June 9, 2011 • 24 mins
Thomas Malthus concluded that humanity is bound to outgrow Earth's carrying capacity. The prediction was based on humanity's exponential growth and the linear growth of the food supply -- but was he correct? Tune in to find out.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chuck Bryant sitting across from me. Um, and
(00:24):
that makes the Stuff you Should Know the podcast? There
you go on the infur nation. That's far is Is
there somebody fast forwarding through this part right now? Huh? Yes?
So Chuck? Right it is Chuck. Yes. Still have you
noticed how often I say right? Yeah? It's mind numbing.
(00:44):
Plus someone will right in and say, do you know
usually right all the time? And um, it sounds like
I'm eating hard candy all the time. I know that's
not the case. You've never eaten anything in here. I
can attest to that. Uh yeah, I'm overly celebratory, okay, Chuck. Uh.
As you know, I was a student of anthropology, still
(01:05):
consider myself such um And I first came upon this
term called carrying capacity when I was I took this
life changing anthropology class, right uh And I don't remember
the teacher's name anymore, but he was awesome. He introduced
me to probably my favorite article or essay of all time. Uh,
(01:25):
the worst Mistake in the History of the human race,
right by Jared Diamond. Awesome stuff. Um any dustin Diamond
by Mike Diamond, by Jared Diamond, the guy who wrote
Collapse and Guns, Germs and steel and stuff. Um, that's
required reading in my opinion. I just think you should
that essay, not necessarily as books. Um, but this I
(01:48):
was also introduced to carrying capacity and this there's this
really cool video. He showed it to get the point across.
And it's just a map of the world, right, and
it's um it's there's red dots. It shows population growth
and each red dot equals I think a million people.
And so it starts out in Africa, in Ethiopia, I
believe the creadle of humanity. And it starts there and
(02:10):
all you know, very slowly, there's like a it's time
elapse obviously, so the years go by like that, and
um uh, like the red dots start appearing very slowly,
start moving out of Africa, spreading to Asia, to Europe
all that, and then um it starts to to pop
up around North America and South America and then all
(02:31):
of a sudden you get to the I think like
the sixteenth century, maybe a little later, the Industrial Revolution,
and all of a sudden, this map just goes red
and it's really jarring. It really gets to point across
it like how quickly population has grown in the world
and the impacts of it. You know, that's why he
(02:52):
coupled this with carrying capacity, because it's like, well, yeah,
population and growth. Who cares? Then you say, oh, well,
there's a limit to the amount of resources we have, um.
And that limit is called the carrying capacity of Earth,
meaning how much Earth can sustain human life. And there's
supposedly a point to it, right, Yeah, I got some stats.
(03:14):
There's my intro here. Here's a couple of stats, Josh,
the United Nations population Division estimates. Because five babies are
born every second, and you're like crying all that poop,
the world is going to have seven billion people by
years in they think seven billion. Yeah, we're at six
(03:37):
point nine two and change right now, So I mean
we're close. And um to to illustrate your point there
about the red dots spreading like a disease, that is humans, um,
fewer than a billion people in eighteen hundred. Yeah, it
was like eight hundred million. Eight hundred dude. That mean
it seems like ancient history, but it ain't that long ago.
(03:58):
Three billion people in nineteen sixty and only six billion
people as recently as nine. Between nineteen fifty, chuck in nine,
the global population doubled from two point five billion to
five billion. That is cra azy. And behind this, that's
what they call exponential growth. It's not just adding like
(04:20):
a million people a year slow. Insteady, you're adding a
fixed number. It's you're adding you know, population is doubling
in forty years. That's exponential growth. And that is the
basis of what a guy named Thomas Robert Malthus uh In,
an eighteenth century English clergyman, predicted in his essay Um,
(04:42):
an essay on the principle of population, basically saying human
growth is exponential. We have a big problem because the
growth of food is not. It's linear. It's right, and
we're in trouble eventually. And he was fairly controversial at
the time. He was debated by a lot of people,
one of which was this dude named William Godwin, and
(05:03):
he had a theory called the perfectibility of society, which
is basically, you know, did we we're humans and we
no matter how much we grow, we will be able
to counter that with advances and technology to allow us
to grow. So they debated like crazy. Godwin subsequently was
one of the first proponents of anarchism, and Malthus talked
(05:26):
about eugenics way back then before it was eugenics. He said,
I could see something like this being possible, but he
said it's probably not something we should do. And he
also incidentally was the one of the first people to
uh to support or popularize the economic theory of rent.
Really yeah, well he was just all over the place,
(05:48):
wouldn't he. Well, but all kind of ties into population
because eugenics tied into it because he was talking about
controlling population and rent, he theorized, was only possible with
a surplus of re sources um, which allows you to
own a second place and rent it or rent a
tool or you know whatever people renting man. So what
(06:10):
Mauthis is talking about is generally classified as economics, right,
but it's also it stretches into all sorts of dirty,
nasty little areas like greed, um ecology, population control. So eugenics,
um family planning, abortion and fanticide, all sorts of stuff. Um.
(06:31):
That has a lot of implications, far reaching implications, right,
And so I didn't realize that there was somebody who
was a contemporary of him that argued, like, no humans
will use technology to outstrip, to outpace this mauth Mouthusian
curse is what it's called. Right, Yeah, that was more
than God when there was a few people too. I
didn't realize that it was at the time, but I
(06:52):
know that over the centuries people have been like mauth Is,
that was a great idea, but you really missed the mark.
And we're gonna use you as an example of how
badly somebody can can get it wrong, right, Because it
wasn't just technology. There's another aspect of it called the
demographic transition, which is basically as um as we get
(07:13):
better with this technology, one of the things we come
up with this birth control um and while we're while
our mortality rates are are lowering, so to our fertility rates,
and we eventually come to this thing called the replacement rate,
which is two point one children per household leads to
(07:35):
zero population growth, right, And I think they set in
Western Europe the number was one point four in the
late nineties. Like some people are afraid that that Mauthis
was correct at this point, and other people say that,
like in Europe and Asia they worry about the opposite
because you know, they have the problem over there that
(07:55):
they're not enough young people to take care of the
retirees one day. Exactly, it's negative population growth. So who's
right they do estimate? Um, who's who they is? I
don't know, but it just said researchers estimate that population
is not gonna level off until mid century at about
nine billion. Well that's at best. If that's if we
do level off, we could continue to keep going the
(08:17):
rate we're at now, the replacement rate that leads to
zero population growth, which is two point one right now,
we're at two point six worldwide and with Africa UM
skewing us the other way. Subsidaria in Africa has about
a five point one fertility rate, which means for every
household there's five point one children born. Does that point
one child? You always feels so bad for hus the
(08:38):
knee down, you know, on one leg um. But the uh,
if we can get to zero population growth, then we're
not going to really have to deal with the Mauthusian
curse possibly ever, but we're not. Then that's that's but
that's one thing that's um that mouth Is didn't account
for is things like as society has become more educated,
(08:59):
fertility rates tend to drop dramatically. So that's that's another
way to put it off too. So he was scoffed at,
Like you said, there's a lot of people out there
who think he he was he missed the mark. But um,
people have been doing a little bit of math lately
and have figured out that, Um, it's entirely possible that
he's right. That's somewhere down the line, He's right. Yeah,
(09:20):
And at the basis we should say of Mouths, his
whole thing is a lack of food and water really,
and we need air, food, water, shelter and all that stuff.
But what he was mainly centered on was eventually the
food growth will not match up with the population growth.
And a billion people go hungry every day already. So
(09:42):
so I might argue that that's already the case. So
let's talk about carrying capacity, chuck Um, if we had
not transitioned, which we have, which kind of proves the
UM positive positivists camp Um that we can be technological.
If we hadn't transition from hunter gatherer to agriculture UM,
(10:03):
the care and capacity of Earth would have been reached
at about a hundred million people. Yes, because there's just
so many animals running around that we can kill. There's
only so many berries that are going to occur naturally
on the on the vine. Right. But we did transition
to agriculture UM before we hit the hundred million mark,
possibly maybe not UM farming, and we we began to
(10:28):
use technology which is growing crops to feed ourselves. And
then we reached another point right UM where we hit
what was called the green revolution, remember that UM, where
there was a lot of people who were saying about
a billion people are going to die because we are
(10:49):
no longer We're not going to be able to provide
food for all the people here. Um. We've we've come
up with great vaccines and all this other technology that's
lowering the mortality rate. But that just means people are
living longer and they need food longer over the over
their lifespan. Right, So what are we gonna do? Norman
Borlog comes along and says, you know what we're gonna
(11:10):
doing exactly tapioca pudding for everybody and a care bear
in every garage. No, they go ahead with what he
said because he was a genius. He said, we're gonna
maximize the yield that we get out of arable land.
We're not just gonna plant some seeds and be like,
hope you grow. We're going to apply tons of pesticide,
tons of fertilizer, and we're going to squeeze corn the
(11:34):
size of your torso out of every every plant. Right, Yeah,
he wasn't some like awful mad That sound makes him
sound like some awful mad scientists, though in the eyes
of a lot of environmentalists he he well, I mean
think about all the runoff, all the soil depletion. Also,
didn't he also want a Nobel Prize? Sure? Yeah, he's
(11:54):
credited with saving that billion people that were predicted to
starve because he came in just in time because Earth
would have reached this carrying capacity for agriculture. So we've
had at least two different events where we were able
to leap forward through technology and avoid the Malthusian curse. Right, Yes,
So there are people out there who say, well, you know,
we're we're we're going to avoid it again, but what
(12:16):
will that be? Sure and come up with another one.
So I'm sorry, chok, we would have hit the carrying
capacity a hundred million where we hunter gatherers? Right? What
are the predictions now? Well, they say, and this is
where what I think is really interesting and completely sad,
is that we have a potential caring capacity of two
billion to forty billion, clearly past the two So one
(12:39):
might ask, how can it be that big of a range,
And the answer is lifestyle. And here's a very sad
sat If the entire earth live like middle class Americans,
not the super rich, who you know, probably consume more
energy and the like than your average human, just regular
middle class American folks consume about three point three times
(13:02):
the subsistence level of food and two hundred and fifty
times the subsistence level of water clean water. And that
means the Earth if we if everyone was like us,
the Earth could only support about two billion people. So
what's going on is of the Earth is consuming I
don't have the percentage, but the other seventy percent of
(13:22):
the Earth is left with what's left, which is really
really it's just a it's a uh disparity in the
allocation of resources and that's consumed. So that's why it
can be a range of two billion to forty billion
because of the different lifestyles. If if everyone lived like
there would be plenty for everyone and no one would
be starving. No, if everybody lived like we would all
(13:46):
we would be like sorry, well the um Yeah, that's
that's where the forty billion number comes in. I've seen
thirty and I've seen forty on the high end for
the carrying capacity, and that's where every square inch of
arable land is being cultivated to its maximum yield, and
all people live in high rises that are as high
as we can build them right now, right um, And
(14:06):
we're mining UM asteroids for uh, for UM minerals and
all that. We're not we're no longer going we're no
longer going to the Earth. We're going into outer space. Possibly.
I don't think that that shouldn't have started about fifty
years ago, right um. But the that forty billion prediction
(14:28):
is um based on the absolute minimum requirements, and everybody,
forty billion people living on the planet UM all using
the minimum amount, which is four liters of water a
year and about three ms of food a year, mostly grains,
and you can basically kiss meat goodbye because we need
(14:48):
that land to grow our grains rather than grow grains
to feed cows, which is another way that the West
consumes resources more than more than its fair share through
a meat rich diet, which just you're not only eating
the meat, you're eating the grains that the meat ate. Right,
So chuck, and let me ask you something. If you
(15:12):
had if you went home and turned on your tap
and there was hot water and it was flowing, and
it was as much as you liked, right, would you
care how you were getting that? What do you mean
how it was being delivered through my faucet? Yes? Uh?
Is this the trict question? No, it's not. Let me rephrase.
If you went home and turned on your hot water
(15:35):
and there's as much hot water as you wanted, and
it was you knew it was coming from a sustainable source,
would you care if it was sustainable? Yeah? I guess not.
But I'm kind of like a water saver. So your
water saver. What if you knew you didn't really have
to save water because it was so sustainable, you wouldn't care.
(15:55):
No one cares as long as we have the luxuries
that were afforded. It does, and you don't care if
it came from burning banana appeals, No one cares. The
problem is that the problem with the course that we're
on apparently right now, is that we are um using
technology not to get more from less, but to get
(16:18):
more from more, more cheaply. Right. Yeah, it's um it's
a uniquely human thing they call it in the article,
which is pretty much true. But technological advancement is in
many ways leading to our habitat destruction. Ideally, at this
point everyone would be on solar and the massive companies
(16:38):
would be solar powered and all that kind of thing.
And that's another great point is you know, you don't
care where your electricity comes from. Do you care if
it comes from a solar panel or wind? No, of
course you don't. You just want your electricity. So if
we had invested, or if we could invest our technological
advances into um get what we have now from less
(17:02):
from solar radiation or wind power, then we would be
that that's true cutting edge technology, rather than you know,
figuring out ways to deplete things faster, more cheaply, which
is the way we're going. Yeah, like thinking of let's
say a more efficient oil driller or a more efficient
(17:23):
way of getting coal from a mountain, i e. Mountaintop removal.
So they're using technology, but they're using in ways that
are also destroying the habitat. And sustainability is all about
finding the right balance in your habitat. So here's here's
the conclusion I came to from reading this right the
argument from the positivists camp. I don't even think I'm
(17:45):
using that word correctly. But um, the people who are
the optimists camp, sure duh, right are Um they're saying, no,
mouth has was incorrect because he failed to account for
human ingenuity. And as population grows, so to do the
number of geniuses, and that's where innovation comes from. Right, Um.
(18:09):
The I think the the optimists are missing a point
in their model, and that is greed. You can't really
sway greed to to benefit human ecology, can you know?
And you can't convince an entire population of people to
(18:30):
change their lifestyles, which is what it would take. That's
what I'm saying you you can't because they don't care.
But if you could deliver them that same amount of
hot water, that same electricity, and it was coming from
a sustainable source. No one's going to fight that, right.
It's having to get them to fight that fight to
get the people who are controlling it to change over.
(18:53):
They're not going to do that. So there's that fatal
flaw in that model that the gloom and doom camp
has over the UM optimist camp, and that they don't
account for for greed. Have you ever seen who killed
the electric car? No? I never did. I encourage people
to see that. That's pretty scary. The e V one was.
I mean, I don't know if you remember, but the
(19:14):
e V one was. It was ready to go. There
were TV commercials you can look up EV one commercial
on YouTube and they were running them on television. Electric
electric cars are here, They're not coming, they are here,
and boom it was gone. Yeah, I'll check it out
and I'll give you a few guesses as to why
it left so quickly. And not only were they gone, dude,
(19:36):
they literally gathered them all up and crushed them many time. Exactly. Yeah, sad,
but go go rented. It's cool. Yeah, and um powerful
lobbies out there. What else you got? I got nothing, man.
This is this is a good one to chew on
for people. I think I think so too. We just
(19:56):
encourage people like we always do, just to you know,
we're not saying, you know, quit your job and go
like build solar panels for a living and live on
a on a wind farm. You can do that, that'd
be awesome. But little little things, little positive steps, they've
say a little water, say a little power. I disagree, man,
what I don't think the onus is on the people.
I think the onus is on the the people who
(20:18):
are misdirecting technological advancement. I'd say it's on bothagree you
don't think that this is on the people to conserve
I think I think it. I think it is. I
think we've put it on the people, but I don't
think it's going to make enough of an impact. All right,
(20:39):
I think it's on the policy makers. That's who I
think it's on. I would I think I think it's
on both. Um. Okay, well that's a debate to be
played out on the Facebook page if you ask me, right, yeah, man,
we should set a form um. So if you want
to learn more, type and has the Earth reached its
carrying capacity? Or Thomas Malthus M A L T h
U s in this search part how stuff works dot Com.
(21:01):
It will bring up some pretty cool stuff. Well, then
that means it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh,
I'm gonna call this, uh, how to make a my
teenage son listen to your show from Portland, Oregon. Hi,
guys and Jerry. When you have a teenager, you will
quickly learn that you can't just tell them what to
do and expect them to do it. I remember those days.
(21:23):
It's so frustrating because as a parent, you know that
your kid will love something and get lots out of it,
but you can't come right out and say it, or
they will never ever try the thing you told them
to try. For example, your podcast. I knew for a fact,
like I know that it will reign in Portland, that
my thirteen year old son Ethan would really love stuff.
You should know because I love the podcast. I've turned
other people onto it and they love it. But I
(21:45):
knew I had to be sneaky in order for my
son to give it a try. Ethan is a fencer
and at the time was also working on a research
project about Renaissance jousting and tournaments. So one Saturday I
was working in the kitchen. I played how nights were
Uh to catch his interest. Every time he came in
the kitchen, I'd hit play. When he leave, I'd hit pause.
(22:08):
I would figure he would just think, Man, these guys
take a long time to finish the center. He would
hang around the kitchen longer and longer each time, and
I could tell I almost had him on the line
like I was noodling. Although you would say I had
him on the arm. Yeah, there's no mine. When it
was over, he said he already knew everything you talked
about in the podcast, but I could tell he was intrigued.
Then I hit him with the Scooby Doo Show and
(22:29):
that was it. You had another fan. Now he has
downloaded the app for his iPod and listens each night
as he's going to sleep. And that tent, Yeah, that's
from Afton in a very sneaky mom thank you in Portland, Oregon.
That also kind of ties into the Colts and Brainwashing
episodes two, didn't it? Yeah? And she said um. When
(22:50):
she replied, I asked her if I could read this.
She said sure, And she said, I guess he'll know
my little trick now, but he'll get such a kick
out of being mentioned Ethan the fencer, he will forget
the yeah, and at least he can rest assured that
she's not like putting anything in his soup to get
him to do what she wants. She uses more subtle
tactics than that. Right. I wish you could put something
(23:11):
in soup to make people listen to this. I'd be
putting it in soup. Yeah, that's a good idea. I
put it in all soups. I'll tell you what, if
you have any suggestions of what we can put in
people's soup to get them to listen to stuff you
should know and to get them to go give us
a review on iTunes. Huh, yeah, that that helps us out.
When you do that, Uh, you should send us an
(23:32):
email and you should send it to a specific email dress.
That is stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
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(23:58):
to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camery. It's ready,
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chuck Bryant sitting across from me. Um, and
(00:24):
that makes the Stuff you Should Know the podcast? There
you go on the infur nation. That's far is Is
there somebody fast forwarding through this part right now? Huh? Yes?
So Chuck? Right it is Chuck. Yes. Still have you
noticed how often I say right? Yeah? It's mind numbing.
(00:44):
Plus someone will right in and say, do you know
usually right all the time? And um, it sounds like
I'm eating hard candy all the time. I know that's
not the case. You've never eaten anything in here. I
can attest to that. Uh yeah, I'm overly celebratory, okay, Chuck. Uh.
As you know, I was a student of anthropology, still
(01:05):
consider myself such um And I first came upon this
term called carrying capacity when I was I took this
life changing anthropology class, right uh And I don't remember
the teacher's name anymore, but he was awesome. He introduced
me to probably my favorite article or essay of all time. Uh,
(01:25):
the worst Mistake in the History of the human race,
right by Jared Diamond. Awesome stuff. Um any dustin Diamond
by Mike Diamond, by Jared Diamond, the guy who wrote
Collapse and Guns, Germs and steel and stuff. Um, that's
required reading in my opinion. I just think you should
that essay, not necessarily as books. Um, but this I
(01:48):
was also introduced to carrying capacity and this there's this
really cool video. He showed it to get the point across.
And it's just a map of the world, right, and
it's um it's there's red dots. It shows population growth
and each red dot equals I think a million people.
And so it starts out in Africa, in Ethiopia, I
believe the creadle of humanity. And it starts there and
(02:10):
all you know, very slowly, there's like a it's time
elapse obviously, so the years go by like that, and
um uh, like the red dots start appearing very slowly,
start moving out of Africa, spreading to Asia, to Europe
all that, and then um it starts to to pop
up around North America and South America and then all
(02:31):
of a sudden you get to the I think like
the sixteenth century, maybe a little later, the Industrial Revolution,
and all of a sudden, this map just goes red
and it's really jarring. It really gets to point across
it like how quickly population has grown in the world
and the impacts of it. You know, that's why he
(02:52):
coupled this with carrying capacity, because it's like, well, yeah,
population and growth. Who cares? Then you say, oh, well,
there's a limit to the amount of resources we have, um.
And that limit is called the carrying capacity of Earth,
meaning how much Earth can sustain human life. And there's
supposedly a point to it, right, Yeah, I got some stats.
(03:14):
There's my intro here. Here's a couple of stats, Josh,
the United Nations population Division estimates. Because five babies are
born every second, and you're like crying all that poop,
the world is going to have seven billion people by
years in they think seven billion. Yeah, we're at six
(03:37):
point nine two and change right now, So I mean
we're close. And um to to illustrate your point there
about the red dots spreading like a disease, that is humans, um,
fewer than a billion people in eighteen hundred. Yeah, it
was like eight hundred million. Eight hundred dude. That mean
it seems like ancient history, but it ain't that long ago.
(03:58):
Three billion people in nineteen sixty and only six billion
people as recently as nine. Between nineteen fifty, chuck in nine,
the global population doubled from two point five billion to
five billion. That is cra azy. And behind this, that's
what they call exponential growth. It's not just adding like
(04:20):
a million people a year slow. Insteady, you're adding a
fixed number. It's you're adding you know, population is doubling
in forty years. That's exponential growth. And that is the
basis of what a guy named Thomas Robert Malthus uh In,
an eighteenth century English clergyman, predicted in his essay Um,
(04:42):
an essay on the principle of population, basically saying human
growth is exponential. We have a big problem because the
growth of food is not. It's linear. It's right, and
we're in trouble eventually. And he was fairly controversial at
the time. He was debated by a lot of people,
one of which was this dude named William Godwin, and
(05:03):
he had a theory called the perfectibility of society, which
is basically, you know, did we we're humans and we
no matter how much we grow, we will be able
to counter that with advances and technology to allow us
to grow. So they debated like crazy. Godwin subsequently was
one of the first proponents of anarchism, and Malthus talked
(05:26):
about eugenics way back then before it was eugenics. He said,
I could see something like this being possible, but he
said it's probably not something we should do. And he
also incidentally was the one of the first people to
uh to support or popularize the economic theory of rent.
Really yeah, well he was just all over the place,
(05:48):
wouldn't he. Well, but all kind of ties into population
because eugenics tied into it because he was talking about
controlling population and rent, he theorized, was only possible with
a surplus of re sources um, which allows you to
own a second place and rent it or rent a
tool or you know whatever people renting man. So what
(06:10):
Mauthis is talking about is generally classified as economics, right,
but it's also it stretches into all sorts of dirty,
nasty little areas like greed, um ecology, population control. So eugenics,
um family planning, abortion and fanticide, all sorts of stuff. Um.
(06:31):
That has a lot of implications, far reaching implications, right,
And so I didn't realize that there was somebody who
was a contemporary of him that argued, like, no humans
will use technology to outstrip, to outpace this mauth Mouthusian
curse is what it's called. Right, Yeah, that was more
than God when there was a few people too. I
didn't realize that it was at the time, but I
(06:52):
know that over the centuries people have been like mauth Is,
that was a great idea, but you really missed the mark.
And we're gonna use you as an example of how
badly somebody can can get it wrong, right, Because it
wasn't just technology. There's another aspect of it called the
demographic transition, which is basically as um as we get
(07:13):
better with this technology, one of the things we come
up with this birth control um and while we're while
our mortality rates are are lowering, so to our fertility rates,
and we eventually come to this thing called the replacement rate,
which is two point one children per household leads to
(07:35):
zero population growth, right, And I think they set in
Western Europe the number was one point four in the
late nineties. Like some people are afraid that that Mauthis
was correct at this point, and other people say that,
like in Europe and Asia they worry about the opposite
because you know, they have the problem over there that
(07:55):
they're not enough young people to take care of the
retirees one day. Exactly, it's negative population growth. So who's
right they do estimate? Um, who's who they is? I
don't know, but it just said researchers estimate that population
is not gonna level off until mid century at about
nine billion. Well that's at best. If that's if we
do level off, we could continue to keep going the
(08:17):
rate we're at now, the replacement rate that leads to
zero population growth, which is two point one right now,
we're at two point six worldwide and with Africa UM
skewing us the other way. Subsidaria in Africa has about
a five point one fertility rate, which means for every
household there's five point one children born. Does that point
one child? You always feels so bad for hus the
(08:38):
knee down, you know, on one leg um. But the uh,
if we can get to zero population growth, then we're
not going to really have to deal with the Mauthusian
curse possibly ever, but we're not. Then that's that's but
that's one thing that's um that mouth Is didn't account
for is things like as society has become more educated,
(08:59):
fertility rates tend to drop dramatically. So that's that's another
way to put it off too. So he was scoffed at,
Like you said, there's a lot of people out there
who think he he was he missed the mark. But um,
people have been doing a little bit of math lately
and have figured out that, Um, it's entirely possible that
he's right. That's somewhere down the line, He's right. Yeah,
(09:20):
And at the basis we should say of Mouths, his
whole thing is a lack of food and water really,
and we need air, food, water, shelter and all that stuff.
But what he was mainly centered on was eventually the
food growth will not match up with the population growth.
And a billion people go hungry every day already. So
(09:42):
so I might argue that that's already the case. So
let's talk about carrying capacity, chuck Um, if we had
not transitioned, which we have, which kind of proves the
UM positive positivists camp Um that we can be technological.
If we hadn't transition from hunter gatherer to agriculture UM,
(10:03):
the care and capacity of Earth would have been reached
at about a hundred million people. Yes, because there's just
so many animals running around that we can kill. There's
only so many berries that are going to occur naturally
on the on the vine. Right. But we did transition
to agriculture UM before we hit the hundred million mark,
possibly maybe not UM farming, and we we began to
(10:28):
use technology which is growing crops to feed ourselves. And
then we reached another point right UM where we hit
what was called the green revolution, remember that UM, where
there was a lot of people who were saying about
a billion people are going to die because we are
(10:49):
no longer We're not going to be able to provide
food for all the people here. Um. We've we've come
up with great vaccines and all this other technology that's
lowering the mortality rate. But that just means people are
living longer and they need food longer over the over
their lifespan. Right, So what are we gonna do? Norman
Borlog comes along and says, you know what we're gonna
(11:10):
doing exactly tapioca pudding for everybody and a care bear
in every garage. No, they go ahead with what he
said because he was a genius. He said, we're gonna
maximize the yield that we get out of arable land.
We're not just gonna plant some seeds and be like,
hope you grow. We're going to apply tons of pesticide,
tons of fertilizer, and we're going to squeeze corn the
(11:34):
size of your torso out of every every plant. Right, Yeah,
he wasn't some like awful mad That sound makes him
sound like some awful mad scientists, though in the eyes
of a lot of environmentalists he he well, I mean
think about all the runoff, all the soil depletion. Also,
didn't he also want a Nobel Prize? Sure? Yeah, he's
(11:54):
credited with saving that billion people that were predicted to
starve because he came in just in time because Earth
would have reached this carrying capacity for agriculture. So we've
had at least two different events where we were able
to leap forward through technology and avoid the Malthusian curse. Right, Yes,
So there are people out there who say, well, you know,
we're we're we're going to avoid it again, but what
(12:16):
will that be? Sure and come up with another one.
So I'm sorry, chok, we would have hit the carrying
capacity a hundred million where we hunter gatherers? Right? What
are the predictions now? Well, they say, and this is
where what I think is really interesting and completely sad,
is that we have a potential caring capacity of two
billion to forty billion, clearly past the two So one
(12:39):
might ask, how can it be that big of a range,
And the answer is lifestyle. And here's a very sad
sat If the entire earth live like middle class Americans,
not the super rich, who you know, probably consume more
energy and the like than your average human, just regular
middle class American folks consume about three point three times
(13:02):
the subsistence level of food and two hundred and fifty
times the subsistence level of water clean water. And that
means the Earth if we if everyone was like us,
the Earth could only support about two billion people. So
what's going on is of the Earth is consuming I
don't have the percentage, but the other seventy percent of
(13:22):
the Earth is left with what's left, which is really
really it's just a it's a uh disparity in the
allocation of resources and that's consumed. So that's why it
can be a range of two billion to forty billion
because of the different lifestyles. If if everyone lived like
there would be plenty for everyone and no one would
be starving. No, if everybody lived like we would all
(13:46):
we would be like sorry, well the um Yeah, that's
that's where the forty billion number comes in. I've seen
thirty and I've seen forty on the high end for
the carrying capacity, and that's where every square inch of
arable land is being cultivated to its maximum yield, and
all people live in high rises that are as high
as we can build them right now, right um, And
(14:06):
we're mining UM asteroids for uh, for UM minerals and
all that. We're not we're no longer going we're no
longer going to the Earth. We're going into outer space. Possibly.
I don't think that that shouldn't have started about fifty
years ago, right um. But the that forty billion prediction
(14:28):
is um based on the absolute minimum requirements, and everybody,
forty billion people living on the planet UM all using
the minimum amount, which is four liters of water a
year and about three ms of food a year, mostly grains,
and you can basically kiss meat goodbye because we need
(14:48):
that land to grow our grains rather than grow grains
to feed cows, which is another way that the West
consumes resources more than more than its fair share through
a meat rich diet, which just you're not only eating
the meat, you're eating the grains that the meat ate. Right,
So chuck, and let me ask you something. If you
(15:12):
had if you went home and turned on your tap
and there was hot water and it was flowing, and
it was as much as you liked, right, would you
care how you were getting that? What do you mean
how it was being delivered through my faucet? Yes? Uh?
Is this the trict question? No, it's not. Let me rephrase.
If you went home and turned on your hot water
(15:35):
and there's as much hot water as you wanted, and
it was you knew it was coming from a sustainable source,
would you care if it was sustainable? Yeah? I guess not.
But I'm kind of like a water saver. So your
water saver. What if you knew you didn't really have
to save water because it was so sustainable, you wouldn't care.
(15:55):
No one cares as long as we have the luxuries
that were afforded. It does, and you don't care if
it came from burning banana appeals, No one cares. The
problem is that the problem with the course that we're
on apparently right now, is that we are um using
technology not to get more from less, but to get
(16:18):
more from more, more cheaply. Right. Yeah, it's um it's
a uniquely human thing they call it in the article,
which is pretty much true. But technological advancement is in
many ways leading to our habitat destruction. Ideally, at this
point everyone would be on solar and the massive companies
(16:38):
would be solar powered and all that kind of thing.
And that's another great point is you know, you don't
care where your electricity comes from. Do you care if
it comes from a solar panel or wind? No, of
course you don't. You just want your electricity. So if
we had invested, or if we could invest our technological
advances into um get what we have now from less
(17:02):
from solar radiation or wind power, then we would be
that that's true cutting edge technology, rather than you know,
figuring out ways to deplete things faster, more cheaply, which
is the way we're going. Yeah, like thinking of let's
say a more efficient oil driller or a more efficient
(17:23):
way of getting coal from a mountain, i e. Mountaintop removal.
So they're using technology, but they're using in ways that
are also destroying the habitat. And sustainability is all about
finding the right balance in your habitat. So here's here's
the conclusion I came to from reading this right the
argument from the positivists camp. I don't even think I'm
(17:45):
using that word correctly. But um, the people who are
the optimists camp, sure duh, right are Um they're saying, no,
mouth has was incorrect because he failed to account for
human ingenuity. And as population grows, so to do the
number of geniuses, and that's where innovation comes from. Right, Um.
(18:09):
The I think the the optimists are missing a point
in their model, and that is greed. You can't really
sway greed to to benefit human ecology, can you know?
And you can't convince an entire population of people to
(18:30):
change their lifestyles, which is what it would take. That's
what I'm saying you you can't because they don't care.
But if you could deliver them that same amount of
hot water, that same electricity, and it was coming from
a sustainable source. No one's going to fight that, right.
It's having to get them to fight that fight to
get the people who are controlling it to change over.
(18:53):
They're not going to do that. So there's that fatal
flaw in that model that the gloom and doom camp
has over the UM optimist camp, and that they don't
account for for greed. Have you ever seen who killed
the electric car? No? I never did. I encourage people
to see that. That's pretty scary. The e V one was.
I mean, I don't know if you remember, but the
(19:14):
e V one was. It was ready to go. There
were TV commercials you can look up EV one commercial
on YouTube and they were running them on television. Electric
electric cars are here, They're not coming, they are here,
and boom it was gone. Yeah, I'll check it out
and I'll give you a few guesses as to why
it left so quickly. And not only were they gone, dude,
(19:36):
they literally gathered them all up and crushed them many time. Exactly. Yeah, sad,
but go go rented. It's cool. Yeah, and um powerful
lobbies out there. What else you got? I got nothing, man.
This is this is a good one to chew on
for people. I think I think so too. We just
(19:56):
encourage people like we always do, just to you know,
we're not saying, you know, quit your job and go
like build solar panels for a living and live on
a on a wind farm. You can do that, that'd
be awesome. But little little things, little positive steps, they've
say a little water, say a little power. I disagree, man,
what I don't think the onus is on the people.
I think the onus is on the the people who
(20:18):
are misdirecting technological advancement. I'd say it's on bothagree you
don't think that this is on the people to conserve
I think I think it. I think it is. I
think we've put it on the people, but I don't
think it's going to make enough of an impact. All right,
(20:39):
I think it's on the policy makers. That's who I
think it's on. I would I think I think it's
on both. Um. Okay, well that's a debate to be
played out on the Facebook page if you ask me, right, yeah, man,
we should set a form um. So if you want
to learn more, type and has the Earth reached its
carrying capacity? Or Thomas Malthus M A L T h
U s in this search part how stuff works dot Com.
(21:01):
It will bring up some pretty cool stuff. Well, then
that means it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh,
I'm gonna call this, uh, how to make a my
teenage son listen to your show from Portland, Oregon. Hi,
guys and Jerry. When you have a teenager, you will
quickly learn that you can't just tell them what to
do and expect them to do it. I remember those days.
(21:23):
It's so frustrating because as a parent, you know that
your kid will love something and get lots out of it,
but you can't come right out and say it, or
they will never ever try the thing you told them
to try. For example, your podcast. I knew for a fact,
like I know that it will reign in Portland, that
my thirteen year old son Ethan would really love stuff.
You should know because I love the podcast. I've turned
other people onto it and they love it. But I
(21:45):
knew I had to be sneaky in order for my
son to give it a try. Ethan is a fencer
and at the time was also working on a research
project about Renaissance jousting and tournaments. So one Saturday I
was working in the kitchen. I played how nights were
Uh to catch his interest. Every time he came in
the kitchen, I'd hit play. When he leave, I'd hit pause.
(22:08):
I would figure he would just think, Man, these guys
take a long time to finish the center. He would
hang around the kitchen longer and longer each time, and
I could tell I almost had him on the line
like I was noodling. Although you would say I had
him on the arm. Yeah, there's no mine. When it
was over, he said he already knew everything you talked
about in the podcast, but I could tell he was intrigued.
Then I hit him with the Scooby Doo Show and
(22:29):
that was it. You had another fan. Now he has
downloaded the app for his iPod and listens each night
as he's going to sleep. And that tent, Yeah, that's
from Afton in a very sneaky mom thank you in Portland, Oregon.
That also kind of ties into the Colts and Brainwashing
episodes two, didn't it? Yeah? And she said um. When
(22:50):
she replied, I asked her if I could read this.
She said sure, And she said, I guess he'll know
my little trick now, but he'll get such a kick
out of being mentioned Ethan the fencer, he will forget
the yeah, and at least he can rest assured that
she's not like putting anything in his soup to get
him to do what she wants. She uses more subtle
tactics than that. Right. I wish you could put something
(23:11):
in soup to make people listen to this. I'd be
putting it in soup. Yeah, that's a good idea. I
put it in all soups. I'll tell you what, if
you have any suggestions of what we can put in
people's soup to get them to listen to stuff you
should know and to get them to go give us
a review on iTunes. Huh, yeah, that that helps us out.
When you do that, Uh, you should send us an
(23:32):
email and you should send it to a specific email dress.
That is stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought
(23:58):
to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camery. It's ready,
are you
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