21 Resource Development and Environment: Cases of Pessimism

Mr. Dhiren Borisa

Learning Outcomes:

• After completing the chapter, you will be able to comprehend:
• A brief overview of various trends towards a grim future for humanity if current usage of resources continue
• Emerging precarious state of environment as sited by various ecologists and studies such as the Malthusian paradigm, the report by the club of Rome and the Global 2000 report

Introduction

We have a complex relationship with our environment and such is observed globally however at varying scales on account of growing population base, differential resource base, striking levels of inequality and multi-sited poverty, levels of development and industrial capacity etc., which together determine our nature of resource consumption and its pressures. While one observes progressive outlook towards the improvement in our living standards, in ways in  which  our  economy,  society  and  environment  are  integrated  improving  better  health facilities, increased life expectancy and a diversity of commodities to cater to our everyday needs, our not so distant future breathes in the fear of exhaustion of resources that support our mass-consumption based lifestyles. Our dependency on fossil fuels as primary energy source since the industrial revolution has raised alarming signals. Both due to the finiteness of resources, as well as due to the various climatic and environmental impacts it has had on us from global warming due to excessive carbon emissions and greenhouse gases and the fear of climate change and its repercussions on earth’s carrying capacity. Since 1960’s when Rachel Carson published Silent Spring questioning the chemical and fertilizers industry and its impact on environment, numerous ecologists and studies have sited pessimistic views towards our future if current regime of resource consumption continues giving call for a sustainable approach to resource development. However, such views have been in circulation since the dawn of industrial revolution when Malthus proposed his theory of population growth and its relationship with finite earth’s resources, especially land and its productivity. Later in 1970’s and 80’s numerous studies such as the “limits to Growth” by the club of Rome and the “Global 2000” report to the president of USA expressed similar concerns.

The questions we raise here are of the future of the earth. How long can the finite resources support our lifestyle and course of development? Does earth have enough to supply to the future needs if the rate of resource consumption and dependency on exhaustible resources continues? How does one explain the gross inequalities across the various consumers of these resources from the scale of local, regional to the global? What will happen once our resources exhaust? Today, when developing countries struggle to attain better living standards and industrial development through consumption of the same exhaustible resources like their industrially developed counterparts did in past, is it justified to ask them to stop the consumption, given that the cleaner technology as replacement of current consumption pattern is really expensive? Who should bear the cost? Ecologists argue environment should certainly not.

Two sets of worldviews have dominated the response to the aforementioned questions. The pessimistic view proposed by many ecologists and scientists signalling a grim future, and the optimistic view as proposed by several economists that suggest a sustainable approach to seek remedy to current and future crisis without toppling down any improvement in the standard of living. In the current section, we build through the various pessimistic models of resource development.

Thomas Malthus and his “An Essay on the Principle of Population”:

Earth’s population today has reached the 7.5 billion mark with predictions suggesting it will be close to 10 billion past the year 2050. While population growth in developed countries has stalled, the majority of world population lives in developing countries struggling within gross inequalities, striking poverty levels but growth aspirations of better living standards like the developed counterparts. Although population growth is slowing down globally, since the population base is huge, it implies that numerically it continues to add pressure on the limited resources that earth supplies putting additional strain on environment, governing institutions and social and economic infrastructures.

This relationship between growing population and finite resources was predicted long back as the industrial revolution was setting in the Great Britain. An English scholar and cleric by the name of Thomas Robert Malthus was writing and distributing pamphlets on population growth with his monumental work published in 1798 in London by the title “An Essay on the Principle of Population”. While the 18th century England was rejoicing optimistically the improvement in the standards of living and future possibilities based on improvements in technological knowledge of the times, Malthus was suggesting a contrary view. The fears he sighted were the exorbitant growth in population, which if left unchecked would add pressures on the limited resources that earth supplies. He argued giving example of the family tree that the population grows exponentially (i.e. it doubles itself by each cycle) while the food supply increases only arithmetically (i.e. the increment is only additive at a uniform time interval), which beyond a point of crisis would outstrip the available resources.

Once the point of crisis is reached where the population increase is greater than the food increase, population will be forced to move to subsistence level through various checks. There will be deaths and famines, and many would fail even to maintain the subsistence level and population will be checked. Malthus suggested two kinds of checks, the preventive checks and the positive checks. The former implied man can voluntary strive towards reducing population growth. One of the measures suggested was through ‘moral restraint’ by extending the age of marriage to a later part in life, celibacy, family planning methods, self-restraint etc. The positive checks included natural calamities, floods, famines and wars that would keep in check the growing population.

Positive Checks:

Levels the population to the level of food supply. Eg. Famines, epidemics, floods, seismic events, misery, plague etc. These checks are applied by nature as humans fail to keep in check the growing population increase.

Preventive Checks:

Delayed marriages until one can sustain family and offspring, abstinence, restricting marriage to poo people, etc. Malthus was devout Christian and did not propose artificial birth control in his original treatise. However, the neo-malthusian idea propagates birth control also as preventive measure to avoid the Malthusian catastrophe.

       While the theory was simple and logical, it was severely criticized by a range of ideologies from Marxists, socialists, free market proponents, to feminist, to economists etc. One heavy criticism to the theory came from Marx himself who questioned him as ‘lackey of Bourgeoisie’. The criticism was around the argument propounded by Malthus that the poor were responsible for the population growth as they reproduced rapidly. And it was this rapid rise in their population that explained their poor status rather than the exploitative practices of the capitalists. Others criticize Malthus citing examples of growing agricultural productivity based on technological innovations and dramatic changes in the fertility rates in our times. However, despite these criticisms the basic postulate of Malthus stands valid in terms of the growing population and increasing pressures on the finite resource base.

This theory holds true in many under developed countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kenya, China, etc. With high growth rates of population for many between 2-3 percent annual growth and recurring food shortages despite improvements in agricultural productivity for instance green revolution technology. The theory is substantiated by the need for the preventive checks in form of family planning measures in many countries.

The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich (1968)

Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 book “The Population Bomb” forwarded the Malthusian idea of a pessimistic future. Explaining a scene from Delhi and the over crowdedness and related pressures, he argued that the condition in most underdeveloped countries is not only their making but is a product of the developmental processes of the developed world. The relationship is not only with the shortage of food production but the level of environmental deterioration has clamped down possibilities of future growth. The population of the earth is growing at astounding rates. Given the doubling time of population, the earth’s resources would exhaust themselves in near future. If earth is a space ship, the growing population will lead to mass starvation. Even science that claims to innovate technologies to support life even through fantastical explorations in outer space will not be sufficiently able to cater to growing demand of population unless this growth is put to stop. The population will continue to grow until the birth rate exceeds the death rate. It will only shrink when either birth rate falls or the death rate rises. Thus, there are only two possible solutions to avoid a grim future – decreasing the birth rate by family planning practices or by increasing the death rate through famines, wars and plague till the population is balanced with the resource carrying capacity of the earth.

Ehrlich later admitted that his claims were slightly premature and exaggerated regarding collapsing of world post 1970’s with mass level famines but continued stridently to believe that governmental interventions on reproduction were necessary to overcome a pessimistic future. At the same time, economist kept presenting an optimistic picture of economic growth as a solution to curbing population growth, he used America as an example to support how such were faulty claims as environment continued to be deteriorated with pressures on natural resources globally. And such that economic growth of the rich that continued to grow richer was a disease rather than a cure.

‘Tragedy of the Commons’ Garett Hardin (1968)

Victorian Economist William Forester Lloyd in 1833 in his pamphlets on population used an example of a common grazing ground to explain a paradoxical situation. He argued that within limited grazing ground if every villager tried maximising its profit by increasing the lot of herd, while it would benefit the herder but it would lead to overgrazing and exploitation of the commons. Over a century later in 1968, Garett Hardin in his paper “Tragedy of Commons” spoke of human population growth, the impact on shared resources of the earth and the welfare State elaborating upon Lloyd’s dilemma of the commons. The earth will all its resources is like an open access resource that as humans we all claim and use, however, short term selfish needs can lead to exhaustion of these resources in the long run. The eventual depletion of resource was still likely according to Hardin if individuals worked and used earth’s resources for self-interests. He argued one cannot only rely on human conscience to evade this crisis.

Although it is argued that individuals cannot be trusted on reducing overuse of ‘common’ resources, there are also examples across traditional societies of prudent management of resources by integrating man, society and the environment. Complex social system can employ self-regulating mechanisms to resolve on prudent use of resources without relying on State or private property. Hardin confused common property for open access resources. Commons belong to community where anybody who does not belong to the community is excluded as an outsider. Hence, there is already a self-regulatory mechanism at work that controls the commons in many societies through ad-hoc institutions to govern them.

  The Club of Rome and the “Limits to Growth’

In April 1968, a group of thirty academicians, scientists, economists, industrialists, humanists and scholars came together and termed themselves the “club of Rome”. An informal college of scholars that believed in the complexity of human problems that they cannot be traditionally resolved through available policy and institutions and that the diversity of club provided that edge to attempt at understanding of the issues that haunted globally. As part of the club Donella and Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers and William Behrens III published in 1972 a best seller work titled “limits to Growth” to explain the predicament of human future on Earth. They produced a simulation model comprising births, deaths and population data along with figures on pollution and resource consumption, food, services and industrial per capita output as independent but dynamically interdependent entities. They forecasted the collapse of civilization if some draconian measures were not adopted regarding population growth and resource consumption.

They began by raising global concerns that impact our everyday lives however we might not experience them directly while obsessed in issues of seeking food and survival. Following U Thant’s address in the United Nations in 1969 and the call that we only had a decade to resolve many of these global concerns ranging from arms race, pollution and environmental deterioration, poverty etc. they charted down at understanding five issues. These issues included accelerating rates of industrialization, rapidly rising population and its concerns, malnutrition, depletion of non-renewable resources and environmental deterioration. The aim was to understand the causes, trends and the influence of it for at least 100 years of coming human future. The club admitted on the oversimplified, generalized nature of the mathematical model but emphasized the need as the world leaders made decisions everyday that were to influence the entire humanity in future. The limits to Growth suggested following conclusions through their preliminary study:

1. If current trends in population growth, pollution, industrialization, food production and resource depletion continued, the limits to our growth will be reached in next hundred years through a sudden decline and collapse in food supply and industrial capacity.

2. There is a possibility of altering these growth trends towards establishing ecological and economic stability and move on sustainable growth by designing a global equilibrium in ways where material needs of each individual are satisfied and everyone has equal opportunity to reach full potential. Despite existence of underdeveloped areas in the world, the population in the world is globally increasing reaching the critical point. There are no unique optimum but series of balances that need to be attained between population levels, social and material conditions determining the quality of life, given the depleting non-renewable resources and finite space. This finiteness would imply in the long run the standard of living will be lower for human population.

    3. It better for human population to start working towards attaining the second point and the sooner is better. Through a global strategy, the conditions of majority in poor developing and underdeveloped countries needs to be improved both in absolute and relative terms to come at par with denizens of the developed world.

4. The issue of global development is interlinked with other global issues thus demanding a holistic global strategy including the issues of man and environment relationships. The population doubling time is just over 30 years and this rising population will only sustain by overexploiting available resources which is likely to bring down further the carrying capacity of the earth. Technological solutions alone cannot help us out of the trouble. The solution can only be attained by treating the issues of development and other issues as a joint issue.

5. Resolution of the current demographic and development issues including environmental deterioration is the primary task ahead of us.

6. It is to be borne by current generation and responsibility cannot be shifted indefinitely on the future generations.

7. An unprecedented international co-operation and policy making is required at a scale never heard before.

8. The efforts to redress the issues cannot embark on maintaining the gaps between the rich and poor nations. The developed nations will have to take the lead in this process to ensure that the cost of improvement of state of affairs does not fall on the poor developing countries.

Critics of the argument called the theory proposed as oversimplified, like a ‘wolf’s cry’, confusing and build on unfound assumptions. Hecox (1976) argued that the significance of the report lies in the questions raised rather than solutions suggested bringing to public focus the crucial global issues that surround us.

Global 2000 Report

     In 1980, Gerald O Barney compiled at the call of US president Jimmy Carter, first report published by a national government that dealt with Global issues. It attempted at projecting the state of world in the beginning of the 21st century on account of issues that haunt us. It concluded that if present growth trends continued we would welcome the 21st century with an overcrowded and in increased vulnerability to disruption than we live at present. There are growing stress of population, resources and environment and we would end up in a state of poverty that is multi sited. Based on computer modelling using data from 11 participating government agencies and world Bank estimates it attempted to map the 20 year probable future for the world. It projected a doomed future with global shortages of basic essential resources looking at trends of population, pollution and resource availability until the year 2000. Unlike its predecessors suggesting some prophecy of pessimism, this report became influential as was accepted as the US government statement. It presented exaggerated picture of future possibilities with several of its conclusions unfound by its own data. It was criticized severely especially with publication of “The Resourceful Earth” edited by Julian Simon and Herman Kahn which concluded stating that despite the grave threats to the environment, the human future does not look as grim as suggested by the report.

Summary:

The above discussion puts forth the ways in which man-environment relations were understood through the human history especially the ones that projected a grim future for the human race. The predictions of man’s future range from Malthus and his treatise on population growth suggesting that nature will put a check on population rise through famines, epidemics and floods if human population does not take preventive measures. Most of the subsequent theorization build then on this thesis that if exhausting nature of resources and growing human wants continued to grow, their exponential increase will soon rise beyond the nature’s capacity to support the population leading to a situation of catastrophe. The late 1960’s with publication of Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” and Hardin’s “ Tragedy of the Commons” continued this understanding that something had to be done soon in order to save the human race; for at the current doubling rates of population and short term selfish needs the long term existence looked in danger. The ‘Club of Rome’, further strengthened the pessimistic man-environment relationship, with publication of the “Limits to Growth” in 1972 that predicted the graph of next hundred years for a collapse of human civilization. Finally, we end by another computer simulation model that came as US Government report by the name of “Global 2000”, the world that was possible in another 20 years from the writing of the report suggesting an overcrowded and depleted future as we enter 21st century unless some drastic and dramatic steps are not taken. Most of these theories since the Malthusian proposal have been criticized on grounds of empirical support and unfound assumption, along with the gravity of pessimism. However, the issues these works raise continue to haunt our everyday global issues and cannot help us deny the overwhelming human influence on environment to the degree of enhancing levels of poverty, depletion of resources, pollution levels and contaminations, and regional variations and gaps between developed and developing worlds in terms of resource allocation and utilizations.

References:

• Ehrlich, P. R. (1968). The population bomb. Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer.
• Hardin, G. (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243-1248. Hecox, W. E. (1976). Limits to Growth Revisited: Has the World Modeling Debate Made
• Any Progress? Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, 5(1), 65-96. Retrieved from http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/ealr/vol5/iss1/8
• Lloyd, W. F. (1833). Two lectures on the checks to population: delivered before the University of Oxford, in Michaelmas term 1832. Oxford: J.H. Parker.
• Malthus, T. (1798). An Essay On The Principle, Of Population, As It Affects The Future Improvement Of Society. With Remarks On The Speculations Of Mr. Godwin, M. Cqndorcet, And Other Writers. London: Printed For J. Johnson, In St. F.Aul/Ft Church-Yard.
• Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens, W. W., III. (1972). The limits of growth: a report for the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind. New York/N.Y.: Universe Books.
• Robin, L. (2013). The future of nature: documents of global change. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• The global 2000 report to the President of the U.S. Entering the 21st century. A report prepared by the Council on Environmental Quality and the Department of State: Study director: Gerald O. Barney. (1980). New York, Pergamon Press.