For as long as humanity has existed there have been prophets of doom. It is, if not the oldest, surely the second oldest profession around. And yet, so far their predictions have not materialized. Does that mean we should ignore the warnings? Are all the warnings false?
Our favorite prophet of doom at this point in time is none other than Englishman Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, who lived from 1766 to 1834. Malthus is the poster child of global disaster and whenever resources are depleted, oil prices spike, or food shortages appear, Mathusian is on everyone's lips. We quickly start seeing signs of global disaster and the end of humanity. It has made headlines many times during the last century and every time, we are told, it was a false alarm. But was it? Clearly, global events work on a time-scale that is rather more extended than the attention span of the public and the news media. I have previously pointed out that Club of Rome's predictions were "within the next 100 years," so by 2070. Yet nearly everyone has already written off the Club of Rome as an alarmist hoax that is so passe.
What Malthus said, in his famous "An Essay on the Principle of Population," is that populations always increase, and when they do, they do so geometrically. He also noted that these populations depend on food and that food production grows linearly. Now, if you remember some of your high school math, you will realize that this invariably creates a serious problem of food shortage. Throughout his life time Malthus came up with various "solutions" to this problem but overall his tone remained pessimistic and it is therefore no surprise that we associate Malthus with disaster and not with a solution to such potential disasters.
The truth is that calamities of Malthusian nature have occurred throughout history. Many population groups and even advanced civilizations have perished because they ran out of resources and could not sustain themselves. Because the lengthy human life-span introduces significant lags, these events have invariably been catastrophic in nature.
Pollution and resource limitations are responsible for most, if not all collapses we know about. This fact is always conveniently ignored by those who think Malthus was nothing but an alarmist whose predictions turned out false. It is also obscured by the tendency of historians to attribute success and failure of civilizations to the acts of individual humans. This tendency is especially strong in the West, where individual accomplishments and hero worship are big themes.
One could of course argue that no disaster on a global scale has (yet) occurred. This is somewhat of a perverse argument though, as I pointed out before. If we all die, there won't be anyone around to say, I told you so. As long as a large enough group survives, they are going to rebound and so they can keep arguing that Malthus was wrong.
The main reason we have not seen a global disaster is that until very recently, humans were not a global force. However, in the last century all that has changed. There are now enough humans on the planet for them to make a real difference on a global scale. What that means is that the dimensions and scope of the next collapse will be orders of magnitude bigger than what we have witnessed so far.
Time to fasten your seat belts.
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