Is it a Food Issue, or a Population Issue?
In his Success Principles series, Chris Cree at SuccessCREEations recently talked about Uintended Consequences. It interesting, well written, and makes the important point that we tend to be short sighted in our decision making and actions, and before making decisions we need to take the time to try to think through some of the possible consequences of the decision.
Chris uses the current debate regarding using corn to make methanol to illustrate his point. For the purposes of this article, this is what I'm more interested in. I don't think he takes it far enough.
Here we have a limited resource - corn. Take it one step further back, though, and the limited resource we are really talking about is arable land. If you take a look at the Global Environmental Outlook 2000 you will see that per capita arable land has decreased worldwide over the last thirty years. Most of this decrease is due to increasing population, urbanization, and road building. In the US, per capita arable land decreased from over 100 acres/person before 1800 to 1.8 acres/person now, with the prediction that it will fall to 0.6 acres/person by 2050, only half of what is needed to sustain our current diet (Not that our current diet should be sustained at our current level. It is responsible for a great many of our medical woes.). China, which has sustained itself for 4000 years, is in even more dire straits. Even now it has only .25 acre/person of arable land. Due to increasing population, even in the face of draconian population control laws, and the environmental disasters that have led to the loss of 10% pf its arable land in recent years, this can only go down.
What we're seeing here is that the issue isn't what to do about food, but what to do about human population increases.
In the 1970s there was a movement in the US favoring zero population growth. This movement was primarily fueled by environmental concerns. In the West, its goal of zero population growth has been largely met. If not for immigration, the population of Europe and the US would be falling. Japan, too, has a birthrate below the replacement level.
So how does the West differ from most of the rest of the world. One, it has a relatively high per capita income. Two, it has a relatively high education level. Three, the per capita energy use is high. The correlation between income and education level is well known. The correlation between income level and energy use is becoming better known and can be seen here.
These three things - education, income, energy - form a virtuous web, each feeding the other, allowing the standard of living to rise and population increases to slow down. If you want to assist in decreasing global population growth, your efforts are best spent in one of these three areas.
Here are some links that can aid you in this quest. These are by no means complete, optimal, or even comprehensive. The goal is to have a starting point that focuses on agencies that encourage sustainable technology, basic education, and individual economic development.
Economic Development
Energy Development
Green Development
Practical Action
Education
Charities Working in Africa
The Peace Corps
Interesting correlation, Rick.
My concern is that there seems to be a growing movement that looks to address the population challenge by effectively killing off people. I've heard from a few different quarters how humans are a "virus" "overwhelming" and "killing" the planet.
If that's the way some folks see mankind, they aren't likely to care all that much if a particular environmental policy (such as the ethanol rules that prompted this whole discussion in the first place) leads to mass starvation.
I'm all for conservation. But putting the environment and legitimately debatable theories like Global Warming before people doesn't work for me.
By the way, I like the new theme. Haven't been over here off the RSS in a while. Looks Great! Very clean and readable.
Thank you for the theme compliments, Chris.
Funny you should bring that up about some quarters seeing humans as a virus. After I posted this I was thinking about some of the environmentalist cant. Many point out reasons why any offered solutions to environmental problems are a bad idea. The major alternatives to burning coal and oil are the sun, wind, water, biofuels, nuclear, and space based solar. I've seen people argue against all of these for reasons ranging from efficiency to aesthetics. I've come to the conclusion that they just don't like people, period. This same attitude, carried to it's logical extreme, frames life itself as a stain on the planet since there was a completely different atmospheric makeup here before life developed.
I'm a firm believer in using things trusted to my care wisely and responsibly. And I even extend that to my piece of the planet.
But I get the feeling there are folks in the environmental movement that prefer humans would simply cease to exist so there will be "zero impact".
I totally don't get the logic in that view.
Nor do I, Chris. Nor do I.
Something has to be done with our population problem indeed. We can't go on like this forever. It a concern we need to take seriously for the sake of our children.
I don't know about has to be done, John. If we don't do anything, events have a way of occurring. Malthus is always near. We don't have any right to do more than aid willing partners in raising their standard of living and education level. They'll take it from there.
John, I can understand your apprehension. At the pace global growth is accelerating it seems like a reckoning is inevitable.
Historically the cultures with the highest birthrates tend to become dominant. Think about that in our current world. Europe is already seeing their immigrants rising to prominence in part because they have much higher birthrates than the indigenous populations.
China's taken drastic steps to "manage" their national birthrate and it is causing all kinds of other problems which might end up being even worse than the problem they were trying to fix. And that is the same sort of unintended consequences that I posted about originally.
Perhaps a workable solution could come from another direction. I don't see an answer yet. I wish I did.
You are right about bringing up this issue. It's a good reminder for all of us that population may not be a concern on our daily lives, but it's a big concern for the next generation.
Hi Pat,
On the contrary, population is an issue for us today, not just a big concern for the next generation. Case in point - the discussion about using corn for ethanol at Chris' site. There wouldn't be a drive for a short-sighted fix for energy if oil were increasing in price so much. A major reason for oil prices increasing is that developing nations are industrializing and mechanizing. Since this is occurring mostly in Asia, where there are already a lot of people, and their population as a percentage of the world population is only going to increase, such resources will only get more expensive.
Increasing mechanization is necessary to raise the standard of living and eventually slow the rate of population growth. The challenge is to learn to do this in a sustainable way.