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As the article reports, the late agronomist Norman Borlaug helped fix the world food problem, and the late economist Julian Simon helped get the world thinking
by tokenadult 11y ago
As the article reports, the late agronomist Norman Borlaug helped fix the world food problem, and the late economist Julian Simon helped get the world thinking about how little of a problem population growth really is.
"One thing that happened on the road to doom was that the world figured out how to feed itself despite its rising numbers. No small measure of thanks belonged to Norman E. Borlaug, an American plant scientist whose breeding of high-yielding, disease-resistant crops led to the agricultural savior known as the Green Revolution. While shortages persisted in some regions, they were often more a function of government incompetence, corruption or civil strife than of an absolute lack of food.
"Some preternaturally optimistic analysts concluded that humans would always find their way out of tough spots. Among them was Julian L. Simon, an economist who established himself as the anti-Ehrlich, arguing that 'humanity’s condition will improve in just about every material way. [This has proven to be true all over the world.] In 1997, a year before he died, Mr. Simon told Wired magazine that 'whatever the rate of population growth is, historically it has been that the food supply increases at least as fast, if not faster.'"
I am old enough to remember when the ideas in the book The Population Bomb seemed like fresh, new ideas. Decades later, the world Ehrlich and I still live in seems more like a confirmation of criticisms of the book[1] than like a confirmation of the book. Since the book was first published, I have spent many years living in Taiwan, starkly poor when I was born and still poor when the book was published, and one of the more densely populated countries of the world during most of my lifetime, but today a prosperous, delightful place to live. The population of the United States has increased greatly in my lifetime, but the United States is still a great place to live too. Fears of great harm from a population explosion were just wrong, that's all. This article is part of a great article series published by the New York Times looking back on predictions from earlier eras and how they turned out.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb#Criticisms
- kiba 11y agoIt is very possible that we can destroy ourselves or be in dire strait because we grow too fast or our population is too big. It's just not at this level or predicted trajectory.
- schiffern 11y agoAnything other than techno-utopianism on HN? Cue the Norman Borlaug worship! Nevermind the fact that the "high-yielding, disease-resistant crops" only perform better when doused with biocides and chemicals (which leads to soil loss, contaminates aquifers and other waters, and ultimately leads to desertification). We're only surviving today by stealing from our future. That's what "unsustainable" means. The problem is that the future catches up with you. The fact that industrial agriculture seems to work today obscures that fact.
- hockeybias 11y agoMaybe not. Innovation Happens.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoSoil loss and desertification is generally caused by excessive tillage, not by chemical use. Chemical use in modern farming has drastically reduced tillage requirements.
- schiffern 11y ago>Soil loss and desertification is generally caused by excessive tillage, not by chemical use. It's both. Herbicides wipe out soil-stabilizing fibrous root networks. Fungicides wipe out soil-stabilizing mycelial mats. Nitrogen fertilizers poison the microbial environment in healthy soil (with about a trillion organisms per cc), destroying a significant source of organic matter. Insecticides kill off the earthworms, which aerate the soil allowing it to soak rain instead of running off (taking soil with it). Any fertilizer that's mined out of the ground is obviously transient, so the ability to have a food system without fertilizer is a Very Important Thing.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoI guess we'll have to switch to pure-meat based diet then. Native grass is the only thing that grows well and reliably on the majority of North American farmland without tillage or chemicals. And the best way to turn grass into calories is to run it through something with four stomachs first. So if you want to raise cereals and vegetables, you have to choose: tillage or chemical use. The latter is much easier on the soil, even if it's not perfect.
- yequalsx 11y agoIt's a bit curious that the response to population concerns is that we can feed ourselves. There is much more to life than mere subsistence. The world can not all live like Americans. There aren't presently enough resources for this to happen. Maybe when we mine the moon and asteroids but not right now. Great harm from the population explosion has been done. The environmental damage is enormous. Yes, we can still feed ourselves but this is not the only aspect of population growth fears.
- ars 11y ago> The world can not all live like Americans. People say this all the time, but it's simply not true. There is no limit to our resources because they can be recycled endlessly. The atoms don't wear out. The only input necessary is energy, and we are working hard to make that cheaper and cleaner.
- yequalsx 11y agoYour last paragraph indicates that you agree with me. I did specify that at this time the world can not all live like Americans. I left open the possibility that in the future this might no longer be true. Hence I don't understand the point of your response. You agree with my statement in the second paragraph but disagree with it in the first. You also ingored the part about environmental damage.
- ars 11y agoYou don't have to mine the moon. The Earth is sufficient. > I did specify that at this time the world can not all live like Americans. No. Even right now we can all live like Americans. For animals, resources are limited. What is there, is what is there. It's not like that for human. Humans create resources if they need them. If the whole world wanted to live like Americans we could create the needed resources. Doing so thoughtlessly creates pollution, but it's not an essential part of the process.
- stouset 11y agoEnergy is still limited. At our long-term growth rate of energy use, we have fewer than 300 years before we start observing warming from thermodynamic limits on energy dissipation[1]. This is completely independent of the method of energy production, and simply a function of how quickly the Earth is capable of radiating thermal energy out into space. [1]: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-e...