"7,000,000,000"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“7,000,000,000”

October 26, 2011

As regular as Halloween ghosts, and with the effrontery of Al Gore lamenting the melting of ice floes, every few years a new crop of Malthusians appears, frightening the populace with fears of overcrowding and a coming shortage of food and fresh water. Recent Cassandras have included Joel E. Cohen, a mathematical biologist from Rockefeller University who wrote an op-ed in Monday’s New York Times and Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia who noted, regarding the seven billionth baby, “the consequences for humanity could be grim.” The New Yorker, according to William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, has thrown gasoline on this fire, concluding recently that Malthus was not wrong, just early.

What prompted the New York Times to print this op-ed is the significance of an enormous sign outside the United Nations with a number on it – 7,000,000,000 – the number of people the earth is expected to reach sometime next week. The adamancy of the anti-natalists appears to know no bounds. That poor child, who starts the world on the path toward eight billion, risks growing up under the cloud that he or she bears sole responsibility for tipping the scales toward annihilation by starvation and drought.

In 1798, with the earth housing less than a billion people, Thomas Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population in which he predicted that the world’s population would outstrip its food supply by the middle of the 19th Century. In using static analysis, he failed to anticipate the industrial revolution. A hundred and seventy years later, in 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote a best-seller, The Population Bomb , in which he predicted mass starvation in the 1970s. Four years later, with the world population approaching four billion, the Club of Rome commissioned The Limits to Growth, which raised awareness as to the interdependency between natural resources (limited) and population growth (potentially unlimited.) Again, their warnings proved to be more hype than real. Since then the earth has accumulated another three billion people, as overall living standards improved. While it is certainly true that millions are still starving, that is more due to dysfunctional governments than a question of agriculture, as can be seen in places like Somalia and Ethiopia.

Ironically, two years earlier, in 1970, Norman Borlaug, an agronomist, received the Nobel Peace Prize. In the 1940s, with the spectre of starvation a real possibility, Professor Borlaug developed genetically unique strains of “semidwarf” wheat and later rice, that raised food yields as much as six fold. In granting the prize, the Nobel Committee stated that “more than any other person of this age he has helped provide bread for a hungry world.” The Wall Street Journal, at the time of his death in 2009, noted: “Borlaug showed that nature is no match for human ingenuity in setting the real limits to growth.” According to Wikipedia, Norman Borlaug was credited with saving more than a billion people. Instead of deploring population growth, he did something about it.

The world, as Joel Cohen points out in his op-ed in the Times, has become bifurcated, with the developed world – the U.S. being a notable exception – exhibiting declining populations. Meanwhile, the developing world – in this case with China being the most notable exception – continues to show positive population growth. The net result, as Professor Cohen notes, is that the average number of children per woman has fallen to 2.5 today from 5 in 1950. Wealth, education and birth control are distinctly having an impact on birth rates, and that trend is likely to persist.

Much is made by Joel Cohen at the increasing rate with which the world keeps adding another billion. The first billion took tens of thousands of years until about 1810 – the second, 120 years; the third 29 years and the fourth 16 years. The most recent increase, a 17% gain, took 13 years. Each time we add a billion the percent gain declines, making adjustment for people easier. Of course there is a maximum. The earth is not expanding, so predictions of an apocalyptical end to humankind, at some point, will be proven correct. But that point is likely to be thousands of years into the future. Thus far man’s ingenuity in finding better and less expensive ways of feeding himself has exceeded his ability, or willingness, to procreate.

The bigger and far more immediate problem is the one of aging, a subject I have written on frequently . At the end of his op-ed, Professor Cohen does comment on this looming problem. He writes, “In 1950, for each person 65 and older, there were six children under 15. By 2070, elderly people will outnumber children under 15.”

If one looks to the immediate past, one should conclude that economic development will likely result in continued declining birthrates and that scientific development, in terms of genetically modified seeds and improved fertilizers, will continue to improve the productivity of arable land. Desalinization plants will help with water shortages. But just as it was impossible to anticipate the changes that have occurred over the past two hundred years, my guess is that human creativity will continue to surprise. As William McGurn wrote in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal: “Instead of looking for ways to reduce the number of people at the banquet of life, we would do better to look for ways to lay a better and more bounteous table.” That is exactly what markets have been doing since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. As long as man is permitted to be creative and innovative, there is no reason to expect the trend not to continue.

Overpopulation may prove to be a problem. On the other hand, an aging population is a problem, one that needs to be addressed very soon.