Almost invariably someone asks if I’m not aware that population growth is much slower in the food-rich North than in the food-poor South. This fact seems to be offered as proof that human societies are not subject to the laws of ecology, which (it is assumed) predict that the more food the faster the growth. But this is not what ecology predicts. Let me repeat that: Ecology does not predict that the population in a food-rich area will grow more rapidly than the population in a food-poor area. What ecology predicts is: When more food is made available, the population will increase. Every year more food is made available in the North, and every year the population increases. Every year more food is made available in the South, and every year the population increases.
Then I will be told very emphatically that more food is not being made available in the South. The population is growing like wildfire, but this growth is not being supported by any increase in food. All I can say about this is, if what you say is true, then we are clearly in the presence of a miracle. These people are not being made from food, because, according to you, no food is being made available for them. They must be made of air or icicles or dirt. But if it turns out—as I strongly suspect it will—that these people are not made of air or icicles or dirt but ordinary flesh and blood, then I’ll have to say, what do you think this stuff is? [Here B grabbed the skin on his arm.] Do you think you can make this flesh and blood out of nothing} No, the existence of the flesh and blood is proof that these people are being made out of food. And if there are more people here this year, this is proof that there is more food here this year.
And of course I have to deal with the starving millions. Don’t we have to continue to increase food production in order to feed the starving millions? There are two things to understand here. The first is that the excess that we produce each year does not go to feed the starving millions. It didn’t go to feed the starving millions in 1995, it didn’t go to feed the starving millions in 1994, it didn’t go to feed the starving millions in 1993, it didn’t go to feed the starving millions in 1992—and it won’t go to feed the starving millions in 1996. Where did it go? It went to fuel our population explosion.
That’s the first thing. The second thing is that everyone involved in the problem of world hunger knows that the problem is not a shortage of food. Producing more food does not solve the problem, because that’s simply not the problem. Producing more food just produces more people.
Then people will ask, “Don’t you realize that our agricultural base is already being destroyed? We’re eliminating millions of tons of top-soil every year. Even the sea isn’t yielding as much food as before. Yet the population explosion continues.” The point of the objection is contained in that last sentence: Our food production capacity is declining, yet the population explosion continues. This nonfact is offered as proof that there is no connection between food and growth. Once again, I’m afraid I must insist that this is magical thinking. Our population explosion can no more continue without food than a fire can continue without fuel. The fact that our population continues to grow year after year is proof that we’re producing more food year after year. Until people start showing up who are made of shadows or metal filings or gravel—when that happens, then I’ll have to back off this point.
When all else fails, it will be objected that the people of the world will not tolerate a limit on food. That may be, but it has nothing to do with the facts I’ve presented here.
No one has ever specifically asked me what I have against birth control, but I’ll answer the question anyway. I don’t have a thing against birth control as such. It just represents very poor problem-solving strategy. The rule in crisis management is, Don’t make it your goal to control effects, make it your goal to control causes. If you control causes, then you don’t have to control effects. This is why they make you go through airport security before you get on the plane. They don’t want to control effects. They want to control causes. Birth control is a strategy aimed at effects. Food-production control is a strategy aimed at causes.
We’d better have a look at it.
Questions and Answers
[All Qs as summarized by B for non-German-speaking listeners]
Q. You mention in one of your “demonstrations” that the walls of the cage are expanded to accommodate an increased population of mice. It seems to me this invalidates the demonstration, inasmuch as there is no way for us to expand the walls of this planet to accommodate an increased human population.
A. What the nations of Europe did, beginning in the sixteenth century, was precisely to expand the walls of their cage to accommodate an increased population—into the New World, Australia, Melanesia, and Africa.
Q. It’s difficult for me to see how you have improved on Thomas Malthus, who was making similar predictions a century ago.
A. Malthus’s warning was about the inevitable failure of totalitarian agriculture. My warning is about its continued success.
Q. Your models of population growth fail to take into account the well-established correlation between standard of living and population growth. Countries with a high standard of living have a growth rate near zero or even below zero (as in Germany!), whereas countries with a low standard of living are the ones that account for the greatest growth. This shows that food production and population growth aren’t necessarily connected.
A. The argument you’ve presented is the sort of argument the tobacco industry likes: “One of my best friends never touched a cigarette in her life, didn’t grow up among smokers, and didn’t work among smokers, but she died of lung cancer at age thirty-seven. On the other hand, my father has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day since he was seventeen and is still hale and hardy at age sixty-three. This shows that smoking and cancer aren’t necessarily connected.”
When our population system is assessed as a whole—on a global scale, rather than country by country—there is no doubt whatever that, as a whole, our population is increasing catastrophically, so that studies conducted by international groups like the United Nations predict without reservation that there will be twelve billion of us here in forty years or so.
Q. The point you are ignoring is that population growth can be slowed if living conditions are improved.
A. In the New World five hundred years ago, the non-native population was zero. Today the non-native population is three hundred million. This growth was not a result of poor living conditions. It was a result of the causes I have outlined here tonight.
Q. The farmers of the world do not primarily produce food to feed an expanded population, as you suggest. This is not the force to which they are responding. More and more farmers are engaged in producing crops that don’t feed anyone at all, crops like coffee, cotton, and tobacco.
A. Where is the food coming from to feed our expanding population then? If it isn’t being produced by farmers, who is producing it? This is a biological fact that is simply beyond dispute: If a hundred million people are added to the population, these people will be made from food and nothing else.
Q. According to Karl Marx, the population of every culture is determined by the constraints of its livelihood. For example, foraging peoples, in order to pursue their lifestyle, must maintain a very small population. They could feed more, but only by abandoning some aspect of their lifestyle. In other words, their lifestyle forces a limit on them. Our lifestyle will force a limit on us as well.
A. I see. And meanwhile, food production has nothing to do with it?
Q. As far as I am concerned, food production has nothing to do with it.
A. I can only point out that the biological sciences see the matter differently.
Q. It seems to me that we don’t need to do anything about our growing population. The system itself will take care of it.
A. You mean by collapsing. Yes, that
’s perfectly true. If you learn that the building you’re living in has a structural fault that will soon cause it to collapse under the force of gravity, you’re certainly at liberty to let the system take care of it. But if your children are living in the building when it finally collapses, they may not think as highly of this solution as you do.
The Great Remembering
25 May, Schauspielhaus Wahnfried, Radenau