Sustainability, Energy, Resources, Population, "Peakiness" and Malthus Revisited...and He's Still Wrong.

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The Economist magazine revisits a topic that we've discussed here , here in the "The Logic of Life" , here in a comment thread . You may also recall that Thomas Malthus figured prominently in those discussions for his flawed, late 18th century view on population and food resources moving forward. His flaw as Tim Harford also explained in his recent book, The Logic of Life, is that he perfected a way of gauging population, innovation and resources that explained history up to his life time but whose rationale was just starting to show its flaws and irrelevance...practically in real time as Malthus wrote about it. He had no way of knowing.

Excerpt from the article: (emphasis mine)

If the world's population growth was a false concern four decades ago, when it peaked at 2% a year, it is even less so now that it has slowed to 1.2%. But even though crude demography is not to blame, changing lifestyles arising from rapid economic growth especially in Asia are a new worry. As the Chinese have become more affluent, they have started to consume more meat, raising the underlying demand for basic food since cattle need more grain to feed than humans. Neo-Malthusians question whether the world can provide 6.7 billion people (rising to 9.2 billion by 2050) with a Western-style diet.

Once again the gloom is overdone. There may no longer be virgin lands to be settled and cultivated, as in the 19th century, but there is no reason to believe that agricultural productivity has hit a buffer. Indeed, one of the main barriers to another “green revolution” is unwarranted popular worries about genetically modified foods, which is holding back farm output not just in Europe, but in the developing countries that could use them to boost their exports.

So I say, lest we hurt we, as individuals, allow our future prospects to be compromised through some collective bungle of The Fatal Conceit variety, we should look forward with some optimism knowing that innovators will reshape and push outward the frontiers of our productive potential. Man's ability to adapt to changes always seems to be highly underrated in the present looking forward....precisely because people discount the future effects of the ever advancing progress and evolution that is taking place right before their eyes.

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