In between “the bomb will kill us all” in the 50’s and “the bomb will kill us all” in the 80’s, there was a period in the 70’s when the apocalypse du jour was that we would all die because the world would become so overpopulated that by now, in the far flung year of 2009, they expected that we’d all be standing in the dead center of the three foot cube of space allotted to us and which we’d never left. A lot of very bright people, including a lot of sci fi writers, figured that by now, we’d have over-run the entire world and millions would have died in food riots, resource wars, gang violence, and the destruction of all moral values and society itself by the influence of bell bottomed trousers and electric guitars.
Even Heinlein himself believed in this vision of the future enough that he worked it right into his Future History.
So what happened? Why were so many so wrong? What were the unquestioned assumptions underpinning their conclusions?
And are we making the same sorts of mistakes in the modern era?
I think pretty much the same thing as happened when Malthus in 1798 said there were only so many people that could live of the available land: technology and progress!
On a side note, the collapse migt still arise when the polarcaps melt
The Green Revolution had a lot to do with it. Different strains of food crops, combined with different farming techniques, let farmers raise significantly more food on the same amount of land.
It is still absolutely correct that our greatest problem is overpopulation of the earth. Technology has allowed us to support many more people than Bob thought, but he was, in general, right on the money.
We are going to 9B over the next few decades. AGW, assuming it exists, is more directly a consequence–and more insolvable–because of overpopulation than any other single factor. So are the legion other problems related to our presence on earth.
I have the sense that moaning about overpopulation has become politically incorrect, perhpas because the population expansion is now occurring in the developing world.
It’s a big deal and it’s just plain stupid to pretend it’s not. We are the most invasive species, and will, in the end, sacrifice the entire earth to support ourselves.
I suspect the birth control pill had something to do with it. The first Pill was only developed in the late 50’s, and there were laws against contraception in some states in the US until Griswold v Connecticut in 1965 and Eisenstadt v Baird in 1972. At the very least, the Pill (and the new acceptance of other contraceptives) has made population growth less visible to people in First World countries.
We did have food riots last year in some parts of the world. They had an element of resource wars to them, too, since part of the reason for the rising cost of food was the rising price of oil.
Moaning about overpopulation in the US or Western Europe has become politically incorrect because it makes you sound like an idiot. Moaning about overpopulation in South/Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa does not.
Anywhat, I completely agree that overpopulation is still our biggest long-term problem as a species. I was more talking about a specific dystopian vision of the future from a specific time in the past.
As someone who always strives for the best possible quality of thought. I’m curious to know what errors brought people to these wrong conclusions.
People are providing some very interesting and illuminating answers!
In many ways, the conclusions were not wrong. They were based on the available evidence. Projections of disaster were the logical conclusion of the trends then in effect. The Malthusians couldn’t anticipate technology changes.
And in one major way, they’re still correct. We’ve just pushed the deadline back some.
Your OP is like the old joke about the guy falling from a tall building, and calling out at each floor, “all right so far!” Just because you’ve fallen more floors than someone else expected doesn’t mean the law of gravity has been repealed.
What do you think the anthropogenic global warming crisis is about? Six people didn’t tip us into AGW – six billion did (well, and the billions leading up to six billion).
Every problem that’s caused by people is made worse by MORE people.
Technology isn’t always the answer. Sometimes things get solved, sometimes new problems arise, or are recognized as having been there for a long time.
But it’s not just a matter of food – all resources are finite. Put one guy in a phone booth. Now put another. Now another. Keep stuffing guys in there forever. Your argument is basically “they’ll all be okay.” Some would expect otherwise.
The Malthusian apocalypse may not happen as envisioned, or it may already be starting – but it will happen, at some point, with mathematical certainty, unless we change our expectation that everything can expand forever.
I fortell that it will all build to a head and explode in a frenzy of fire, famine and cannibalism, after which the scarred and barren Earth will recover and bury the traces of our history in the silt of aeons.
The only solution is interplanetary colonization – at least to the Moon and to Mars. Bound to this planet, our fate is to devour it and then ourselves. To the stars, my friends, for the endless buffet!
Like most things food isn’t the real problem so much as the distribution. There is plenty of land and places to raise things, but the issue is that isn’t where the people are.
So how do you raise food and get it from places where it can grow, to places where people are and it doesn’t grow. And even if you can, if it isn’t profitable few people will want to do it.
It’s like water, cities like LA, Phoenix, Las Vegas are expanding at an enormous rate and severely lack water. Cities like Buffalo and Cleveland have tons of fresh water and are shrinking.
Well, they were wrong because what they predicted did not happen.
However, you draw light to something I’d like to focus on : is predicting the future impossible because all we can do is say "If present trends continue… " and well, sometimes they don’t?
Excuse me, but while I am clumsy and adorable, I am not a Straw Man, so please stop treating me as such.
I made no argument at all, actually, in my original argument. I was talking about specific predictions made by people in the past about this exact era. Those did not come true. Why?
So far, the general consensus seems to be : technology.
I agree. If we could take all the world’s resources, put them in a pile, then dole them out based on need (without cost), we’d find things worked out pretty good.
That’s why transportation efficiency is such a vital facet of technological advancement.
Demographers don’t spend much time worrying about overpopulation these days. This is because all indicators are that fertility rates are falling everywhere. In industrialized countries, total fertility rates are at replacement or lower. In fact, governments in Europe and Japan are actively trying to promote higher fertility rates - there’s a lot of concern that fertility rates are so very low in some countries that soon there will not be enough workers to support the elderly.
In the developing world, fertility rates are going down. There is no reason to believe that they will not eventually stabilize around replacement rate, as they have in industrialized countries.
It’s important to keep in mind that even when fertility rates go down, population momentum will cause the population to keep growing, at least for a while. Once you hit replacement fertility, it takes a while for the population to settle in at a constant level. If you look at long term population projections, they tend to show global population leveling out around the mid-21st century.
One other factor I want to mention is the AIDS epidemic. Populations in some countries in sub-Saharan Africa are much smaller that demographers in the 60s and 70s would have anticipated, even taking development into consideration.
