Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Unsustainability Is a Progressive Delusion
China’s oppressive one-child policy has at long last been repealed. Sadly, it was replaced with an only slightly less oppressive two-child policy. Hopes that China’s leaders have finally realized the blatantly evil nature of such decrees are, of course, wishful thinking. The demographic disaster that such bureaucratic meddling has caused was the motivating factor for the policy change.
Likewise, hopes that the American intelligentsia might pass such a basic test in recognizing good and evil are nothing but a pipe dream. Sarah Conly, Professor of Philosophy at Bowdoin College, has provided us with a prime example in the Boston Globe, replete with references to every liberal’s favorite buzzword “unsustainable.”
The change is being applauded around the world, but it raises the question: Is this really a good thing?
If her answer was yes, I’m guessing she wouldn’t have asked.
The most recent estimate from the United Nations says we’ll reach a population of 9.7 billion by 2050. And we just reached the population milestone of 7 billion in 2011, meaning it will take just less than 40 years to increase our population by almost 3 billion people. All of this from a world population of about 1 billion in 1800. China now constitutes 19 percent of the world population, and so a change in the country’s fertility rate will likely bring about that 9.7 billion even sooner.
The sad truth is that trying to support this many people will bring about environmental disaster.
Conly fails to mention that the UN predicts that once the Earth reaches that peak population of 9.7 billion, it will begin to decline rapidly as the world’s collective family tree is upside down. She makes a call for all of us to cut back to only having two children, as if oblivious to the fact that the most of the world (Africa being the notable exception) has already done so, or is on track to be there soon.
Unaware that her preferred fertility rates have already been achieved (despite having written a book on the subject), she recounts a parade of horribles (Storms! Lack of fresh water! Overcrowded cities! Changing global temperatures!), none of which are actually unique to the modern world, and all of which can be overcome by human ingenuity.
We are using resources unsustainably, and despite the frequent cries for a cutback in the use of resources and release in greenhouse gases, nothing much has happened. Today we release more greenhouse gases than we did before the Kyoto accords. More people will mean more unsustainable resource use, worse climate change, and, eventually, wars over scarce goods or massive population displacement and migrations to places with remaining resources.
A valid point. Remember how we reached peak oil production back in 2007, and the world fell into a crisis of skyrocketing fuel costs? No? Do you instead recall human ingenuity making vast quantities of previously unobtainable oil available to us? Well, Sarah Conly sure doesn’t.
Given the damage we are causing, and the suffering we foresee for all those who live after us, it is clear that having more than one child is just something that none of us — Chinese or American — has a moral right to do.
The increased suffering that Conly sees must exist only in her own mind. In reality, a far higher percentage of people suffered when the population sat at her preferred one billion back in the year 1800.
Our resource consumption has grown exponentially. The key fact which is consistently missed by the left is that our resource production has grown even more exponentially. The idea that we are anywhere near some kind of hard ceiling to such innovations is delusional. When we do run out of oil, or more likely, when it becomes scarce enough that prices begin to climb significantly, alternatives will be created. If history is any guide, the replacement will prove cheaper, cleaner, more efficient, more plentiful, and it will come into existence and widespread use for no reason other than the profit motive.
Such doomsday predictions of unsustainability are nothing new. In 1894, the Times of London predicted that by 1950, every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. In reality, cars had almost entirely replaced horses as the dominant mode of transportation by 1920, solving the looming sanitation crisis without an ounce of government intervention, or a rationing of resources. The internal combustion engine, combined with a previously useless raw material in crude oil allowed this transition to take place.
This is the fundamental truth that escapes Conly and those like her. Before the 1850s, the Earth theoretically had the maximum amount of oil that it will ever contain, and yet, it was utterly useless to the human race. In every meaningful sense, we have a greater volume of oil now than at any other time in history. Technological advancements mean that new resources, which are not factored into liberal sustainability calculations today, will continue to emerge to pick up any gap created by a growing population.
Published in General
ok, wait… 100% in absolute poverty in 1820? I’m going to have to question some of the definitions used in that chart.
It’s about 95% in 1820, Ryan.
But the government does and the immigrants will vote for more. Even now they are promised more for their future votes. Even without voting they influence the electoral college in a similar way that slavery used to make the South more powerful. There is no 3/5 limit though. We get the full effect. They are also overrepresented in our prison systems which I suppose could be considered another kind of welfare program. In addition they do not feel strongly about our Bill of Rights. They will undermine those as well. This is a very high price for a very short term benefit. The electoral path for a Republican is very difficult now and will be impossible in 2020.
The only cases in recorded history…
Regards,
Jim
I didn’t see a birth date on Professor Conly’s faculty page, but I guess from her photo that she is an academic product of the 60s/70s. It was during that period that the great Malthusian Ehrlich published “The Population Bomb”, which contributed to the large opinion shift shown by the graph below. I suspect her tattered but revered copy occupies a holy place in her office.
Here is a quote from her page regarding human impact on the environment: “For this reason, it can be permissible for governments to regulate the number of children we have, as long as they do that in ways that don’t violate rights.”
Thank goodness she added that qualifying phrase on the end. For a second, I thought she was an extremist.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/148355/americans-preference-smaller-families-edges-higher.aspx
BTW, I noticed that the last survey at the Gallup link shows that the group who most strongly believe in having less children is the high income group — the group most able to afford them. (Then again, maybe they are high income because they do not have children.)
I’ll assert without evidence the gross generality that the trend to families having only one child, or at the most two, is a significant factor, maybe the factor, contributing to the current generation of closed-minded spoiled idiots.
The one child is so precious that he must be protected from all dangers, and has learned that he must fight against microaggressions and find his safe space where no one disagrees with him or makes him uncomfortable and insist on trigger warnings before he might read something that describes harsh reality.
You have causality reversed. It is not the physical Manhattan that makes it so desirable. It is the human Manhattan that does so.
All true. I was merely making the point that working immigrants are a net win for the economy in the absence of entitlements. But, of course, where there are large entitlements, the whole thing becomes a rotten morass.
The issue is and has always been human ability to adjust to changes in technology, sources of energy, food, natural resources etc. The only thing that really restrains adjustment are organized interests that can capture political power. Change threatens the status quo and free markets, under the rule of clear law, maximizes change. Those who use the term sustainability and who want to empower some regulatory apparatus to help us reach sustainability support organized interests who are threatened by progress and change, unless they’re just personally corrupt and have some angle. Established interests including class elites, are hostile to markets and always have been because they threaten. Anti market theologies are reactionary and always have been.
The only Austrian economist I had the good fortune to know as an undergraduate, pointed out that arithmetic growth from one to two is always faster than exponential growth and we are always at a new base of one.
Frank’s use of the language “slightly less oppressive” and “blantantly evil nature” aren’t that far from “unsustainable”. I worked in China for over a year and couldn’t get excited about the one child policy. China is badly over-crowded. Most Chinese I met wanted to emigrate. There’s too much emphasis on the freedom to have as many children as you want. It might be OK in a country like ours. Having lots of kids is fine where offspring are intended to take care of old parents and infant mortality is high. That’s the ancient way of providing social security. But who supports those children before emancipation? Kind of tough in low income China. Kind of tough here.
Frank’s views seem more moral than economic. What’s all this assurance from commentators that technology will spare us? How can you be so sure? And why is it a fact that most of the world has voluntarily imposed on itself a 2 child limit? Prove it!
Just because a party line liberal makes a point, is it necessarily absurd? Maybe “unsustainable” is an adopted political buzzword of the left. So what. I’ts still in the dictionary. Global warming and the and the rest of their propganda aside, nations still have mouths to feed. Where’s the guarantee that natural resourses will never diminish? Old Chinese proverb. “You can’t put 10 lbs. of s..t in a 5 lb. bag”.
t
The logic behind “sustainability” is: In order that people not die, people should not be born.
Hard to argue with that.
It is both moral and economic. Trying to make a post all inclusive of every argument simply makes it unreadably long while lacking focus.
There are plenty of places in this country which would, if they were your only exposure to it, cause you to think that this country is horribly overcrowded. Such anecdotes are not terribly useful when drawing broad conclusions.
My first economic point is to echo what iWe has said. People are the engine of a country, not natural resources. More people means more brains, a certain percentage of which will be brilliant. Those minds are far more valuable than any specific natural resource. Take the example of Israel, which lacks the oil of it’s neighboring countries, but is far more successful because of it’s technology sector.
They do lack basic human freedoms.
Aside from the examples we have from history? Innovation hasn’t slowed down. Advancements in computing and robotics insure that we will continue to grow even more efficient in producing resources for the foreseeable future.
Reread my post and follow the link to the CIA fact book on birth rates. With just a little more research you can find that birthrates are trending downward in most of the world(Africa and parts of the middle east being the main exceptions). The U.S. for example is barely above replacement level. Most of Europe is below replacement level. These numbers continue to decline.
Hm… seems someone else wrote about “sustainability” on Ricochet recently.
To quote again from Briggs’s article:
Disagree- port city with easy international access attracted the movers and the shakers.
There are lots of ports that are not valued like Manhattan. Airport routes and flight frequencies basically follows the people – not the other way around.
I agree that cities reach critical growth levels in different ways. But I maintain that it is the human capital that matters. Otherwise New Orleans would be one of the richest places on earth.