Thomas Robert Malthus' second principle: Population does
invariably increase when the means of subsistence increases. (Subsistence: the action or fact of maintaining or supporting
oneself at a minimum level. —Apple Apps Dictionary)
Several factors have contributed to the six
hundred fifty percent increase in the population of the world in just over two
hundred years (in 1804, forty-four years into the Industrial Revolution, one
billion people; in 2006, six and one half billion). The Industrial Revolution
sponsored the invention and mass production of implements that increased crop
yields as did concomitant increased understanding by agriculturalists of the
how and why of plant development. Better transportation of crops as well as
more effective means of preventing spoilage also made more food available to a
greater number of people.
Unfortunately social norms have not adjusted to
the increased food supply. Even today in primarily agricultural countries, the
age-old idea that a family must have many children to help raise enough food
for itself and possibly for sale, persists even though better nutrition and
more available health care have lowered the rate of child mortality
considerably. Religious beliefs have also stymied efforts at controlling family
size.
Unfortunately there are several caveats. Not
all political entities care about the equitable distribution of food within
their jurisdictions. Politicians also use the withholding of food as a means of
ethnic cleansing. Monocultures deplete arable land, and yield less overtime
because of plant diseases, and our rapidly changing environment hosts increased
flooding of prime farmland as well as creating large drought-stricken areas.
And we have shortsightedly over fished many of our traditionally used species
and by contaminating the oceans made others unsafe to eat. Most recently the
dubious success of genetic manipulation of some foodstuffs must be factored in.
Are we reaching toward or have we reached the tipping point to an ever-decreasing
food supply.
If this is so, then humanity faces the very
serious reality that the decreasing availability of adequate subsistence caused
by the caveats noted in the previous paragraph will create severe civil unrest
and social upheaval that will lead eventually to class warfare between those
who have enough food and those who don't. The concomitant bloodshed and death
by starvation will lead to a decrease in population, but it will probability
take a long time to restore a balance between mouths to feed and the food
supply. There are countless examples in nature of this reality: An increase in vegetation
in an ecology inhabited by rabbits will promote their having larger litters.
Foxes and other predators will take advantage of the largess of rabbits and produce
more young. As the rabbit population is decreased by predation or disease
caused by over-crowding (my next blog), the predators' litters will become
smaller or the females will become infertile until the numbers of prey increase
again. Nature has refined this principle of balance over eons. Unfortunately,
humans have ignored this need for a balance between population and food supply,
and will probably continue to ignore it to their detriment as a species.
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