Malthus was wrong in the 1820s, and he was still wrong in the 1970s. Maybe someday, he'll turn out to have been "right" after all, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
It's kind of amazing that, 150 years after Malthus, the same recycled arguments were still made and given serious consideration. Then again, 50 years hence and the "cult of Malthus" still seems alive and well and larger than ever. And still wrong.
Math suggests a limit somewhere, we just don’t know where it is, or how plausible various step changes in the limiting factors will be. Probably war will thin things out at some point, I just hope not nuclear so the land and water remain relatively useable.
Everything has a limit, sure. If nothing else, the population of humans on earth will probably stop growing before we reach the point where there is a continuous layer of humanity covering the surface of the earth.
Malthus's (and these others') mistake is not in assuming that there are limits to population growth without a change in how things are done, it is in assuming that we have already had all of the good ideas we'll ever have. It's not just Malthus and folks from the 70s, either. In the 1890s, authors wrote about how every street in London / New York City would be buried under 8-10 feet of horse manure if populations continued to grow. They did, and there's less horse dung now in either city than there was in 1894.
On the one hand, you can't fault people for not knowing specifically that we'd invent the automobile, but on the other hand, if you want to make predictions about the future, you need to account for humanity's ability to solve problems and invent new things.
It is interesting, though, that pretty consistently since Malthus wrote in 1826, "the end of the world" has always been about 15 years away.
I wonder if that 15 years away has anything to do with perception of time by people of a certain age range.
Wrt people changing what they do- yup. Given the way we soil the environment, I won’t be surprised that a few things will catch us, and also something that wasn’t foreseen in 1970. People who are frothing about lower testosterone levels and sperm counts are not frothing about chemistry that performs these lowerings, for example.
I tend to think that we end up with "about 15 years" because it is long enough that nobody can really gainsay you with confidence, but short enough to be scary.
If I tried to start a panic about how [bad thing] would happen in 40 or 50 years, roughly half the population would see that as "long after I'm dead and buried anyway". If I tried to start a panic about how [bad thing] would happen in 3 or 4 years, people would remember my claims when the [bad thing] didn't happen, and my career as a wielder of influence would be over.
Well, religion is a total bust too. I can’t count the number of times Armageddon has failed to arrive.
We don’t experience as many dead zones in the waters, thankfully, and we have lots of hydrocarbons left. Not sure I’m happy to be rich in PFAS and microplastics, though. Since our kids will never have known a world with glaciers and snow like we had, they won’t miss them, just like we don’t miss passenger pigeons and large herds of bison.
We know global warming denialists like to point to the small number of "the Earth is cooling" articles in the 1970s to argue that the conclusions from climate cannot be trusted.
Cherry picking can easily give a false impression of the "historical perspective."
While I don't know much about the accurate historical perspective of the Earth Day era, I can point out 6 of the 18 quotes from the AEI page come from Paul Ehrlich. These of course are easy to find as Ehrlich and his wife spearheaded the movement with "The Population Bomb", and "his charismatic and media-savvy methods helped publicize the topic" (quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich ).
Three are from Kenneth Watt. Two are from Barry Commoner.
If there were a lot of people making these predictions then there would be little need to cite the same people multiple times. This strongly suggest cherry picking, rather than representing the historical perspective.
Furthermore, the first Earth Day was pre-EPA, back when smog covered L.A., people regularly threw their trash out the car windows, and the burning Cuyahoga river became a symbol of the ongoing environmental devastation.
So to use the NYT's editorial saying “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” as a dire prediction of “gloom and doom” and “existential threats”, when we actually did greatly stop pollution, strongly suggests some alternative motive for this article.
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[ 23.4 ms ] story [ 2222 ms ] threadIt's kind of amazing that, 150 years after Malthus, the same recycled arguments were still made and given serious consideration. Then again, 50 years hence and the "cult of Malthus" still seems alive and well and larger than ever. And still wrong.
Malthus's (and these others') mistake is not in assuming that there are limits to population growth without a change in how things are done, it is in assuming that we have already had all of the good ideas we'll ever have. It's not just Malthus and folks from the 70s, either. In the 1890s, authors wrote about how every street in London / New York City would be buried under 8-10 feet of horse manure if populations continued to grow. They did, and there's less horse dung now in either city than there was in 1894.
On the one hand, you can't fault people for not knowing specifically that we'd invent the automobile, but on the other hand, if you want to make predictions about the future, you need to account for humanity's ability to solve problems and invent new things.
It is interesting, though, that pretty consistently since Malthus wrote in 1826, "the end of the world" has always been about 15 years away.
Wrt people changing what they do- yup. Given the way we soil the environment, I won’t be surprised that a few things will catch us, and also something that wasn’t foreseen in 1970. People who are frothing about lower testosterone levels and sperm counts are not frothing about chemistry that performs these lowerings, for example.
If I tried to start a panic about how [bad thing] would happen in 40 or 50 years, roughly half the population would see that as "long after I'm dead and buried anyway". If I tried to start a panic about how [bad thing] would happen in 3 or 4 years, people would remember my claims when the [bad thing] didn't happen, and my career as a wielder of influence would be over.
We don’t experience as many dead zones in the waters, thankfully, and we have lots of hydrocarbons left. Not sure I’m happy to be rich in PFAS and microplastics, though. Since our kids will never have known a world with glaciers and snow like we had, they won’t miss them, just like we don’t miss passenger pigeons and large herds of bison.
What they don't point out is that while 10% of the articles in the 1970s predicted cooling, 62% of them predicted warming. https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-in...
Cherry picking can easily give a false impression of the "historical perspective."
While I don't know much about the accurate historical perspective of the Earth Day era, I can point out 6 of the 18 quotes from the AEI page come from Paul Ehrlich. These of course are easy to find as Ehrlich and his wife spearheaded the movement with "The Population Bomb", and "his charismatic and media-savvy methods helped publicize the topic" (quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich ).
Three are from Kenneth Watt. Two are from Barry Commoner.
If there were a lot of people making these predictions then there would be little need to cite the same people multiple times. This strongly suggest cherry picking, rather than representing the historical perspective.
Furthermore, the first Earth Day was pre-EPA, back when smog covered L.A., people regularly threw their trash out the car windows, and the burning Cuyahoga river became a symbol of the ongoing environmental devastation.
So to use the NYT's editorial saying “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” as a dire prediction of “gloom and doom” and “existential threats”, when we actually did greatly stop pollution, strongly suggests some alternative motive for this article.