The title of a recent article and accompanying video in the NY TImes has a quite ironic Title.
The Unrealized Horrors of Population Growth
dismisses the idea that the size of the human population could be a problem and in doing so goes on to skip over an amazing number of drastic crises facing humanity today.
[more across the DKOS Arabesque]
It is becoming increasingly clear that one of the reasons for dangerous state of humanity in the 21st century is the weird vacuity that passes for elite commentary these days. This article from the NY Times and the accompanying video critiquing Paul Ehrlich's book the population bomb illustrates everything I'm talking about:
1. Blithely dismiss climate change? Check.
2. Ignore water and soil depletion? Check.
3. Champion the green revolution without noticing that it's entirely oil dependent? Check.
4. Fail to discuss oil economics or depletion rates or production costs or EREOI (energy return on energy invested) in relation to any of the issues raised? Check.
5. No mention of ecological collapse (massive ocean dead zones, deforestation, long-term drought)? Check.
6. Blithely ignore the billions who HAVE died over the past 40 years from poverty and starvation for the exact reasons that are being discussed? Check.
I, too, do not agree with everything Ehrlich has said but in terms of discussing ecological collapse and understanding how that isn't something one can look at on a short time scale he's spot on. The irony of the Malthusean problem is that in order for it to be proven wrong we must continually accept that it's correct and seek to mitigate the potential consequences before they become too great.
I'm not really sure why the particular editorial line was taken and why the commentators (excluding Paul Ehrich himself) seem so enamoured of this particular line of propaganda. One does suspect that the incessant drum beat of growth as the core fundamental idea in economics and politics has become a sort of intellectual cancer. We seek to see things one way and try to make things fit that world view no matter what the facts are.
Another thought is that this video is badly edited. It is possible that a more nuanced argument between Paul and his detractors is going on regarding some of the more controversial elements to his vision and that is getting lost. However, one would think that the 23 journalists and researchers involved in this could have done a lot better job getting at the nature of the story here.
What Malthus observed hundreds of years ago is very similar to something like gravity. He saw a force of nature that the circumscribed limits of any ecological system places on a population. Humans, as one of the video's commentators states, are not like insects and can more readily affect their destinies. A bird that flies does not defy gravity so much as harness countervailing physical forces - aerodynamic lift. Humans are the same - as Malthusean pressures have pushed in we've found new ways to address them. And that may indeed continue indefinitely. But the only way that happens is for society to recognise not that Paul Ehrilch was wrong, but that without taking steps to address ecological collapse it will happen. It is already happening - just look at Syria or California. These problems, and they are legion (oceanic dead zones and pollution, desertification and deforestation, the ever increasing vice-like pressure on every system planet-wide created by global warming, fishery collapse, mass extinctions, soil erosion, water resource depletion, etc. etc. etc.) are not only not going away , they are getting drastically worse as time goes on.
When a group of smart, educated people examine a problem and miss so thoroughly the key issues involved, one has to ask: what is going on?