Stuff You Should Know - Was Malthus right about carrying capacity?

Episode Date: June 9, 2011

Thomas Malthus concluded that humanity is bound to outgrow Earth's carrying capacity. The prediction was based on humanity's exponential growth and the linear growth of the food supply -- but was he correct? Tune in to find out. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HouseStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant sitting across from me. And that makes this Stuff You Should Know the podcast. There you go. The only incarnation thus far.

Is there somebody fast forwarding through this part right now, huh? Yes. So, Chuck, right? It is Chuck. Yes, still. Have you noticed how often I say right? Yeah. It's mind-numbing. Plus, someone will write in and say... Do you know you say right all the time? Or it says, um? Or it sounds like I'm eating hard candy all the time? I know. Not the case. You've never eaten anything in here. I can attest to that. Yeah, I'm overly salivatory. Okay? Yes. Yes. Chuck, as you know, I was a student of anthropology. Yeah. Still consider myself. Sure. Such. And I first came upon this term called Caring Capacity

when I was... I took this life-changing anthropology class, right? And I don't remember the teacher's name anymore, but he was awesome. He introduced me to probably my favorite article or essay of all time, The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race, right? By Jared Diamond. Awesome stuff. By Dustin Diamond? By Mike Diamond. Okay. By Jared Diamond. The guy who wrote Collapse and Guns, Germs, and Steel and stuff. That's required reading, in my opinion. Yeah. I just think you should... That essay, not necessarily his books. Okay. But this... I was also introduced to Caring Capacity, and there's this really cool video he showed us to get the point across.

And it's just a map of the world, right? And it's... There's red dots. It shows population growth. Yeah. And each red dot equals, I think, a million people. And so it starts out in Africa, in Ethiopia, I believe, the cradle of humanity. Sure. And it starts there and all... Very slowly. There's like a... It's time elapsed, obviously. Yeah. So the years go by like that. Yeah. And the red dots start appearing very slowly, start moving out of Africa, spreading to Asia, to Europe, all that. And then it starts to pop up around North America and South America. And then all of a sudden, you get to the... I think like the 16th century, maybe a little later, the Industrial Revolution. And all of a sudden, this map just goes red. And it's really jarring.

It really gets the point across it. Like, how quickly population has grown in the world, and the impacts of it. You know, that's why I coupled this with caring capacity, because it's like, well, yeah, population growth, who cares? Then you say, oh, well, there's a limit to the amount of resources we have. And that limit is called the caring capacity of Earth, meaning how much Earth can sustain human life. And there's supposedly a point to it, right? Yeah. I got some stats. There's my intro. That was great. Take it from here. Here's a couple of stats, Josh. The United Nations Population Division estimates, because five babies are born every second, and 80... Right there, 10, 15. Oh, man. You got that crying? All that poop? Yeah.

The world is going to have 7 billion people by year's end, I think. 7 billion. Yeah, we're at 6.92 and change right now. Yeah. So, I mean, we're close. And to illustrate your point there about the red dots spreading like a disease that is humans. Yeah. Fewer than a billion people in 1800. Yeah, it was like 800 million. 1800, dude. I mean, it seems like ancient history, but it ain't that long ago. Yeah. 3 billion people in 1960, and only 6 billion people as recently as 1999. Yeah. Between 1950, Chuck, and 1990, the global population doubled from 2.5 billion to 5 billion. That is crazy. And behind this, that's what they call exponential growth. Yes. It's not just adding like a million people a year. Slow and steady, you're adding a fixed number.

It's you're adding, you know, populations doubling in 40 years. That's exponential growth. And that is the basis of what a guy named Thomas Robert Malthus, an 18th century English clergyman, predicted in his essay, an essay on the principle of population, basically saying, human growth is exponential. We have a big problem because the growth of food is not, it's linear. That's right. And we're in trouble eventually. And he was fairly controversial at the time. He was debated by a lot of people, one of which is this dude named William Godwin. And he had a theory called the perfectability of society, which is basically, you know, did we, we're humans and we, no matter how much we grow, we will be able to counter that

with advances in technology to allow us to grow. So they debated like crazy. Godwin subsequently was one of the first proponents of anarchism. And Malthus talked about eugenics way back then, before it was eugenics. He said, I could see something like this being possible, but he said it's probably not something we should do. And he also, incidentally, was one of the first people to support or popularize the economic theory of rent. Really? Yeah. Well, he was just all over the place, wasn't he? Well, but it all kind of ties into population because eugenics tied into it because he was talking about controlling population. Sure. And rent, he theorized, was only possible with a surplus of resources, which allows you to own

a second place and rent it, I guess, or rent a tool or whatever people rent it back then. So what Malthus is talking about is generally classified as economics. Yeah. Right. But it's also, it stretches into all sorts of dirty, nasty little areas like greed, ecology, population control, so eugenics, family planning, abortion, and fantaside, all sorts of stuff that has a lot of implications, far-reaching implications, right? Yes. And so I didn't realize that there was somebody who was a contemporary of him that argued like, no, humans will use technology to outstrip, to outpace this Malthusian curse is what it's called, right? Yeah, that was more than God when there was a few people, too. I didn't realize that it was at the time. Yeah. But I know that

over the centuries, people have been like, Malthus, that was a great idea, but you really missed the mark. And we're going to use you as an example of how badly somebody can get it wrong, right? Yeah. Because it wasn't just technology. There's another aspect of it called the demographic transition, which is basically as we get better with this technology. One of the things we come up with is birth control. Right. And while our mortality rates are lowering, so too are fertility rates. Right. And we eventually come to this thing called the replacement rate, which is 2.1 children per household leads to zero population growth. Right. And I think they said in Western Europe, the number was 1.4 in the late 90s. Like some people are afraid that Malthus was

correct at this point. And other people say that like in Europe and Asia, they worry about the opposite because, you know, they have the problem over there that they're not enough young people to take care of their retirees one day. Exactly. It's negative population growth. So who's right? They do estimate who they is, I don't know, but it just said researchers estimate that population is not going to level off until mid-century at about 9 billion. Well, that's at best. If that's if we do level off, we couldn't continue to keep going. The rate we're at now, the replacement rate, that leads to zero population growth, which is 2.1. Right now, we're at 2.6 worldwide. And with Africa skewing us the other way, Sub-Saharan Africa has about

a 5.1 fertility rate, which means for every household, there's 5.1 children born. Does that 0.1 child always feel so bad for us? It's a knee down, you know, on one leg. But if we can get the zero population growth, then we're not going to really have to deal with the Malthusian curse possibly ever. But we're not. But that's one thing that Malthus didn't account for is things like as societies become more educated, fertility rates tend to drop dramatically. So that's another way to put it off too. So he was scoffed at, like you said, there's a lot of people out there who think he missed the mark. But people have been doing a little bit of math lately and have figured out that it's entirely possible that he's right, that somewhere

down the line, he's right. Yeah. And at the basis, we should say of Malthus's whole thing is a lack of food and water, really. And we need air, food, water, shelter and all that stuff. But what he was mainly centered on was eventually the food growth will not match up with the population growth. And a billion people go hungry every day already. So some might argue that that's already the case. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course,

yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. I'm journalist,

Danielle Morton in my podcast, City of the Rails. I plunge into the dark world of America's railroads searching for my daughter Ruby, who ran off to hop trains. I'm just like stuck on this train. God knows where I'm going to end up. And I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters living outside society off the grid and on the edge. I was in love with the lifestyle and the freedom this community. No one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history and the thing we call the American dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die or you could have this incredible rebirth and really understand who you are.

Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to City of the Rails on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts or cityoftherails.com. So let's talk about carrying capacity, Chuck. Yeah, this is cool. If we had not transitioned, which we have, which kind of proves the positives, positivists camp, that we can be technological, if we hadn't transitioned from hunter-gatherer to agriculture, the carrying capacity of earth would have been reached at about 100 million people. Long time ago. Yes, because there's just so many animals running around that we can kill. There's only so many berries that are going to occur naturally on the vine, right? But we did transition

to agriculture before we hit the 100 million mark, possibly, maybe not. Farming. Farming. And we began to use technology, which is growing crops to feed ourselves. And then we reached another point, right, where we hit what was called the Green Revolution. You remember that? Yeah, I remember. Norman Borlaug, where there was a lot of people who were saying about a billion people are going to die because we are no longer, we're not going to be able to provide food for all the people here. Right. Right. We've come up with great vaccines and all this other technology that's lowering the mortality rate, but that just means people are living longer and they need

food longer over their lifespan. Right. Right. So what are we going to do? Norman Borlaug comes along and says, you know what we're going to do? Tapioca pudding. Exactly. Tapioca pudding for everybody. For the elderly. And at Care Bear in every garage. No, go ahead with what he said, because he was a genius. He said we're going to maximize the yield that we get out of arable land. We're not just going to plant some seeds and be like, hope you grow. Right. We're going to apply tons of pesticide, tons of fertilizer, and we're going to squeeze corn the size of your torso out of every plant. Right.

Yeah. He wasn't some like awful mad. That makes him sound like some awful mad scientist. In the eyes of a lot of environmentalists, he, well, I mean, think about all the runoff, all the soil depletion, also didn't he also win a Nobel Prize? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. He's credited with saving that billion people that were predicted to starve because he came in just in time because the earth would have reached this carrying capacity for agriculture. Right. So we've had at least two different events where we were able to leap forward through technology and avoid the Malthusian curse. Right. Yes. So there are people out there who say, well, you know, we're, we're, we're going to avoid it again. But what will that be?

Sure. And come up with another one. So I'm sorry, Chuck, we would have hit the carrying capacity 100 million where we hunter gatherers. Right. Yeah. What are the predictions now? Well, they say, and this is what I think is really interesting and completely sad is that we have a potential carrying capacity of 2 billion to 40 billion. We're clearly past the two. Yeah. So one might ask, how can it be that big of a range? And the answer is lifestyle. And here's a very sad stat. If the entire earth live like middle class Americans, not the super rich who, you know, probably consume more energy and the like than your average human, just regular middle class American folks consume about 3.3 times the subsistence level of food

and 250 times the subsistence level of water, clean water. Yeah. And that means the earth, if we ever, everyone was like us, the earth could only support about 2 billion people. So what's going on is 25% of the earth is consuming. I don't have the percentage, but the other 75% of the earth is left with what's left, right, which is really, really crappy. It's just a, it's a disparity in the allocation of resources. Yeah. It's consumed. So that's why it can be a range of 2 billion to 40 billion because of the different lifestyles. If everyone lived like the 25%, there would be plenty for everyone and no one would be starving. No. If everybody lived like the 25%, we would all, we would be not like the 75%. Right. Sorry.

Well, the, yeah, that's, that's where the 40 billion number comes in. I've seen 30 and I've seen 40 on the high end for the carrying capacity. And that's where every square inch of arable land is being cultivated to its maximum yield. Right. And all people live in high rises that are as high as we can build them right now. Right. Right. And we're mining asteroids for, for minerals and all that. We're not, we're no longer going, we're no longer going to the earth. We're going into outer space. Like terraforming Mars, maybe? Possibly. Don't think that that shouldn't have started about 50 years ago, right? But the, that 40 billion prediction is based on the absolute minimum requirements and everybody, 40 billion people living on the

planet. Yeah. All using the minimum amount, which is a 400 liters of water a year and about 300 kilograms of food a year, mostly grains. And you can basically kiss meat goodbye. Yeah. Because we need that land to grow our grains rather than to grow grains to feed cows, which is another way that the West consumes resources more than, more than its fair share through a meat rich diet, which is you're not only eating the meat, you're eating the grains that the meat ate. Right. Right. So Chuck, let me ask you something. Okay. If you had, if you went home and turned on your tap and there was hot water and it was flowing and it was as much as you liked, right? Right. Would you care how you were getting that? What do you mean? How it was being delivered

through my faucet? Yes. Is this a trick question? No, it's not. Let me rephrase. Okay. If you went home and I'm afraid I'm answering it wrong and turned on your hot water and there's as much hot water as you wanted. Yes. And it was, you knew it was coming from a sustainable source. Would you care if it was sustainable? Yeah. I guess not. But I'm kind of like a water saver. So your water saver. What if you knew you didn't really have to save water because it was so sustainable? You wouldn't care. No one cares as long as we have the luxuries that were afforded. Yeah, I see your point. It doesn't, you don't care if it came from burning banana peels. Right. Right. No one cares. The problem is that the problem with the course that we're on apparently right now is that we are

using technology not to get more from less, but to get more from more, more cheaply. Right. Yeah. It's, it's a uniquely human thing. They call it in the article, which is pretty much true. But technological advancement is in many ways leading to our habitat destruction. Ideally at this point, everyone would be on solar and the massive companies would be solar powered and all that kind of thing. That's another great point is, you know, you don't care where your electricity comes from. Do you care if it comes from a solar panel or wind? No. Of course you don't. You just want your electricity. Yeah. So if we had invested or if we could invest our technological advances into getting what we have now from less from solar radiation or wind power, then we would be,

that's true cutting edge technology rather than, you know, figuring out ways to deplete things faster, more cheaply, which is the way we're going. Yeah. Like thinking of, let's say, a more efficient oil driller or a more efficient way of getting coal from a mountain, i.e., mountaintop removal. So they're using technology, but they're using it in ways that are also destroying the habitat and sustainability is all about finding the right balance in your habitat. So here's the conclusion I came to from reading this, right? The argument from the positivists' camp, I don't even think I'm using that word correctly, but the people who are the optimists' camp, Duh, they're saying, no, Malthus was incorrect because he failed to account for

human ingenuity. And as population grows, so to do the number of geniuses, and that's where innovation comes from, right? I think the optimists are missing a point in their model, and that is greed. You can't really sway greed to benefit human ecology, can you? No. I mean, you can't convince an entire population of people to change their lifestyles, which is what it would take. That's what I'm saying. You can't because they don't care. Right. But if you could deliver them that same amount of hot water, that same electricity, and it was coming from a sustainable source, no one's going to fight that. Right, right, right. It's having to get them to fight that fight to get the people who are controlling it to change over. They're not going to do that. So there's that fatal

flaw in that model that the gloom and doom camp has over the optimist camp, and that they don't account for greed. Have you ever seen who killed the electric car? No, I never did. I encourage people to see that. That's pretty scary. The EV1 was, I mean, I don't know if you remember, but the EV1 was ready to go. There were TV commercials. You can look up EV1 commercial on YouTube and they were running them on television. Electric cars are here. They're not coming. They are here. And boom, it was gone. Really? Yeah. I'll check it out. And I'll give you a few guesses as to why it left so quickly. And not only were they gone, dude, they literally gathered them all up and crushed them. Really? Like so many ET Atari game cartridges? Exactly.

Yeah, sad. But go, go run it. It's cool. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. I'm journalist, and I'm Morton in my podcast,

City of the Rails. I plunge into the dark world of America's railroads, searching for my daughter, Ruby, who ran off to hop trains. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters living outside society off the grid and on the edge. I was in love with the lifestyle and the freedom. This community, no one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history, and the thing we call the American Dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die, or you could have this incredible rebirth and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the City of the Rails. Listen to City of the Rails

on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts, or cityoftherails.com. And powerful lobbies out there. What else you got? I got nothing, man. This is a good one to chew on for people, I think. I think so, too. Just encourage people like we always do. We're not saying quit your job and go build solar panels for a living and live on a wind farm. You can do that. That'd be awesome. But little things, little positive steps. Save a little water, save a little power. I disagree, man. What? I don't think the onus is on the people. I think the onus is on the people who are misdirecting technological advancements. I'd say it's on both. I disagree. You don't think the onus is on the people to conserve? No. I think it is.

I think we've put it on the people, but I don't think it's going to make enough of an impact. All right. I think it's on the policy makers. That's who I think it's on. I think it's on both. Okay. Well, that's a debate to be played out on the Facebook page if you ask me, right? Yeah, man. We should set up a forum. So if you want to learn more, type in Has the Earth reached its carrying capacity? Or Thomas Malthus, M-A-L-T-H-U-S in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. It'll bring up some pretty cool stuff. Yeah. Well, then that means it's time for Listener Man. All right, Josh. I'm going to call this how to make my teenage son listen to your show from Portland, Oregon. Hi, guys, and Jerry. When you have a teenager, you will

quickly learn that you can't just tell them what to do and expect them to do it. I remember those days. It's so frustrating because as a parent, you know that your kid will love something and get lots out of it, but you can't come right out and say it or they will never, ever try the thing you told them to try. For example, your podcast. I knew for a fact, like I know that it will rain in Portland that my 13-year-old son, Ethan, would really love stuff you should know because I love the podcast. I've turned other people onto it and they love it, but I knew I had to be sneaky in order for my son to give it a try. Ethan is a fincer and at the time was also working on a research project about Renaissance jousting in tournaments. So one Saturday I was working in

the kitchen. I played how nights work to catch his interest. Every time he came in the kitchen, I'd hit play. When he'd leave, I'd hit pause. I would figure he would just think, man, these guys take a long time to finish his sentence. He would hang around the kitchen longer and longer each time and I could tell I almost had him on the line like I was noodling, although you would say I had him on the arm. Yeah, there's no one. When it was over, he said he already knew everything you talked about in the podcast, but I could tell he was intrigued. Then I hit him with the Scooby-Doo show and that was it. You had another fan. Now he has downloaded the app for his iPod and listens each night as he's going to sleep. Wow, talk about recruitment. Yeah, that's from Afton in,

a very sneaky mom. Thank you. In Portland, Oregon. Thanks, Afton. That also kind of ties into the cults and brainwashing episodes too, doesn't it? Yeah, and she said when she replied, I asked her if I could read this. She said, sure. And she said, I guess you'll know my little trick now, but he'll get such a kick out of being mentioned, Ethan the Fincer. Yes. He will forgive that. Yeah, and at least he can rest assured that she's not like putting anything in his soup to get him to do what she wants. She uses more subtle tactics than that. Right? I wish he could put something in soup to make people listen to this. I'd be putting it in soup. Yeah, that's a good idea. Put it in all soups. I'll tell you what, if you have any suggestions

of what we can put in people's soup to get them to listen to stuff you should know and to get them to go give us a review on iTunes, huh? Yeah, that helps us out when you do that. Yeah. You should send us an email and you should send it to a specific email address that is stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join HowstuffWorks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.