I never realized that Norman Borlaug was a Malthusian.

[GliderGuider]

Norman Borlaug was the father of the Green Revolution of the '60s and '70s, the architect of the life-saving food booms in Mexico and Asia. I'd always thought of Borlaug as the anti-Malthusian poster child, a technophile polyanna serenely convinced of the supremacy of science in the race to keep food production ahead of population growth. How wrong I was!

I finally got around to reading his Nobel lecture, in which I discovered the passage below:

The Green Revolution, Peace, and Humanity

The green revolution has won a temporary success in man's war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only.

Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the "Population Monster". In the beginning there were but two, Adam and Eve. When they appeared on this earth is still questionable. By the time of Christ, world population had probably reached 250 million. But between then and now, population has grown to 3.5 billion. Growth has been especially fast since the advent of modern medicine. If it continues to increase at the estimated present rate of two percent a year, the world population will reach 6.5 billion by the year 2000. Currently, with each second, or tick of the clock, about 2.2 additional people are added to the world population. The rhythm of increase will accelerate to 2.7, 3.3, and 4.0 for each tick of the clock by 1980, 1990, and 2000, respectively, unless man becomes more realistic and preoccupied about this impending doom. The ticktock of the clock will continually grow louder and more menacing each decade. Where will it all end?

Malthus signaled the danger a century and a half ago. But he emphasized principally the danger that population would increase faster than food supplies. In his time he could not foresee the tremendous increase in man's food production potential. Nor could he have foreseen the disturbing and destructive physical and mental consequences of the grotesque concentration of human beings into the poisoned and clangorous environment of pathologically hypertrophied megalopoles. Can human beings endure the strain? Abnormal stresses and strains tend to accentuate man's animal instincts and provoke irrational and socially disruptive behavior among the less stable individuals in the maddening crowd.

We must recognize the fact that adequate food is only the first requisite for life. For a decent and humane life we must also provide an opportunity for good education, remunerative employment, comfortable housing, good clothing, and effective and compassionate medical care. Unless we can do this, man may degenerate sooner from environmental diseases than from hunger.

And yet, I am optimistic for the future of mankind, for in all biological populations there are innate devices to adjust population growth to the carrying capacity of the environment. Undoubtedly, some such device exists in man, presumably Homo sapiens, but so far it has not asserted itself to bring into balance population growth and the carrying capacity of the environment on a worldwide scale. It would be disastrous for the species to continue to increase our human numbers madly until such innate devices take over. It is a test of the validity of sapiens as a species epithet.

Since man is potentially a rational being, however, I am confident that within the next two decades he will recognize the self-destructive course he steers along the road of irresponsible population growth and will adjust the growth rate to levels which will permit a decent standard of living for all mankind. If man is wise enough to make this decision and if all nations abandon their idolatry of Ares, Mars, and Thor, then Mankind itself should be the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize which is "to be awarded to the person who has done most to promote brotherhood among the nations".

Borlaug now seems to me the ultimate realist, except for his rather forlorn and qualified faith in man's inherent collective rationality. In any event that is a small quibble, and his desire to improve the lot of humanity is unquestionable. It will be interesting to see if our potential for rationality can be realized over the coming decades, or if Borlaug's gloomier Malthusian concerns come to rule the day.

[Warpy]

1. Malthusians are correct about too many people outstripping the food

supply, leading to population collapse. It happens that way in the animal world frequently enough that it's a no brainer.

However, people themselves do have brains, something ignored by Malthus and his followers, along with the cultural problems that lead to overpopulation.

It's been shown time after time in cultures all over the world that the way to lower the human birthrate is to raise the status of women. Women who have worth beyond the number of male children they crank out will stop trying to produce so many of them.

Unfortunately, Malthus, being male, was blind to the role of rabid patriarchy in causing overpopulation. We, however, have the data and can put the brakes on fairly easily if we choose to.

If we don't, climate change will reintroduce our whole species to the practical meaning of the word "famine."

[GliderGuider]

2. Single factors are rarely the answer in such complex subjects as population dynamics

The question of the underlying factors of population growth turns out to be quite tricky -- a lot more complex than I imagined when I began to look at it a few years ago. Back then it was emotionally satisfying to me to imagine that I had discovered a single strongly correlated parameter, but time and counter-arguments have broadened my position. My current view is that population growth is strongly multifactorial, and that the factors vary by region over time.

IMO the general driver behind population growth is our overall ability to control our environment and render it more benign for human beings. The main inputs to this control process appear to be energy, food supply and recorded knowledge. Wealth is the abstraction of this ability to control the world, while factors like health care, sanitation and communication are the significant enablers of that control. As knowledge accumulates over time (though writing and other recording technologies) the degree of our environmental control increases correspondingly. This gives rise not only to population growth, but to the growth of wealth, the growth in social complexity, the increasing exploitation of the non-human world and the subsequent degradation of the planetary environment. To simplify the idea, I think our fate was sealed when we developed writing.

I still think that humanity will bump up against biophysical limits to the growth of civilization, but I no longer think that will necessarily stop population growth. Certainly running into one limit alone probably will not do it. On the other hand, I'm a strong proponent of the idea that we live in a complex, interdependent system that is showing various signs of fragility and brittleness. If that is the case then a failure in one factor (like our energy supply) could have cascading effects into other areas. However, so long as we maintain the ability to record and communicate knowledge, we may find that the human condition can deteriorate very significantly without any overall reduction in our numbers.

I'm still a pessimist on the topic of voluntary, rational, global population control. Too many factors seem to be working against it, not least of which is our ability as individuals and as a species to behave unreasonably.

Population growth has been essentially linear for the last couple of decades, as we have added a constant 70 million people per year to the planet. This is a good sign because it means that our rate of growth is no longer exponential. However, we still have 70 million more mouths to feed each year. Borlaug would probably see a significant level of risk in that, given that he was hoping we would see a stabilization in our numbers well before now.

[kickysnana]

3. I checked his picture and I met him 7 years ago.

He stopped into a Lyme Disease support group asking about getting treatment for Lyme. He was feeling poorly after a tick bite and rash but could not get a diagnosis and treatment. Very nice man. We discussed how closely we were related.