# Is Malthus being proven Right? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 25, 2008, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859 "2008-04-25T15:48:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2008, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/1 "2008-04-25T15:48:17Z")
Rice is up 200% in price…food riots in haiti, Indonesia, India. Wheat triples in price. So, is tjis a validation of malthus? Is the earth exceeding its capacity for people? I am wondering if we are seeing the first signs of famines that will happen, unless food crops are increased. What is your view? ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2008, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/2 "2008-04-25T16:09:32Z")
no. food shortages are a function of politics and the economy, not of the limited carrying capacity of the earth. I have no cite, but I know of projections that the earth could actually sustain _several times_ the current population. This would be the case especially if world food consumption became less reliant on meat, for it takes about 10 pounds of perfectly edible grain to produce one pound of meat. So while current food shortages are troubling, they are not due to increased population. To support this, let me just point out that some of the most densely populated areas in the world (eg the Chinese coast and Europe) are able to supply their own populations with abundant food, while famines typically have been occurring in non-densely populated areas. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2008, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/3 "2008-04-25T16:28:44Z")
I thought that the current problems have been because some of the big farming producers have switched their crop to a more profitable grain… It’s not because the farming has been maxed out. ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2008, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/4 "2008-04-25T16:31:16Z")
[QUOTE=mlees] I thought that the current problems have been because some of the big farming producers have switched their crop to a more profitable grain [/QUOTE] Not to mention ethanol subsidies eating up part of the crop that would otherwise go to feeding people. ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2008, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/5 "2008-04-25T16:37:10Z")
[QUOTE=athelas] Not to mention ethanol subsidies eating up part of the crop that would otherwise go to feeding people. [/QUOTE] How much land is devoted to producing biofuels vs devoted to food production? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2008, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/6 "2008-04-25T17:18:26Z")
I’m always being proved right. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2008, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/7 "2008-04-25T21:29:04Z")
If you did a study, you’d probably find that we produce more calories per person now than at any previous time in history. (We being the entire human race.) Go to a grocery store in any first-world country and you’ll see an abundance of food, much of which will end up being thrown out. When third world countries experience food shortage there may be a number of causes. - Lack of infrastructure. - Politcal corruption. - Local natural disasters: storms, droughts, floods, etc… But as **Svejk** says, our current system is not designed around moving the world’s food supplies to where they’re needed. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2008, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/8 "2008-04-25T21:33:17Z")
[QUOTE=Malthus] I’m always being proved right. 😉 [/QUOTE] If I laugh in the middle of a thread about food shortages, does that make me a bad person? - Carry on - ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2008, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/9 "2008-04-25T21:45:40Z")
I’ve been wondering when somebody on this Board would mention Malthus. ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_Stimulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Digital\_Stimulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_Stimulus)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2008, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/10 "2008-04-25T22:43:42Z")
[QUOTE=mlees] It’s not because the farming has been maxed out. [/QUOTE] While I’m pretty sure that that is indeed the case (i.e., that farming has **not** maxxed out), isn’t there also an issue concerning locality? At some point, the cost of transporting food to where it’s needed is simply too high. Not that that’s necessarily the limiting factor _now_ – I have no idea – but, even if it isn’t I’d think it would be in some future situtation… ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2008, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/11 "2008-04-25T22:47:51Z")
Isn’t this recent rice crisis mostly because of a loss of crops due to weather? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2008, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/12 "2008-04-25T22:49:04Z")
[QUOTE=Digital Stimulus] While I’m pretty sure that that is indeed the case (i.e., that farming has **not** maxxed out), isn’t there also an issue concerning locality? At some point, the cost of transporting food to where it’s needed is simply too high. Not that that’s necessarily the limiting factor _now_ – I have no idea – but, even if it isn’t I’d think it would be in some future situtation… [/QUOTE] [Soon.](http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080512/hertsgaard) > [@](#): > > Though largely unnoticed by the world media, a decisive moment in the peak oil debate came last September, when James Schlesinger declared that the “peakists” were right. You don’t get closer to the American establishment and energy business than Schlesinger, who has served as chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, head of the CIA, Defense Secretary, Energy Secretary and adviser to countless oil companies. In a speech to a conference sponsored by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, Schlesinger said, “It’s no longer the case that we have a few voices crying in the wilderness. The battle is over. The peakists have won.” Schlesinger added that many oil company CEOs privately agree that peak oil is imminent but don’t say so publicly. > > One who does is Jeroen van der Veer, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell. Without using the term “peak oil,” van der Veer warned in January, “After 2015, easily accessible supplies of oil and gas probably will no longer keep up with demand.” > > Of course, peak oil could arrive sooner than 2015; columnist George Monbiot has claimed in the Guardian that a Citibank report calculates the date at 2012. But even 2015 leaves a very short time in which to prepare, because modern societies were built on cheap, abundant oil. > > “The world has never faced a problem like this,” warned a 2005 study funded by George W. Bush’s Energy Department. “Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.” ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2008, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/13 "2008-04-25T23:13:08Z")
BG, that link means precisely nothing. First off, the idea of Peak Oil is nonsense. We can really make as much oil as we need and get it from a lot of sources, and our reserves are vast. if the human race continues to increase, oil production and use probably will too - _unless_. _Unless_ we simply find a better option. Which we are exploring right now. Peak Oil, if it comes at all, will come because we get something even better. But even if your link was right, it would have very little to do with the current discussion. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2008, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/14 "2008-04-25T23:23:48Z")
[QUOTE=smiling bandit] First off, the idea of Peak Oil is nonsense. We can really make as much oil as we need and get it from a lot of sources, and our reserves are vast. [/quote] The [Peak Oil](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil) theorists do account for such things as the Canadian tar sands. The prediction is not that we are on the verge of exhausting the global petroleum supply, but of the **easily accessible** supply, and that after peak it will grow a bit more expensive every year to get each barrel out of the ground. That we already should be forced to resort to sources such as oil shale only reinforces the theory. [QUOTE=smiling bandit] Peak Oil, if it comes at all, will come because we get something even better. [/quote] No, then it would **not** come because we would not approach or pass the global peak-production point. And you are not even allowing for the possibility that it might be **impossible** to come up with new technologies that substitute for cheap oil effectively, in the sense of allowing us to live our auto-dependent lives as we have been. If the survival of modern civilization depended on the discovery of a faster-than-light drive, that does not mean such a drive would ever be invented. [QUOTE=smiling bandit] But even if your link was right, it would have very little to do with the current discussion. [/QUOTE] Of course it has – because anything that might make shipping greatly more expensive portends the possibility, not of a global Malthusian crisis, but of a multitude of localized ones. Furthermore, petroleum-fueled machinery now plays a crucial role in food **production,** not just transportation. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2008, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/15 "2008-04-26T00:36:35Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] The prediction is not that we are on the verge of exhausting the global petroleum supply, [/QUOTE] I thought that was exactly what your hero James Howard Kunstler was saying? At the very least, he was definitely NOT saying that the price of oil would only get “a little” more expensive per year; he’s already said (in an NPR interview mentioned in another thread, which search failed to bring up) that we would get to apocalypse-level in five years. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2008, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/16 "2008-04-26T00:57:43Z")
[QUOTE=Leaper] I thought that was exactly what your hero James Howard Kunstler was saying? At the very least, he was definitely NOT saying that the price of oil would only get “a little” more expensive per year; he’s already said (in an NPR interview mentioned in another thread, which search failed to bring up) that we would get to apocalypse-level in five years. [/QUOTE] That is not because of the price of petroleum quintupling or so in the next five years, but because of the stress even a **moderate** and, this is the most important thing, **irreversible** upward trend in the price will place on a global industrial economy not prepared to deal with it. From [_The City in Mind,_](http://www.amazon.com/City-Mind-Notes-Urban-Condition/dp/B0000C2W6A/sr=8-1/qid=1166738461/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-9788122-0265632?ie=UTF8&s=books) chapter on Atlanta, pp. 73-75: > [@](#): > > A current popular belief in America is that “alternative fuels” could replace gasoline in the vehicles we use and that the system could merrily roll along without petroleum as if nothing had happened. This a dangerous delusion. The truth is that no known “alternative technology,” including hydrogen, fuel cell, electricity, nuclear, or alcohol from biomass, can take the place of gasoline in the way we have organized our lives, especially where cars and trucks are concerned. None of the touted alternative fuels is as versatile as gasoline, or can be produced for anything close to the cheap price of gas we’ve been accustomed to, or can be stored or transported as easily. The electric car is not going to save Atlanta. > > * * * > > I believe the world is entering a long era of chronic instability in oil markets that no amount of wishing or pretending will hold back. By the time this book is published – a year from now – I shall be surprised if we are not experiencing the initial effects. The two oil-producing regions that allowed America to postpone this reckoning for twenty-five years, the Alaskan North Slope fields, and the North Sea fields (belonging to Britain and Norway), are scheduled to pass their production peaks this year, and after that, most of the oil in the world will be controlled by people who don’t like us, or contained in regions too chaotic to engage in the complex business of oil extraction. The Middle East regions containing the greatest reserves will be the last to peak, but long before they do, the oil markets will destabilize. **In the current American mood of narcotized inattention, the point can’t be emphasized enough that it is not necessary for oil reserves to run out before world oil markets are severely destabilized.** And when that occurs, industrial economies will be painfully compromised. > > We Americans cherish a set of delusions to minimize or deflect the seriousness of this. As already touched on, we believe that we can run a drive-in civilization on some fuel other than petroleum. The actual prospects for this are dim, but we base our belief (a wish, really) on the spectacular cavalcade of technological achievements that occurred in the previous century, one astonishing novelty after another: airplanes, movies, radio, TV, antibiotics, Teflon, computers, automobiles themselves. (The lingering “victory disease” from our great triumph in World War Two still stokes our delusions of invincibility.) Alternative energy sources such as natural gas, biomass, coal, nuclear power, solar power, fuel cells, and so forth, will fall far short of compensating for disrupted oil markets. It will be a hard lesson. The world’s fleet of eleven thousand jet airplanes will not run on coal or plutonium. Massive disruptions to transportation and business will occur. The “global economy” as touted in recent years – meaning the long-range transport of enormous quantities of cheap goods virtually everywhere – will join mercantile imperialism in the history books. Food production, which depends heavily on oil-based fertilizers, will be affected by oil market disturbances. The Caesar salad that travels twenty-five hundred miles from California to somebody’s table in Atlanta will become an object of nostalgia. Farming will have to become much more labor-intensive, will have to be practiced on a far smaller scale, and done much closer to market. Half a million other products, from medicine, asphalt, paint and detergent to plastic trash bags, are also derived from oil. As the oil markets destabilize, shortages and fluctuating prices in oil will hinder industry from even addressing the problem of converting societies to other forms of energy. (Emphasis added.) That book was published in 2001 and industrial civilization appears still to be ticking along just fine – but that does not make his predictions irrelevant; the first signs of some stress fractures are just now starting to show. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2008, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/17 "2008-04-26T01:15:14Z")
Looks to me as though right now the price of crude oil is in [backwardation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backwardation). The price of crude oil for delivery in 2015 is less than the price for crude oil to be delivered in 2008. So if you are confident that the price of oil is about to go through the roof, you can easily make a killing by going long on futures contracts. Don’t waste your time posting about peak oil on a message board - get on the phone and call your broker first thing Monday morning. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2008, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/18 "2008-04-26T03:16:51Z")
[QUOTE=brazil84] Looks to me as though right now the price of crude oil is in [backwardation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backwardation). The price of crude oil for delivery in 2015 is less than the price for crude oil to be delivered in 2008. So if you are confident that the price of oil is about to go through the roof, you can easily make a killing by going long on futures contracts. Don’t waste your time posting about peak oil on a message board - get on the phone and call your broker first thing Monday morning. [/QUOTE] “The Depression was not a fun time to be rich.” – Maureen Johnson Smith, in [_To Sail Beyond the Sunset,_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Sail_Beyond_the_Sunset) by Robert A. Heinlein. ---
**Author:** ![greatshakes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/58956e/32.png) [@greatshakes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/greatshakes)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2008, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/19 "2008-04-26T06:23:57Z")
IIRC, in my economics class way back when, the book gave a cite that food actually could be grown exponentially, and Malthus was indeed wrong. Food riots, don’t usually manifest with famines, but rather with political situations. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2008, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859/20 "2008-04-26T06:34:13Z")
But isn’t the current rate of food production unsustainable? We’re depleting aquifiers at an unsustainable level - we may reach a “peak water” point once those aquafiers are depleted and food production will have to drop. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-malthus-being-proven-right/446859.md?page=2)