Posted on 08/05/2007 1:54:34 AM PDT by qlangley
It is a little over 200 years since Malthus predicted that the world was on the point of running out of food. Population grows geometrically, he pointed out, but food production just arithmetically. Starvation and poverty were around the corner.
When Malthus developed his theories the world was home to just under one billion people. Today it is more than six billion, and they are better fed, better clothed and better housed than ever before. Malthus was more comprehensively wrong than almost anyone else in history, and yet he still has his admirers today.
After more than 20 years of work for the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He had taken farming techniques from his native Iowa, enhanced them with further research, and applied them in developing countries. He started with Mexico, then other parts of Latin America, then on to Asia.
Environmentalists, of course, dismissed his work as both damaging and fruitless . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at quentinlangley.net ...
Once again the evirowackos prove they really do not care if the people of Africa, or anywhere, starve to death.
“Environmentalists need to face the uncomfortable fact: you cannot feed the world, oppose GM food, and save the Amazon rain forests. That extra land would have to come from somewhere.”
Likewise, the environMENTALs that think, few though they may be, are squirming as they confront two possible futures, one powered by icky, smoky, gritty coal-fired electricity, and the other energized by sanitary-but-scary nuke plants.
Cassandra was right.
“Malthus was more comprehensively wrong than almost anyone else in history, and yet he still has his admirers today.”
His timeline may have been off, but his mathematics are impeccable.
We’ll see if, when, and why the global human population levels off.
The "new" Zimbabwe farmer.
Seems to me the real crunch will come in the next thirty years as the world’s population once again doubles. We may not have problems at 6.7 billion, but as we reach 14 billion, I don’t see how we could avoid some serious issues.
Course the only people who seem to be trying to do something about it are the Chinese, the Europeans and their decendents. Everyone else is flat out putting a bun in the oven as soon as it’s emptied. Or so it seems...
But they have what they asked for and I waste no pity on them.
Most of the countries in Africa were big argriculture exporters before independence and the people were much better off. Independence, socialism and curruption have destroyed most of Africa. The road back will be long and slow.
I had a guy the other day try to slam the British for their colonialism. Look, I don’t think colonialism was best for most nations, but there were some positive sides to it as well.
Governmental structures were set up. Certain British technologies and customs were instituted. Now some of these weren’t positive, but in others they were.
The farming practices could have been a big help to Africa. In some nations I think they were.
Like you say, I think a rush to slam Britain and remove them from the scene did leave vacuums that have severely damaged the continent.
Do you remember “Roots”? Do you remember the nice clean little villages that were shown? I’m not sure where the creaters of that program got their information, but I’ve seen pictures of African natives from that period. I’ve read of the intertribal fighting. I’ve read of the cannablism. To my way of thinking, there were worse things than British colonialism. That is unfortunate because that colonialism was sometimes terrible. Still, looking at things in perspective and especially in light of the problems over there today, I remain unconvinced that colonialism caused the problems of today.
so was Jeremiah...
True. As between Cassandra and Jeremiah, on the one hand, and Malthus and Paul Erlich, on the other hand, do we choose the ones that were right or wrong?
Of course, the fundamental error Malthus and Erlich have made is that they assume a static system with no feedback. Market economies are huge feedback loops. Even without market economies, changes in human behavior in response to changes in their environment is a feedback loop. That's why Malthus has never been right empirically.
That's very true. Although in defense of envirowackos (I never thought I'd say that!) you can argue that most people on the left and the right don't really care about starvation, whether it's in Africa or N. Korea or elsewhere.
I wish more people did care, so we could discuss solutions. (Charity isn't the real answer -- I'm pretty sure about that. But I'm not sure what the best answer really is.)
I totally agree. To the left, colonialism is one of the ultimate evil crimes -- up there with slavery. But this is a simple, cartoonish view. As you point out, colonialism had some real benefits, as well as real harm, especially the way the British practiced it.
But they have what they asked for and I waste no pity on them.
Hear! Hear! Someone says it plainly.
Look no further than Zimbabwe, nee Rhodesia.
I would reckon that if one was to query older blacks in Zimbabwe (which seems to be in the throes of civilizational collapse) about "whether they were better off with white rule" - to an individual, they would denigrate the former whites, regardless of how their lives and livelihoods are falling apart now.
As you said, their pain is not worth the sympathy or concern of western Euro-whites who "oppressed" black Africa in the first place.
They want us out, and want us dead or otherwise removed from their "civilizations".
Fine. Let them live with the results.
- John
>>Malthus ought to be synonymous with Jeremiah and Cassandra. Little wonder that he’s still held in esteem by the modern day prophets of Doom.
Not at all. Cassandra was right but was not widely believed. Malthus was wrong but was widely believed.
>>>“Malthus was more comprehensively wrong than almost anyone else in history, and yet he still has his admirers today.”
>>His timeline may have been off, but his mathematics are impeccable.
>>We’ll see if, when, and why the global human population levels off.
You are way off here. His maths were right but he made completely wrong assumptions. He assumed that population would grow geometrically and food production would grow arithmetically. On those assumptions, his maths were indeed correct. But his assumptions have been proven to be comprehensively wrong. Food production has consistently grown faster than population.
So it is not merely that he was wrong about the timeline. For that to be true, we would see increasing food shortages, though without reaching the critical point that he predicted. Then you could legitimately claim that his crisis point has been merely postponed.
What we have actually seen is increasingly plentiful supplies of food.
He was not wrong about the timeline. He was wrong about the trends and wrong about the direction.
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