Overpopulation? The Greatest Myth of Modern Times
by Eamonn Keane, B. Comm., Dip. Ed., Grad. Dip. Ed.
The following article was submitted to the Melbourne Age newspaper in response to an article titled "Feeding the world’s Children Must be Our First Responsibility" by columnist Pamela Bone. Ms Bone has written several such articles with a recurring anti natalist theme. The Age did not print Eamonn Keane’s response. We have printed his response for your information. Eamonn Keane has written two books on population and related issues. They are titled Population Control and Population Explosion. He is the economics coordinator at a school in Harris Park, Sydney.
Pamela Bone contends that the world is overpopulated. She says that the world’s population "is growing faster than the ability of the Earth to feed its people" (The Age, April 25). Since 1948, the per capita food production of developing countries has increased by 40 percent. According to reports from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (UNFAG), with each year that passes, it takes less land to grow each person’s food requirements. Between 1970 and 1973, both India and China have been among the leading nations in exporting food.
In 1990, the UNFAO Report on the State of Food and Agriculture, claimed that every nation had the capacity to feed all their own people well and it blamed governments in developing countries for forcing food prices down thus giving farmers less incentive to grow food. Further to this, the UNFAO has estimated that with present technologies fully employed, the world could feed 30 to 35 billion people roughly six times the present world population of 5.4 billion people. Roger Revelle, Director of the Harvard Centre for Population Studies, estimates that the world’s agricultural resources are capable of supporting 40 billion people. Indian economist Raj Krishna estimates that India alone is capable of increasing crop yields to the point of providing the entire world’s food supply. India, it is worth noting has four times as much arable land per person as Japan and twice as much as Britain.
Bone gives the impression that Third World countries are terribly overcrowded. On average, people in Australia, most of whom live in five cities, live in more crowded conditions than do people in China and India of whom 80 percent live in the countryside or in small villages. It has been calculated that the present population of the world could all lie down with nobody touching anyone else in a city smaller than Sydney. In general, population densities are higher in wealthier regions of the world than in poorer ones. China has a population density of 117 per square kilometre of land surface, Italy has 191 and the U.K. has 234. In fact, the U.N. Demographic Yearbook for 1989 listed more than 30 countries that were more crowded than China. In terms of population density per square kilometre of agricultural land, China has 273 while the U.K. has 315. In more general terms, for this measurement: Africa has 80, Latin America 55, Oceania 55, Asia 422, former Soviet Union 59, North America 55. These figures show that most of the World’s South (less developed countries) have low population densities per square kilometre of agricultural land which indicates the absence of a common pattern in the Third World countries.
What about resources? Professor Jacqueline Kasun says that while resources are always scarce relative to the demands that human beings place upon them, the limits are however so far beyond our present use as to be nearly invisible and are actually receding as new knowledge develops. For example, silicon for silicon chips is found in ordinary sand. Regarding the two principal metals which we use — aluminium and iron — these exist in almost limitless quantities in ordinary clay. Chemical processes are known for extracting them but are not used because it is easier to get iron and aluminium from iron ore and bauxite respectively. Dr Alan Hammond of the World Resources Institute, has stated that over the last few decades the prices of almost all resources have fallen in real terms. He points out that over this time the reserve to production ratio has in fact grown and that we have plateaued on a per capita use basis in industrial countries which are the main users.
Increasing demand for resources stimulates exploration and encourages people to search for more economical ways of extracting them. Even if demand outstrips supply, this will call forth the invention of substitutes. The Greeks’ transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age 3000 years ago was inspired by a disruption due to war of trade in the tin necessary to make bronze. The Greeks responded to the crisis by starting to use iron. Timber shortages in the 16 century Britain ushered in the age of coal. Similarly a shortage of whale oil in the mid-nineteenth century led to the sinking of the first oil well in 1859.
It is against this backdrop of human ingenuity discovering and creating new resources, that Professor Julian Simon in his book The Ultimate Resource, argued that resources should not be thought of as finite since it is the human mind itself which is the ultimate resource. In 1980, Simon offered to bet that the real price of any natural resource (grains, oil, coal, timber, or metals) would fall over the ten year period to 1990. With population on the rise and resources supposedly getting scarcer, then their real prices would inevitably have to rise. Simon disputed this simplistic equation on the grounds that resources were in fact becoming more plentiful and because of this he offered to bet that their prices would fall. Paul Ehrlich accepted the bet saying that he would "accept Simon’s astonishing offer before other greedy people jump in". Ehrlich lost the bet. Between 1980 and 1990, the price of the resources fell in real terms as Simon had predicted.
What about the environment? Does population growth inevitably lead to its degradation? It is pointless blaming population growth in developing countries for environmental problems when the developed countries with less than 25 percent of the world’s population: consumes 75 percent of all energy used, 79 percent of all commercial fuel, 85 percent of all wood products and 72 percent of all steel products. It is widely agreed that developed countries produce up to 80 percent of man-made pollutants.
In technical terms, environmental degradation is primarily the result of using inappropriate technology and of an unjust distribution of wealth and resources. On the basis of data gathered from both developed and less-developed countries, Barry Commoner, the well known environmentalist, concluded that: "In all countries, the environmental impact of the technology factor is significantly greater than the influence of population size or affluence". Eastern Europe for example has one of the worst pollution levels in the world but a relatively low population density. If it could acquire better technologies, it could begin to clean up its pollution while simultaneously raising the material living standards of its people.
If population growth has a negative impact on human welfare, then how do we account for the fact mat in the economic history of the United States and Western Europe, the biggest upsurge in their economic activity was during the period of their most rapid population growth over the last two centuries? Or why is the human condition in countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Kenya, and Mauritius for example, much better now than it was 50 years ago when their respective populations were much smaller? Again, why is it that there are less people affected by famine today than mere was during the same period of the last century even though the world’s population is much larger now?
The most exhaustive study to date of the relationship between population growth and development was carried out by the National Academy of Sciences in the United States in 1986. Its Final Report concluded that it is misleading to say that population growth causes poverty. It also found that no significant degree could pollution problems be related to population growth per se and that to a great extent these problems could be resolved by appropriate government policies designed to correct market failure.
The world "overpopulation" has no precise meaning. It describes a subjective judgement rather man an objective fact as there is no demographic criterion to define it. For example, Holland has four times the population density of its former colony Indonesia, but it is the latter that is said to have an "overpopulation" problem. The word overpopulation is simply a pejorative word for poverty. If we incorrectly analyse the problem of poverty as so-called overpopulation, then getting rid of the people them selves will suggest itself as a solution. This is easier than focusing on the poverty which challenges us to work for social justice and for solidarity between people and nations.