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Here's Why Overpopulation Isn't a Crisis at All
Overpopulation is often viewed as a nightmare, but what if it's a dream come true?
05 January, 2017
<p dir="ltr"><span><a href="https://bigthink.rebelmouse.com/arpan-bhattacharyya/overpopulation-are-the-doomsayers-crazy-or-acutely-aware-heres-what-aldous-huxley-had-to-say-about-it" target="_blank">You have seen it here before</a>:</span><a href="http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/7-billion-people-how-near-is-overpopulation" target="_blank"><span> overpopulation is a key problem for our age</span></a><span>. With the world population currently standing at 7.5 billion people, one-sixteenth of all the humans that have ever lived are alive now.</span></p> <p dir="ltr"><span>Think about that: for each one of us, </span><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16870579" target="_blank"><span>there stand 15 ghosts</span></a><span>. When you consider how long humanity has been around, however, that number seems to be rather low. Indeed, the ratio has fallen from 30 ghosts for each living person in 1968 – as noted by Arthur C. Clarke in </span><span><em>2001: A Space Odyssey –</em> </span><span>as the population has since doubled.</span></p> <p dir="ltr"><span>By any measure, we have a lot of people around. The problems of feeding, housing, employing, and educating everybody are going to get harder. While we don’t appear to be on the edge of Malthusian catastrophe, the problems we do face are unpleasant.</span></p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>But is there a plus side to this?</strong></p> <p dir="ltr"><span>While we often focus on how to deal with so many people, we ignore the fact that more people means more opportunities for great minds and ideas. </span><a href="https://ccb.stanford.edu/paul-r-ehrlich" target="_blank"><span>Paul R. Ehrlich</span></a><span>, author of </span><em>The Population Bomb</em><span>, suggested that in an overpopulated world we would have <strong>“a</strong></span><strong> dozen Beatles and a few Shakespeares</strong><span><strong>”</strong> at any given time.</span></p> <p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/staff/staff/research_fellows/toby_ord" target="_blank"><span>Dr</span><span>.</span><span>Toby Ord,</span></a><span> philosopher at Oxford, </span><span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-upsides-of-overpopulation/2011/10/26/gIQAdzJ7IM_blog.html" target="_blank">argues that</a>:</span></p> <blockquote>
<p dir="ltr"><span> </span><strong>“These upsides may even outweigh the downsides, making a larger population a good thing overall. </strong>One example is the rapidly growing information economy. If someone makes a hammer, only a few people get the benefit, but if someone records a new song, writes a computer program, or invents a new technology, everyone can benefit. These activities thus produce more value the more people we have. With twice as many people doing jobs like these, we could all get roughly twice the benefits (more art, culture, science, technology), or they could work roughly half as many hours. A larger population thus has the potential to make life much better, so long as we can find the resources to support it.”</p>
</blockquote> <p dir="ltr"><span>The idea here is simple: more people equals more productive work. Or at least more people that can do specialized work. In our information age, we can all benefit from a great deal of this activity directly. Provided, of course, that we can manage to feed that many people. That’s the catch.</span></p> <p dir="ltr"><span>There are those who are not so sure about the benefits. Dr. Ehrlich himself pointed out that the presence of more great artists was only a consolation prize for enduring what he predicted, <strong>in the 1970s</strong>, would be </span><span>worldwide famines</span><span>. To this day he is still advocating for population controls, arguing even just a few years ago that families should have fewer children.</span></p> <p dir="ltr"><span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus" target="_blank">Thomas </a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus" target="_blank">Malthus</a></span><span>, the original worrier about overpopulation, noted pessimistically that only a wealthy few would be able to endure a population crisis, with the rest of society living in poverty and misery. Not much reason to think we would benefit from a slew of artistically minded people, in that case.</span></p> <p dir="ltr"><span>Today, the idea of overpopulation is discussed much less than it was in the 1970s. The concern for environmentalists has moved on from the number of people to their consumption patterns. Dr. Ehrlich famously lost a bet on the price of metals going up as resources depleted; they in fact all went down. The overall population had little effect on the prices, it was the rates of consumption that mattered.</span></p> <p dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.wired.com/1997/02/the-doomslayer-2/" target="_blank"><span>The man who won that bet</span></a><span>, economist </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Lincoln_Simon" target="_blank"><span>Julian Simon</span></a><span>, was also optimistic about population growth, suggesting that increased population will not lead to crippling losses in resources, but may be a blessing instead.</span></p> <blockquote>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>“Resources come out of people’s minds more than out of the ground or air,”</strong> he says. <strong>“Minds matter economically as much as or more than hands or mouths. Human beings create more than they use, on average. It had to be so, or we would be an extinct species.”</strong></p>
</blockquote> <p dir="ltr"><span>So, is the brave, new, overpopulated world we inhabit going to be great? Full of artists, computer programmers, culture, and digital goods for all? Or will it be a washout, where all those artists are starving in the streets for lack of enough resources to feed us all? While the prospect of immediate catastrophe seems lower now than it did then, the question of what an increasing population means for us is still as relevant as ever.</span></p> <p dir="ltr"><span> </span></p> <div class="video-full-card-placeholder" data-slug="ruth-reichl-on-feeding-the-world-via-the-free-market" style="border: 1px solid #ccc;">
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This Underwater Food and Fuel Source Might Save Us All
A Cornell University professor believes he has our food, climate, and fuel revolution answered all with one organism: microalgae.
13 December, 2016
A diver observes filamentous algae, locally known as thanatos, at La Ciotat in the Mediterranean sea. This bloom here is definitely not the good kind of algae, but it has some useful relatives. (Photo Boris Horvat/AFP/Getty Images)
<p dir="ltr">The human race is expanding <a href="http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/can-the-world-sustain-9-billion-people-by-2050" target="_blank">in a big way</a>. As we watch birth rates in some nations boom and life expectancies in others stretch, logistical questions arise — particularly how to feed and fuel such a population with ever-less arable land and resources.</p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>Food production will need to increase, </span><a href="http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/soy/consumers/" target="_blank"><span>by some estimates, up to 70%</span></a><span>. </span><span>The question will, at a certain point, no longer be one of finding new farmable land, but one of </span>how we do more with less?</p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>Charles H Greene, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University and lead author of the paper, “Marine Microalgae: Climate, Energy and Food Security From the Sea,” believes he has found a solution. </span></p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>Microalgae — the tiny little specks the entire oceanic food chain is based on — could be our saviors in more than one way. Through a process called ICMM (industrial cultivation of marine microalgae – basically, microalgae-farming), Greene and his team believe they’ve stumbled onto “the next green revolution,” and the process sounds strikingly simple.</span></p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>Take freshly grown microalgae, extract the water, and extract the lipids for biofuel. The leftovers are protein-rich and highly nutritious. While they’re not likely to replace corn or wheat in our diets, they could replace soy in the market, adding protein to animal feed for domesticated farm or aqua-cultured animals, or even humans.</span></p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>The real benefit to ICMM isn’t in its byproduct, though — it’s in the farming of it. Generating enough ICMM biofuel to </span><span>replace our global demand for liquid fuel </span><span>would require roughly 800,000 square miles of land. What’s more, with no extra farming required, we’d also be producing roughly ten-fold the amount of soy protein produced each year </span><span>globally</span><span>.</span></p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>To recap: an area of land three times the size of Texas could produce enough fuel to remove the </span><span>planet’s</span><span> dependence on oil, and produce more than 10 times the amount of soy protein we currently produce annually. </span></p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>And we’re not even at the good part yet.</span></p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>Unlike soy farming, ICMM doesn’t require fertile land in favorable climates to generate enough product to permanently feed the world and end oil dependence. Arid, subtropical climates like Mexico, North Africa, the Middle East, and Australia can be used to produce the stuff — we could actually farm the Sahara Desert.</span></p> <p dir="ltr"><span><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODQwOTE5OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MTIyNjE3OH0.mIO9iyHJ0-hd5hiqQBhA5mQJij7XJ-9ySRm_lecLOx8/img.jpg?width=980" id="623d4" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0a7802e499ee417b241ac8634e7f7398" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"><br></span>Salt, brine and mud, colored by the microalgae <em>Dunaliella salina</em>. </p> <p dir="ltr">ICMM currently requires quite an investment: a 2500-acre commercial facility would cost $400-500 million, and roughly 512 million acres would be required to farm enough microalgae to feed the planet and unhook our oil dependency.</p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>However, according to Professor Greene, the investment would pay for itself. “We can grow algae for food and fuels in only one-tenth to one one-hundredth the amount of land we currently use to grow food and energy crops.” </span></p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>While the upfront cost is high, the long-term benefits absolutely sound worth it. “That may seem like a lot of money, but integrated solutions to the world’s greatest challenges will pay for themselves many times over during the remainder of this century,” Greene says. What’s more, “the costs of inaction are too steep to even contemplate.”</span></p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>The pros are vast: we could stop clear cutting rainforests for soy plantations, end the debate over pipelines and climate change in one year, create jobs, and end oil wars. To say nothing of </span><span>feeding the entire planet</span><span>. </span></p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>The cons, while significant, are temporary: as money and research is invested into new technology, costs always go down. And besides, the money saved from fueling and feeding the planet via current methods would pay for this multiple times the long term. </span></p> <div dir="ltr"></div> <p dir="ltr"><span>Humans have always excelled at finding ways to kill themselves. Here, finally, we may have found a way to save each other, instead.</span></p> <p dir="ltr"><span>Who would have thought it would come from the sea?</span></p> <div><span> </span></div><div class="video-full-card-placeholder" data-slug="global-population-boom-are-people-the-problem-the-solution-or-both" style="border: 1px solid #ccc;">
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