from: "The Story of B" by Daniel Quinn
Because the ideas I’m going to be presenting here have proved to be so unsettling for people, I’ve learned to approach them cautiously, from a good, safe distance—a good, safe distance being in this case about two hundred thousand years. Two hundred thousand years ago is when a new species called Homo sapiens first began to be seen on this planet.
As with any young species, there were not many members of it to begin with. Since our subject is population, I’d better clarify what I mean by that. We have an approximate date for the emergence of Homo sapiens because we have fossil remains—and we have fossil remains because a sufficient number of this species lived around this time to provide those fossil remains. In other words, when I say that Homo sapiens appeared about two hundred thousand years ago, I’m not talking about the first two of them or the first hundred of them. But neither am I talking about the first million of them.
Two hundred thousand years ago, there was a bunch. Let’s say ten thousand. Over the next hundred ninety thousand years, Homo sapiens grew in numbers and migrated to every continent of the world.
The passage of these hundred ninety thousand years brings us to the opening of the historical era on this planet. It brings us to the beginning of the agricultural revolution that stands at the foundation of our civilization. This is about ten thousand years ago, and the human population at that time is estimated to have been around ten million.
I want to spend a couple minutes now just looking at that period of growth from ten thousand people to ten million people. As it happens, what this period of growth represents is ten doublings. From ten thousand to twenty thousand, from twenty thousand to forty thousand, from forty thousand to eighty thousand, and so on. Start with ten thousand, double it ten times, and you wind up with about ten million. So: Our population doubled ten times in a hundred ninety thousand years. Went from about ten thousand to ten million. That’s growth. Undeniable growth, definite growth, even substantial growth . . . but growth at an infinitesimal rate. Here’s how infinitesimal it was: On the average, our population was doubling every nineteen thousand years. That’s slow— glacially slow.
At the end of this period, which is to say ten thousand years ago, this began to change very dramatically. Growth at an infinitesimal rate became growth at a rapid rate. Starting at ten million, our population doubled not in nineteen thousand years but in five thousand years, bringing it to twenty million. The next doubling—doubling and a bit—took only two thousand years, bringing us to fifty million. The next doubling took only sixteen hundred years, bringing us to one hundred million. The next doubling took only fourteen hundred years—bringing us to two hundred million at the zero point of our calendar. The next doubling took only twelve hundred years, bringing us to four hundred million. The year was 1200 A.D. The next doubling took only five hundred years, bringing us to eight hundred million in 1700. The next doubling took only two hundred years, bringing us to a billion and a half in 1900. The next doubling took only sixty years, bringing us to three billion in 1960. The next doubling will take only thirty-seven years or so. Within ten or twenty months we’ll reach six billion, and if this growth trend continues unchecked, many of us in this room will live long enough to see us reach twelve billion. I won’t attempt to imagine for you what that will mean. At a rough guess, my personal guess, take everything bad that you see going on now—environmental destruction, terrorism, crime, drugs, corruption, suicide, mental illness—violence of every kind—and multiply by four . . . at least. But, believe it or not, I’m not here to depress you with gloomy pictures of the future.
We have a population problem. There are a few people around who think that everything is fine, and we don’t have a population problem at all, but I’m not here to change their minds. I’m here to suggest that the angle of attack we’ve traditionally taken on this problem is ineffective and can never be anything but ineffective. After that, I want to show you a more promising angle of attack. But right now I’d like to read you a fable that I think you’ll find relevant. It’s about some people with a population problem of their own and the way they go about attacking it. It’s called “Blessing: A Fable About Population.”
It happened once, on a planet not much different from our own, that researchers at a drug company got lucky with a substance they were testing as a pain reliever. Ingesting this substance, called D3346, pain-ridden mice began to exhibit signs of relief: They were friskier, they mated more often, their appetites improved, and so on. Human tests made company officials ecstatic. D3346 outperformed much more powerful drugs and had no deleterious side effects (aside from imparting to the subject an objectionable odor that soon disappeared when the drug was discontinued).
The new drug worked so well that the marketing department knew they had more than a mere painkiller on their hands. People put up with a host of small aches and pains more or less all the time, and simply by getting rid of them, D3346 gave users a feeling of well-being so intense that it almost amounted to a “high.” The name Blessing was adopted for the new product without discussion, as was its slogan: “Works on pain you didn’t even know you had!”
The drug was initially marketed in pill and liquid forms, but in less than a year someone had the bright idea of packaging it as a powder in disposable shakers designed to take their place beside the salt and pepper on the dining- room table. Within months, all “medicinal” forms had disappeared from store shelves, and Blessing was no longer “taken for pain.” It had become just another beneficial food additive, like a vitamin.
No one was surprised when, nine months after the introduction of the drug, the birth rate began to climb. This had been predicted, and everyone understood the reasons for it. Blessing didn’t increase fertility or sexual appetite; it wasn’t an aphrodisiac. People using it just felt better— more playful, more affectionate, more outgoing. It was predicted that the birth rate would soon level off—and it did . . . at about ten percent above the old rate.
On this planet, the people I’ve been talking about did not constitute a dominant world culture, as we do—but they soon began to be noticed globally. In the first place, they smelled bad, which earned them the name by which they became known all across the world: the Stinkards. In the second place, responding to internal population pressures, they were incorrigible trespassers and encroachers. Nonetheless, the Stinkards usually managed to do their encroaching without violence . . . by sending Blessing ahead of them.
It didn’t matter that no one wanted to end up smelling like the Stinkards. The Blessing was there, and few could resist taking just an occasional dose for a sore back or a headache, and before long they were using it like table salt. People began by loathing the Stinkards and passionately resisting their encroachments, but ended up becoming Stinkards themselves. After a few hundred years the Stinkard expansion came to an end—because there were no new lands to expand into. The entire planet was Stinkard.
Farsighted leaders realized that population was soon going to be an urgent problem, but a century passed without significant action being taken. The human population, having no reason to do anything else, continued to grow. Famine became a familiar feature of life in certain parts of the world, and in some quarters the problem came to be understood not as one of curbing growth but as one of increasing food production. Another century passed, and the human population continued to expand.
In informed circles, people began to practice and advocate various population-control strategies, ranging from birth control in one form or another to school programs designed to reduce teenage pregnancies, but none of these initiatives had any measurable effect. As more and more people became aware of the crisis, sociologists and economists began to probe more deeply for its causes. They noted, for example, that in many parts of the world, having children was a means of financial success; lacking other economic opportunities, especially for women, people brought children into the world to serve as unpaid workers and guarantors of old-age security.
One biohistorian by the name of Spry tried to draw people’s attention to the fact that, before the appearance of Blessina, the human population of the planet had been virtually stable, but his listeners had a hard time seeing the connection between the two things.
Dr. Spry tried to explain. “If you introduce Blessing into the diet of any species,” he said, “the result will be the same: The birth rate will increase. Without any offsetting increase in the death rate, the species’ overall population will inevitably increase as well.”
The professor’s listeners really had no notion of what he was getting at, since Blessing had been a constant feature of the human diet for a thousand years, and they couldn’t begin to imagine how it felt to live without it. He had to explain very patiently that, without a constant intake of Blessing, everyone would experience a whole host of minor aches and pains, and experiencing these minor aches and pains, they would be slightly less frisky, slightly less playful, slightly less affectionate, slightly less outgoing—-and slightly less inclined to mate. As a result, the birth rate would go down, and the population would soon become stable once again.
“Are you saying that the solution to our population problem is to live in pain?” people asked him incredulously.
“That’s a complete exaggeration of my point,” the professor said. “Before Blessing came along, people didn’t think of themselves as ‘living in pain.’ They were not living in pain. They were just living.”
Others said, “This is really all beside the point. Dr. Spry has already pointed out that Blessing isn’t an aphrodisiac and doesn’t in itself increase fertility. The fact that we use Blessing doesn’t compel us to mate more often. We can mate as little or as much as we want. What’s more, we can also use any number of contraceptive methods to avoid pregnancy. So it’s hard to see what Blessing has to do with the matter at all.”
“It has this to do with it,” Dr. Spry replied. “If you make Blessing available to any species, the members of that species will mate more often, and their birth rate will rise. It’s not a question of what you or I will do—whether you or I will elect to use contraceptives, for example. It’s a question of what the species as a whole will do. And I can demonstrate this experimentally: The birth rate of any species with free access to Blessing will increase. It doesn’t matter whether it’s mice or cats or lizards or chickens—or humans. This isn’t a matter of what individuals do, this is a matter of what whole populations do.”
But the professor’s audiences always indignantly rejected this observation. “We’re not mice!” they would yell. “We’re not cats or lizards or chickens!”
Increasingly regarded as a crank and an extremist, Dr. Spry eventually lost his teaching post and with it his credibility as an authority on any subject, and was heard from no more.
The population crisis mounted. Environmental biologists estimated that the human population had already exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet and was headed for a catastrophic collapse. Even former scoffers and optimists began to see that something had to change. Finally the heads of state of the major world powers convened a global conference to study and discuss the issues. It was an impressive event, unprecedented in human history. Thousands of thinkers from dozens of disciplines came together to put the problem under scrutiny.
The concept of control soon emerged as the overriding theme of the conference. Population control, of course, was the subject itself. But achieving control of population implied control on all sorts of levels and in all sorts of ways. New economic controls would encourage couples to control family size. In backward lands, where women were little more than breeding machines, new social controls would release their creativity to enhance family prosperity. Birth-control devices, birth-control substances, and birth- control strategies needed wider dissemination. Naturally, on the level of the individual, personal control needed to be improved. Educational controls were hotly debated, with some arguing that controls were needed to keep children ignorant about sex while others argued that controls were needed to make children aware of sex.
Control, control, control—it was a word heard ten thousand times, a million times.
Unlike the word Blessing.
At the Stinkards’ great global conference on population, Blessing wasn’t a major topic—or even a minor topic.
In fact, Blessing wasn’t even mentioned once.
People who hear this parable naturally want to know how to interpret it. They can see that the Stinkards were fundamentally irrational when they refused to acknowledge the connection between Blessing and their population explosion. The connection seems obvious. The Stinkards’ population explosion began exactly with the introduction of Blessing, and the introduction of Blessing would clearly produce the result observed. Logic and history combine to indict Blessing as the cause of the Stinkard population explosion. Logic and history combine to suggest that removing this cause would end the explosion and restore population stability.
But what in our own culture corresponds to Blessing?
I’ll answer an easier question first and tell you that my role here today corresponds exactly to the role of the unfortunate Dr. Spry. I will name to you the cause of our population explosion—with far more evidence and plausibility than Dr. Spry was able to muster in the case of Blessing—and then we’ll see. I’m used to people becoming enraged with me on this issue. They become enraged because, like Dr. Spry, I’m indicting what is perceived to be the very foremost blessing of our culture—a blessing far more essential to our way of life than any mere pain reliever.
Among life-forms found on the surface of our planet, all food energy originates in the green plants and nowhere else. The energy that originates in green plants is passed on to creatures who feed on the plants, and is passed on again to predators who feed on plant eaters, and is passed on again to predators who feed on those predators, and is passed on again to scavengers who return to the soil nutrients that green plants need to keep the cycle going. All this can be said to be the A of the ABCs of ecology.
The various feeding and feeder populations of the community maintain a dynamic balance, by feeding and being fed upon. Imbalances within the community—caused, for example, by disease or natural disasters—tend to be damped down and eradicated as the various populations of the community go about their usual business of feeding and being fed upon, generation after generation. Viewed in systems terms, the dynamic of population growth and decline in the biological community is a negative feedback system. If you’ve got too many deer in the forest, they’re going to gobble up their food base—and this reduction in their food base will cause their population to decline. And as their population declines, their food base replenishes itself—and since this replenishment makes more food available to the deer, the deer population grows. In turn, the growth of the deer population depletes the availability of food, which in turn causes a decline in the deer population. Within the community, food populations and feeder populations control each other. As food populations increase, feeder populations increase. As feeder populations increase, food populations decrease. As food populations decrease, feeder populations decrease. As feeder populations decrease, food populations increase. And so on. This is the B of the ABCs of ecology.
For systems thinkers, the natural community provides a perfect model of negative feedback. A simpler model is the thermostat that controls your furnace. Conditions at the thermostat convey the information “Too cold,” and the thermostat turns the furnace on. After a while, conditions at the thermostat convey the information “Too hot,” and the thermostat turns the furnace off. Negative feedback. Great stuff.
The A of the ABCs of ecology is food. The community of life is nothing else. It’s flying food, running food, swimming food, crawling food, and of course just sitting-there-and-growing food. The B of the ABCs of ecology is this, that the ebb and flow of all populations is a function of food availability. An increase in food availability for a species means growth. A reduction in food availability means decline. Always. Because it’s so important let me say that another way: invariably. An increase in food availability for a species means growth. A reduction means decline. Every time, ever and always. Semper et ubique. Without exception. Never otherwise.
More food, growth. Less food, decline. Count on it.
There is no species that dwindles in the midst of abundance, no species that thrives on nothing.
This is the B of the ABCs of ecology.
With the A and the B of ecology in hand, we’re ready to go back and look again at the origin of our population explosion. For a hundred and ninety thousand years our species grew at an infinitesimal rate from a few thousand to ten million. Then about ten thousand years ago we began to grow rapidly. This was not a miraculous event or an accidental event or even a mysterious event.
We began to grow more rapidly because we’d found a way to defeat the negative feedback controls of the community. We’d become food producers—agriculturalists. In other words, we’d found a way to increase food availability at will.
This ability to make food available at will is the blessing on which our civilization is founded. It’s also the blessing that the pain reliever in my parable stands for. The ability to produce food at will is an undoubted blessing, but its very blessedness can make it dangerous—and dangerously addictive—just like the analgesic in my fable.
“At will” is the operative expression here. Because we could now produce food at will, our population was no longer subject to control by food availability on a random basis. Anytime we wanted more food, we could grow it. After a hundred and ninety thousand years of being limited by what was available, we began to control what was available—and invariably we began to increase what was available. You don’t become a farmer in order to reduce food availability, you become a farmer to increase food availability. And so do the folks next door. And so do the folks farming throughout your region. You are all involved in increasing food availability for your species.
And here comes the B in the ABCs of ecology: An increase in food availability for a species means growth for that species. In other words, ecology predicts that the blessing of agriculture will bring us growth—and history confirms ecology’s prediction. As soon as we began to increase the availability of our own food, our population began to grow—not glacially, as before, when we were subject to the community’s negative feedback controls—but rapidly.
Population expansion among agriculturalists was followed by territorial expansion among agriculturalists. Territorial expansion made more land available for food production—and no one goes into farming to reduce food production. More land, more food production, more population growth.
With more people, we need more food. With more food available, we soon have more people—as predicted by the laws of ecology. With more people, we need more food. With more food, we soon have more people. With more people, we need more food. With more food, we soon have more people.
Positive feedback, this is called, in systems terminology. Another example: When conditions at the thermostat convey the information “Too hot,” the thermostat turns the furnace ON instead of OFF. That’s positive feedback. Negative feedback checks an increasing effect. Positive feedback reinforces an increasing effect.
Positive feedback is what we see at work in this agricultural revolution of ours. Increased population stimulates increased food production, which increases the population. More food, more people. More people, more food. More food, more people. More people, more food. More food, more people. Positive feedback. Bad stuff. Dangerous stuff.
What is observed in the human population is that intensification of production to feed an increased population invariably leads to a still greater increase in population. I’ve seen this called a paradox, but in fact it’s only what the laws of ecology predict. Listen to it again: “Intensification of production to feed an increased population invariably leads to a still greater increase in population.”
Think of it as an experiment that has been performed annually in our culture for the last ten thousand years: Let’s see what happens if we increase food production this year. Hey, whaddya know, our population increased too! Let’s see what happens next year if we increase food production.
Hey, whaddya know, our population increased again! Do you suppose there’s a connection?
Nah, why would there be?
Well, what shall we do this year? Increase production or decrease it? Well, we gotta increase it, don’t we, because we've got more mouths to feed!
Okay, let’s increase food production again this year and see what happens. Wow, look at that! Population up again.
Well, let’s increase production again and see what happens. Who knows, maybe this time the population will go down.
Nope, up again. Amazing.
These thumbnail conversations describe the results of five annual experiments performed in ancient times. Imagine nine thousand nine hundred ninety-five more of them, bringing us up to the present year, 1996, when we have to ask ourselves, well, what are we going to do this year? Decrease food production?
No way, don’t be ridiculous.
Well, whaddya say, let’s just keep it the same as last year just for once. You know, see what happens?
Are you kidding? Civilization would crash and burn.
Why? If we produced enough food for five and a half billion people last year, why should civilization crash and burn if we produce enough for five and a half billion people this year?
Because enough for five and a half billion wasn’t enough. Millions are starving.
Yeah, but everyone knows that this isn’t because food is lacking. The food is there, it’s just not getting to the people who are starving.
Look, didn’t we have this conversation in 1990?
Sure we had it in 1990.
We had it in 1990 and in 1921 during the Russian famine and in 1846 during the Irish famine and in 1783 during the Japanese famine and in 1591 during the Italian famine and in 1315 during the European famine. God, I can remember having this conversation in the sixth century B.C. during the Roman famines.
Well, that’s the point I’m making. How many times have we run this experiment?
About ten thousand times. Ten thousand times we’ve decided to increase food production, and ten thousand times the population has gotten bigger. Doesn’t prove anything, of course. This time could be different. This time the population might go down.
Well, okay, let’s try it one more time. We’ll increase food production again this year and see what happens. . . .
Hey, whaddya know. The population went up again this time. Quite a coincidence, huh?
Let me spend a few minutes now outlining a series of demonstrations that will clarify the issues I’ve raised here.
This is demonstration number one. Into a nice roomy cage we introduce two young, healthy mice. The cage has a built-in feeder that enables us to make food available to the mice in any quantity we like. After installing the two mice, we shove in two kilos of food. This is obviously much more than two mice need, but that will do no harm and you’ll soon see the point of it. Next day, we take out the feeder, discard the uneaten food, and replace it with another two kilos. We do this every day. Soon the two mice become four, the four become eight, the eight become sixteen, the sixteen become thirty-two. This population growth confirms the fact that these mice have plenty of food. We continue to put in two kilos of food every day and, as time goes on, more and more of it is eaten; this isn’t a surprise, because there are more and more mice eating it. Eventually there comes a day when all of it is eaten. No matter. We continue to put two kilos of food in the cage every day, and every day the two kilos of food are eaten. Now guess what happens to that population, which has been growing so busily from day one of the demonstration. It stops growing. It levels off. Again, this is no surprise at all. As we continue to supply two kilos of food a day, we count the mice daily for a year and see that the population fluctuates between two hundred eighty and three hundred twenty, with an average of three hundred. Two kilos of food every day will maintain about three hundred mice. That’s demonstration one.
Demonstration two begins much the same way. Cage. Two mice. This time, however, we follow a different procedure. Instead of putting in the same amount of food every day, we start with one amount and increase it daily. However much the pair of mice eat the first day, we put in fifty percent more the second day. However much they eat the second day, we put in fifty percent more the third day. Before long there are four mice. No matter, we follow our procedure. Whatever they eat in a day, we put in fifty percent more the next. Before long there are eight mice, sixteen mice, thirty-two mice. No matter, whatever they eat in one day, we put in fifty percent more the next. Sixty-four mice, a hundred twenty-eight, two hundred fifty, five hundred, a thousand. Whatever the mice eat in one day, we put in fifty percent more the next, carefully extending the sides of the cage as needed to avoid stressful overcrowding. Two thousand, four thousand, eight thousand, sixteen thousand, thirty-two thousand, sixty-four thousand. At this point, someone runs in and yells, “Stop! Stop! This is a population explosion!”
Golly! I guess you’re right! What shall we do?
I have a suggestion. Let’s start by answering this question: How much did the sixty-four thousand mice eat yesterday? Answer: five hundred kilos of food. Okay. Well, ordinarily, we’d put seventy-five hundred kilos of food into the cage tomorrow, but let’s abandon that procedure now. Our new procedure will be based on this theory: Yesterday five hundred kilos was enough for them, so why shouldn’t five hundred kilos be enough for them today?
So today we put just five hundred kilos of food into the cage, same as yesterday.
Now watch closely. There are no food riots. Why should there be? The mice have just as much to eat today as they did yesterday.
Now watch closely again. No mice are starving. Why would there be?
Now it’s tomorrow, and again we put just five hundred kilos of food into the cage.
Again, watch closely. There are still no food riots. Still no mice starving. We do it again on day three. Again, no food riots, no mice starving.
But aren’t new mice being born? Of course—and old mice are dying. Day four, day five, day six. I’m waiting for the food riots, but there are no food riots. I’m waiting for the famine, but there is no famine.
There are sixty-four thousand mice, and five hundred kilos of food will feed sixty-four thousand mice. Why should there be riots? Why should there be famine?
Oh—and I almost forgot to mention it—the population explosion stopped overnight. What else could it do? Population growth has to be supported by increased food availability. Always. Without exception. Less food—decline. More food—growth. Same food—stability. That’s what we’ve got here: Stability.
Demonstration three. This demonstration is identical to demonstration two right up to the end. Sixty-four thousand mice, five hundred kilos of food, stability. Then the head of the department charges in and says, “Who needs sixty-four thousand mice? These mice are eating us out of house and home. What’s special about sixty-four thousand mice anyhow? Why not eight thousand? Why not four thousand?”
Oh my, what a crisis. Quick—check the Yellow Pages, see if anyone makes condoms for mice! What, no condoms for mice!?! Well, look under Family Planning! What, no family planning for rodents!?!
No, you know this would not be the reaction. You know this because you understand the B in the ABCs of ecology. We don’t need birth control. All we need is food control.
Someone says, here’s what we do. Yesterday five hundred kilos of food went into the cage. Today we’ll reduce that by a kilo. Oh no, another objects. A kilo is too much. Let’s reduce it by a quarter of a kilo. So that’s what they do. Four hundred ninety-nine and three quarters kilos of food go into the cage. Tension in the lab as everyone waits for food riots and famine—but of course there are no food riots and no famine. Among sixty-four thousand mice, a quarter of a kilo of food is like a flake of dandruff apiece.
Tomorrow four hundred ninety-nine and a half kilos of food go into the cage. Still no food riots and no famine.
This procedure is followed for a thousand days—and not once is there a food riot or a famine. After a thousand days only two hundred fifty kilos of food are going into the cage—and guess what? There are no longer sixty-four thousand mice in the cage. There are only thirty-two thousand. Not a miracle—just a demonstration of the laws of ecology. A decline in food availability has been answered by a decline in population. As always. Semper et ubique. Nothing to do with riots. Nothing to do with famine. Just the normal response of a feeder population to the availability of food.
I’ve been surprised by how challenging people find these ideas. They feel menaced by them. They get angry. They feel I’m attacking the foundation of their lives. They feel I’m calling into question the blessedness of the greatest blessing of civilized life. They somehow feel I’m questioning the sacredness of human life itself.
I’d like to deal with some of the objections people make to these ideas. I do this not to discourage you from expressing objections of your own but because I can express these objections as rudely as I like to myself without making anyone nervous.
I’ll deal with the most general objection first, which is that humans are not mice. This is of course absolutely true, especially at the individual level. Each of us as an individual is capable of making reproductive choices that mice absolutely cannot make. Nonetheless—and this is the point that ecology makes and that I’ve made here today—our behavior as a biological population is indistinguishable from the behavior of any other biological population. In defense of that statement, I offer the evidence of ten thousand years of obedience to this fundamental law of ecology: An increase in food availability for a species means growth for that species.
I’ve been told that it doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve been told that it’s possible for us to increase food production and simultaneously reduce our population. This is basically the position taken by birth-control advocates. This is basically the position taken by well-intentioned organizations that undertake to improve indigenous agricultural techniques in Third World countries. They want to give technologically undeveloped peoples the means of increasing their population with one hand and birth-control aids with the other hand—even though we know full well that these birth-control aids don’t even work for us! They’re certain that we can go on increasing food production while ending population growth through birth control. This represents a denial of the B in the ABCs of ecology.
History—and not just thirty years of history but ten thousand years of history—offers no support whatever for the idea that we can simultaneously increase food production and end population growth. On the contrary, history resoundingly confirms what ecology teaches: If you make more food available, there will be more people to consume it.
Obviously the matter is different at the individual level. Old Macdonald on his farm can increase food production and simultaneously hold his family’s growth to zero, but this clearly isn’t the end of the story. What’s he going to do with that increase he produced on his farm? Is he going to soak it in gasoline and burn it? If so, then he hasn’t actually produced an increase at all. Is he going to sell it? Presumably that is what he’s going to do with it, and if he does sell it, then that increase enters the annual agricultural increase that serves to support our global population growth.
I’m often told that even if we stop increasing food production, our population will continue to grow. This represents a denial of both the A and the B of the ABCs of ecology. The A in the ABCs of ecology is this: We are food. We are food because we are what we eat—and what we eat is food. To put it plainly, each and every one of us is made from food.
When people tell me that our population will continue to add new millions even if we stop increasing food production, then I have to ask what these additional millions of people will be made of, since no additional food is being produced for them. I have to say, “Please bring me some of these people, because if they’re not made of food, I want to know what they are made of. Is it moonbeams or rainbow dust or starlight or angel’s breath or what?”
Almost invariably someone asks if I’m not aware that population growth is much slower in the food-rich North than in the food-poor South. This fact seems to be offered as proof that human societies are not subject to the laws of ecology, which (it is assumed) predict that the more food the faster the growth. But this is not what ecology predicts. Let me repeat that: Ecology does not predict that the population in a food-rich area will grow more rapidly than the population in a food-poor area. What ecology predicts is: When more food is made available, the population will increase. Every year more food is made available in the North, and every year the population increases. Every year more food is made available in the South, and every year the population increases.
Then I will be told very emphatically that more food is not being made available in the South. The population is growing like wildfire, but this growth is not being supported by any increase in food. All I can say about this is, if what you say is true, then we are clearly in the presence of a miracle. These people are not being made from food, because, according to you, no food is being made available for them. They must be made of air or icicles or dirt. But if it turns out—as I strongly suspect it will—that these people are not made of air or icicles or dirt but ordinary flesh and blood, then I’ll have to say, what do you think this stuff is? [Here B grabbed the skin on his arm.] Do you think you can make this flesh and blood out of nothing? No, the existence of the flesh and blood is proof that these people are being made out of food. And if there are more people here this year, this is proof that there is more food here this year.
And of course I have to deal with the starving millions. Don’t we have to continue to increase food production in order to feed the starving millions? There are two things to understand here. The first is that the excess that we produce each year does not go to feed the starving millions. It didn’t go to feed the starving millions in 1995, it didn’t go to feed the starving millions in 1994, it didn’t go to feed the starving millions in 1993, it didn’t go to feed the starving millions in 1992—and it won’t go to feed the starving millions in 1996. Where did it go? It went to fuel our population explosion.
That’s the first thing. The second thing is that everyone involved in the problem of world hunger knows that the problem is not a shortage of food. Producing more food does not solve the problem, because that’s simply not the problem. Producing more food just produces more people.
Then people will ask, “Don’t you realize that our agricultural base is already being destroyed? We’re eliminating millions of tons of topsoil every year. Even the sea isn’t yielding as much food as before. Yet the population explosion continues.” The point of the objection is contained in that last sentence: Our food production capacity is declining, yet the population explosion continues. This nonfact is offered as proof that there is no connection between food and growth. Once again, I’m afraid I must insist that this is magical thinking. Our population explosion can no more continue without food than a fire can continue without fuel. The fact that our population continues to grow year after year is proof that we’re producing more food year after year. Until people start showing up who are made of shadows or metal filings or gravel—when that happens, then I’ll have to back off this point.
When all else fails, it will be objected that the people of the world will not tolerate a limit on food. That may be, but it has nothing to do with the facts I’ve presented here.
No one has ever specifically asked me what I have against birth control, but I’ll answer the question anyway. I don’t have a thing against birth control as such. It just represents very poor problem-solving strategy. The rule in crisis management is, Don’t make it your goal to control effects, make it your goal to control causes. If you control causes, then you don’t have to control effects. This is why they make you go through airport security before you get on the plane. They don’t want to control effects. They want to control causes. Birth control is a strategy aimed at effects. Food-production control is a strategy aimed at causes.
We’d better have a look at it.
Q. You mention in one of your “demonstrations” that the walls of the cage are expanded to accommodate an increased population of mice. It seems to me this invalidates the demonstration, inasmuch as there is no way for us to
expand the walls of this planet to accommodate an increased human population.
A. What the nations of Europe did, beginning in the sixteenth century, was precisely to expand the walls of their cage to accommodate an increased population—into the New World, Australia, Melanesia, and Africa.
Q. It’s difficult for me to see how you have improved on Thomas Malthus, who was making similar predictions a century ago.
A. Malthus’s warning was about the inevitable failure of totalitarian agriculture. My warning is about its continued success.
Q. Your models of population growth fail to take into account the well- established correlation between standard of living and population growth. Countries with a high standard of living have a growth rate near zero or even below zero (as in Germany!), whereas countries with a low standard of living are the ones that account for the greatest growth. This shows that food production and population growth aren’t necessarily connected.
A. The argument you’ve presented is the sort of argument the tobacco industry likes: “One of my best friends never touched a cigarette in her life, didn’t grow up among smokers, and didn’t work among smokers, but she died of lung cancer at age thirty-seven. On the other hand, my father has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day since he was seventeen and is still hale and hardy at age sixty-three. This shows that smoking and cancer aren’t necessarily connected.”
When our population system is assessed as a whole—on a global scale, rather than country by country—there is no doubt whatever that, as a whole, our population is increasing catastrophically, so that studies conducted by international groups like the United Nations predict without reservation that there will be twelve billion of us here in forty years or so.
Q. The point you are ignoring is that population growth can be slowed if living conditions are improved.
A. In the New World five hundred years ago, the non-native population was zero. Today the non-native population is three hundred million. This growth was not a result of poor living conditions. It was a result of the causes I have outlined here tonight.
Q. The farmers of the world do not primarily produce food to feed an expanded population, as you suggest. This is not the force to which they are responding. More and more farmers are engaged in producing crops that don’t feed anyone at all, crops like coffee, cotton, and tobacco.
A. Where is the food coming from to feed our expanding population then? If it isn’t being produced by farmers, who is producing it? This is a biological fact that is simply beyond dispute: If a hundred million people are added to the population, these people will be made from food and nothing else.
Q. According to Karl Marx, the population of every culture is determined by the constraints of its livelihood. For example, foraging peoples, in order to pursue their lifestyle, must maintain a very small population. They could feed more, but only by abandoning some aspect of their lifestyle. In other words, their lifestyle forces a limit on them. Our lifestyle will force a limit on us as well.
A. I see. And meanwhile, food production has nothing to do with it?
Q. As far as I am concerned, food production has nothing to do with it.
A. I can only point out that the biological sciences see the matter differently.
Q. It seems to me that we don’t need to do anything about our growing population. The system itself will take care of it.
A. You mean by collapsing. Yes, that’s perfectly true. If you learn that the building you’re living in has a structural fault that will soon cause it to collapse under the force of gravity, you’re certainly at liberty to let the system take care of it. But if your children are living in the building when it finally collapses, they may not think as highly of this solution as you do.