protected by a democracy and human rights, without venturing in the bigger world of appearances and without leaving our own small and private group of people? Thinking needs the public use of reason (see also this post on Kant). Thoughts are not something you develop on your own, not even in some small and closed group. You first need to listen to as many freely expressed thoughts as possible in order to develop your own thoughts, and then you need to test your own thoughts in confrontation with others.

By making your thoughts public and thus submitting them to scrutiny and tests by other people – first and foremost submitting them to those who are not your private or personal friends, because they might be too kind for you or too like-minded – you are forced to say how you came to have these thoughts and to give an account of the reasons why you have these thoughts instead of others. This will force you to reflect on your reasons and arguments, and, if necessary, to look for better ones. Giving a public account of your reasoning, or knowing in advance that you will give this account, makes you very critical of yourself and helps you avoid mistakes. Nobody wants to make a fool of himself.

The world of appearances, so disliked by Plato for its volatility and imperfection, actually improves the quality of thoughts because of the range of sources of information and opinions, because of the a priori self-criticism that it promotes and because of the a posteriori testing and objecting by other and not necessarily like-minded people (a phenomenon well known in the scientific community).

Giving a public account of your reasoning and arguments, taking objections into account, putting yourself in the place of someone else, think like someone else, look at things from another side or perspective, act as if you hold a contrary point of view, all this is possible only when different perspectives and different points of view are freely expressed. Human rights can help to achieve this. Without human rights, many valuable points of view or perspectives will not be made public, and many valuable objections and counter-arguments will not be known to someone defending a certain thought or idea. This can diminish the quality of the thought or idea in question and therefore it is difficult to understand how a theoretical life can benefit from the elimination of the world of appearances.

Knowledge can hence be defined in a way which is completely different from the Platonic, passive, lonely, anti-social, introvert, non-discursive contemplation. More on the problem of knowledge and politics here.

Parts 1, 2 and 3

The Causes of Poverty (5): Overpopulation

A few cartoons about overpopulation. I’ll try to show in this post how this is related to human rights.

(source)

 

(source)

(source unknown)

Some blame overpopulation for many of the world’s problems such as poverty, famine and war (which are obviously rights violations). There are supposed to be too many people for peaceful coexistence and sustainable food production. The areas of the world which are inhabitable and useable for agriculture are too small compared to the number of people living in them. These people are followers of Thomas Malthus or of malthusianism, and often even predict major catastrophes which will reduce the population significantly. They also advocate some quite draconian measures for limiting the human population.

Thomas Malthus

(source)

In scientific terms: overpopulation occurs when an organism’s numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat; carrying capacity = [available sustainable resources > current and projected needs of the organism].

For example, imagine a population of 10 living in a habitat of 10 square kilometers. These 10 square kilometers can produce food, drinking water, shelter etc. for 15. Then there is no overpopulation. But if the population grows or is expected to grow at a rate of 10% annually, without an equal or superior growth in resources, then overpopulation threatens. There would also be overpopulation if the material resources are adequate but other needs such as space, privacy etc. are not met. For example if the available space is too small to guarantee peaceful co-existence.

So overpopulation can result from changes in the population (increased births, reduced deaths, better healthcare, migration etc.) or from changes in the resources – material or psychological – in the habitat (for example desertification, natural disasters, technological innovations etc.), or from a combination of both.

The current state of the world’s population is the following:

• Present world population – 6,500,000,000 but unequal distribution of world population (see graphs below). The main population clusters are East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Europe.
• Average world growth rate – 1.4% annual, but also unequal distribution of growth rates: fastest growing areas are the Middle East – over 4.0% annual – and the slowest growing areas are Central and Eastern Europe – 0% or less. Southern Africa even sees negative growth rates as a result of the HIV epidemic.
• Forecasts are notoriously difficult but the world’s population is expected to rise by 40% to 9.1 billion by 2050.

Blaming everything on overpopulation is misguided and reductionist. Problems such as poverty and war have a complex set of causes, including in some but not all cases overpopulation, government policies, cultural factors, repercussions from colonialism, religion etc.

One can also question whether there is indeed a problem of overpopulation. Per capita food production has risen the last 50 years, and poverty (expressed as the number of people living on less than 1$ a day) has decreased while the population has increased. So poverty and war may not have anything to do with the size of the world’s population. However, ecological problems may have something to do with it. If so, the solution would surely not be population control, which is much too difficult and often dictatorial. Changes in consumption patterns are a much more promising route.