The Earth Is Not Overpopulated

I had a post the other day entitled Climate Change is a Trojan Horse that talked about the people who strangely believe that the world has too many people. Today at the Federalist entitled Recycled Overpopulation Is Anti-Science, Anti-Freedom, and Anti-Human. Now, it seems that Joe Biden has appointed a woman to be head of the Bureau of Land Management who seems to espouse the debunked Maltusian philosphy.

More than 50 years ago, Paul Erlich wrote “The Population Bomb,” which warned about an allegedly impending disaster of overpopulation that would bring worldwide famine, civil strife, and a host of other calamities. He predicted that the demand of so many new souls would inevitably outstrip the world’s supply of food, energy, and other necessities, ending civilization.

On nearly all his points, Erlich was utterly wrong. None of this happened. The global population continued to grow while the global standard of living rose dramatically.

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One of Erlich’s acolytes happens to be Biden’s recent nominee for the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning. She has come under criticism for her involvement with ecoterrorism and her graduate thesis discouraging everyone, especially those in developed countries, from having more than two children. For her, children are not a blessing, but an “environmental hazard,” and the “truly smart thing” to do is to “stop at one or two kids.”

Nevertheless, a person like Stone-Manning proposes limiting individuals’ rights to life, liberty, and property in order to save the planet. If restricting these rights actually worked this way, however, China would be leading the world in cleanliness instead of being its biggest polluter.

Malthus noticed that deer starved to death when there were too many of them because there was just not enough food. This continues to plague deer and other animals. Malthus however made the inaccurate leap to the idea that the same fate awaited mankind. And, if we were not abled to adapt, so it might be. But it isn't. As it turns out, humans are adaptable.

Indeed, as I write in "Climate Change is a Trojan Horse," one of the reasons for our advancing technology is that there are enough people on the planet to create markets large enough to allow economies of scale. A number of industries have benefited from these large markets, and most of their products would be unaffordable without these large markets. Sure, the wealthy could afford things, but the middle class and the poverty stricken are in the same boat. Indeed, it wasn't until quite recently that there was a middle class, and industrialization is what brought it about. And having larger populations allowed the industrialization.