OPINION | Mark Tomlinson: Facing up to the challenge of a world with 8
billion people in it
New24 – 11 July 2022
A healthy dose of scepticism is in order when
anybody begins to talk about population growth, writes the author.
As the world reaches a world population milestone, we need brave leaders
who believe in equality, and who see the coming challenges of food insecurity,
climate change and migration as something to fix for the benefit of all of
humanity and not simply to ignore, writes Mark Tomlinson.
On 11 July 1987, the world population reached 5 billion. In 2022,
another milestone is reached when there will be 8 billion on earth. In the
context of 8 billion, 5 billion may not seem particularly large. But this
belies the reality of exponential growth. In 1700, the global population was
600 million, in 1803, it was one billion, and as recently as 1960, there were
only 2.5 billion people in the world.
In 1989, to mark the 5 billion milestone, the United Nations
established World Population Day which
is observed on 11 July annually. The theme for 2022 is 'A world of 8
billion: Towards a resilient future for all - Harnessing opportunities and
ensuring rights and choices for all'. This important, but the somewhat
benign theme, masks the extent to which debates and theories about 'population'
have always been controversial and in equal measure, have attracted a rogue's
gallery of racists, eugenicists, catastrophists and also well-meaning
demographers. In this piece, I will endeavour to show how a healthy dose of
scepticism is in order when anybody begins to talk about population – whether
over- (or as I will show) under-population.
One marker of recent attempts to understand and control population
growth dates to the 18th century when Thomas
Malthus argued that it is inevitable that human populations
will outgrow the available resources.
Sticky concept
In the early 20th century, demography and the burgeoning eugenics
movement forged a union to study population growth rates among different social
groups. This culminated in the formation in London in 1928 of the International
Union for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems.
One of the consequences of the marriage between eugenics and
demography/population studies was the practice of forced sterilization in the
first half of the 20th century of thousands of women deemed to be
'undesirable'. This took place largely in the USA and Canada but also in a few
Nordic countries. The association between the eugenics movement and the Nazis
during World War II put paid to any continuing influence that the eugenics
movement may have wished to have on population studies or anything else.
But the 'problem of population growth' is a sticky concept, and the
rather crude racist eugenic focus on differing population growth, simply
morphed into a more 'acceptable' focus on how to feed the world's growing
population. Of course, ensuring there is sufficient food is the most
fundamental human question of all. But as always, this important question was
hijacked in the service of fear. Perhaps the most widely known book about the
'population problem' is the 1968 bestseller 'The
Population Bomb' by Paul Ehrlich. This was the fear book – the
one that warned of ongoing catastrophic worldwide famine.
Ironically, by the time Ehrlich published his book, the problem of how
to feed 6 billion people had largely been solved – by two German chemists and
the American agronomist Norman Borlaugh. It was the work of Fritz Haber and
Carl Bosch who found a way to transform nitrogen in the air into fertilizer.
Without fertilizer, feeding 5 billion people, let alone 8 billion people
would simply be impossible. But as always, when it comes to population,
controversy is baked.
Haber was massively ambitious and obsessed with being accepted as a 'good German', and so
turned his chemical genius towards finding a way to help Germany be victorious
in World War I. He invented mustard gas and directed the poison gas attacks of the trenches of World
War 1. And although he died in 1934, it was his chemistry that led to the
development and use of Zyklon B gas during the Holocaust. The other significant
contribution to the massive increase of agricultural output was that of Norman
Borlaugh, who was the 'father of the Green Revolution'. He won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1970.
As an aside, any act of writing about food and famine is always a
political act. It is impossible to talk about the technology that exists to
feed everybody without being struck by the terrible reality of a world filled
with hunger, malnutrition and famine when, in fact, this need not be the case.
As Susan George so eloquently described in her 1976 book 'How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger',
the problem is never simply about there not being enough food, but that half
the world eats most of, and wastes a great deal of food.
Ageing and declining populations
The latest iteration of the 'population problem' is recent concerns
about ageing and declining populations. Japan and many European countries have
low fertility rates and as a consequence, declining population. By some
estimates, China will reach peak population by 2030, and experts predict that
it will only have 600 million people by
the end of the century. Similar trends are likely throughout Europe, East Asia
and North America. As always, however, some of the dire projections have not
come to fruition with Japan, for example adapting well to its declining
population.
As expected, it is fascinating to see the latest iteration of the
'population commentator'.
In 2021 Elon Musk spoke about his fears about under-population, and the
threat he believes it poses to civilization.
Of course, the juxtaposition of the word 'civilization' with 'population' in
the same sentence should always raise alarm bells.
Given that the world population is expected to reach 10.9 billion by 2100, and that the populations of
more than half of Africa's 54 nations are estimated to double or more by 2050, it is difficult not to
interpret Musk's statement being more about there being fewer of a 'certain
type of person', than people themselves. He is of course talking about white
North Americans and Europeans, and in his relentless pursuit of publicity,
notoriety, and 'mansplaining' is utterly naïve (perhaps unjustifiably I am
giving him the benefit of the doubt here) of how close he is to being the
richest spokesperson for the far-right racist great
replacement theory.
We need to remember the lesson that Fritz Haber offers us. A man blind
with ambition, a German Jew obsessed with acceptance and being a 'good German'.
A man who saved billions from famine with his invention of fertilizer, but also
the evilest of men whose experimentation with poison gas directly led to the
invention of the unspeakable horror in the trenches of World War I and the
eventual murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.
How can one of the greatest and one of the worst inventions of the last
100 years, sit within the same man. What might the lesson be for us? My
takeaway is a simple one. When politicians, academics, journalists and electric
car engineers pontificate about their latest population concerns, make sure you
read them with more than a healthy dose of scepticism – if not outright
disdain. It is highly likely they come from an ideological and fearful
place.
What we need are brave leaders who believe in equality, and who see the
coming challenges of food insecurity, climate change and migration as something
to fix for the benefit of all of humanity and not simply to ignore. We
absolutely do not need a billionaire intent on dominating the
Twittersphere.
www.samigration.com
