Overcrowded planet?

"Run from it. Destiny arrives all the same. And now it's here. Or should I say, I am.” (Thanos)

Fears that the planet is becoming overcrowded have a long and venerable history. The early Akkadian/Babylonian epic of Atra-hasis (18th century BC), a forerunner of the Noah story of Genesis, describes the great flood as a deliberate effort by the Gods to control the growth of the human population: “the land was bellowing like a bull” under the stress of human kind (i). Nearly a thousand years later the Homeric poem, the Cypria, has Zeus bringing the Trojan War so “the load of death might empty the world” and thus “relieve all nurturing earth”. 

Thomas Malthus, an 18th/19th century cleric and scholar hit upon similar concerns in his book ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’. His now familiar problem was the mismatch between population and resource growth. The fact that his name has now been bookended with ‘trap’ and ‘catastrophe’ in modern economic thought suggests such fears remain alive and well. Hollywood seems to be in on the act now too. 

The case against…

The logic of the overpopulation argument is surely implacable. Given the continued growth of the population (Figure 1) and the finite resources those people continue to plunder, weren’t the aforementioned fears simply premature rather than misplaced? 

This, in combination with impending environmental deadlines, engenders a feeling of hopelessness among many. For some, the only possible answer is a forced return to a likely imaginary pre-industrial idyll - growth can only be a bad thing. Harmony with nature can only be regained in its absence.

Should we be willing to give up on all of the advances that industrialisation has facilitated? From the emancipation of women to the decimation of absolute poverty (Figure 2) to achieve such harmony? Although Malthus has since become a byword for misplaced pessimism, we would do well to remember that his fears were well founded at the time. Previous to the industrial revolution in the 18th century, there were barely noticeable changes in living standards from generation to generation. Life expectancy, infant mortality rates and other similar indicators barely budged for millennia (Figure 3). Hobbes famously described the lot of most from his 17th century perspective as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.(ii)” From that vantage point, there was scant cause to believe that further material growth in the population would not result in widespread starvation as Malthus feared. 

However, then came the industrial revolution. The moment when a series of innovations, starting with three in the region of Stockport, managed to finally free us from these previously binding constraints. Admittedly, there can be no doubt that this revolution in the humankind’s well-being initially came with a heavy environmental price tag. However, more recent developments hint at a different and perhaps more sustainable story. 

Humans are the solution… 

There is a strand of thought that somewhat contrarily suggests that the more of us there are, the better life gets. Bank of England economist Andy Haldane, in his speech on human creativity earlier this year, mused that “as humans grouped in larger numbers, ideas and imaginations were collectivised and socialised. Individual intelligence gave way to collective intelligence. Many minds made for light work of the world’s most complex problems… Once, only around 150 people could be connected through hunter-gatherer conversations. Today 4 billion people can be instantly connected in conversation. That number grows by 750,000 globally each day.(iii)” 

The point here is similar to those made by Stephen Pinker in ‘Enlightenment Now’. The fact that the world needs less than a third of the land for food it used to provides testament to the incredible technological advances in food production. Put another way, between 1961 and 2009, the amount of land used to grow food increased by 12% but the amount of food grown increased by 300%. Productivity, and therefore growth, is about doing more with less. The advent of the smart phone is another example. Younger readers will not even recognise some of the 40 odd consumer products that have more or less ceased to exist as a direct consequence of the Smart phone’s incredible rise over the last decade (iv). Walkman anyone? 

These ideas are not particularly new either. Decades ago, Julian Simon was among the vanguard of those who would deploy facts and figures to try and combat some of the wilder claims of inexorable catastrophe. 

His essential point was that human beings are the planet’s most precious resource. Our innate creativity and desire to improve our surroundings meant that the more of us there were, the better our prospects become (v). As upside-down as this sounds, it is to date backed up by statistics on the aggregate lot of humankind. All metrics of living standards seem to shout the same story. As we’ve suggested before, the answer surely doesn’t rest in attempts to quell this innate restlessness and ingenuity, but to further unleash it. 

So relax?

None of this is to suggest that we should relax and ignore the warnings of those speaking of impending environmental or other catastrophe. The opposite is true. However, these problems need to be approached as all others that we face – solvable with our collective ingenuity. Neither fatalism nor suggestions that involve upending the growth applecart are of any help, in our opinion. 

As we’ve pointed out before, beyond the entirely necessary changes to our lifestyles, investors have other tools at their disposal. The increasing proliferation of impact investments are designed to help investors both fuel and profit from the changes required to avert this long forecast, but avoidable doom. 

(i) Feen, RH - Keeping the Balance: Ancient Greek Philosophical Concerns with Population and Environment (1996)

(ii) Hobbes, T – The Leviathan (1651)

(iii) Haldane, A – The Creative economy, the Inaugural Glasgow School of Art Creative engagement lecture (2018)

(iv) Pinker, S – Enlightenment now: the case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress (2018)

(v) Simon, JL – the Ultimate Resource (1981)

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