An Enduring, Popular Myth

State Tyranny and Malthusian Rubbish

Some years ago we read Paul Ehrlich's, The Population Bomb.  Fortunately, at the same time we were also reading the Scriptures.  It did not take too long before the sanity of the Bible exposed the folly of Mr Ehrlich's doomsday proclamations.  But myths and doomsday proclamations have a way of lingering on.

Consequently, every so often it's helpful to take an antidote, lest we are tempted yet again to drink Environmentalist Kool-Aid. 

How Big of a Problem Is Overpopulation?

By Chelsea Follett

@chellivia

Unwarranted panic about overpopulation is a big problem that has led to human rights abuses and much pointless suffering.

Consider the long history of overpopulation alarmism, and how the doomsayers’ fears have failed to materialize again and again. Two centuries ago, Thomas Malthus’s Essay on Population warned that out-of-control population growth would deplete resources and bring about widespread famine. His preferred solution was to decrease the birth rate by delaying marriage, but if that didn’t work he endorsed some rather extreme measures to slash the population. To prevent famine, he thought it was morally permissible to “court the return of the plague” by making the poor live in swamps and even to ban “specific remedies for ravaging diseases.” After Malthus died, the Industrial Revolution brought about unprecedented prosperity that funded the construction of safe water supplies and sewage systems at a scale never before achieved. Living standards were transformed and lifespans lengthened. As farms mechanized, food became more plentiful even as the population grew. Famine became rarer. Yet Malthus’s ideas proved enduringly popular.

Voices in the Wilderness

Why Does the World Still Ignore 2.6M Stillborn Children Every Year?

Posted on | May 20, 2014 

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.

Turtle Bay and Beyond

Why are the nearly three million children who die on their birth day every year still ignored? This is the question posed by a report released today in the Lancet. And it’s the question that should be on the table at the World Health Assembly  this week in Geneva. The high number of deaths hasn’t changed over the years, and neither it seems have the reasons for the utter failure of the world’s maternal health policy elite–see my blog of three years ago.

Delegates interested in making a real difference through the nascent Sustainable Development Goals now under negotiation will be keen on the report’s findings that what could save millions of maternal and newborn lives in the coming years is straightforward: more skilled birth attendants and better health facilities.

To put the matter baldly, we suggest the reason why these children continue to die is because the United Nations and its agencies want them to.  The Malthusians, the population controllers, the eugenicists, and the Greenists all advocate a smaller population for the world as a solution to its problems. 

Drowning in Oil

Peak Oil, Where Art Thou?

The catastrophists have been warning for the past ten years of mankind approaching "peak oil"--that is, the time when oil consumption exceeds supply, leading to a drastic global shortage of energy.  Peak oil was supposed to have occurred around now.  Except . . . .

North America to Drown in Oil as Mexico Ends Monopoly

By Joe Carroll and Bradley Olson  
Dec 17, 2013 6:54 AM
Bloomberg News


The flood of North American crude oil is set to become a deluge as Mexico dismantles a 75-year-old barrier to foreign investment in its oil fields.

It's Not Fair

Economic Ignorance and Moral Turpitude

In his book, Fairness and Freedom, David Fischer makes some observations which represent a touchstone for truth and error in economics.  Fischer has written a historical comparison of New Zealand and the United States.  The latter nation has focused over time upon political and social freedom (from government rules, regulations, and controls) whilst New Zealand has been shaped by notions of fairness (which implies egalitarian distribution at least of opportunity, if not actual goods). 

We will endeavour to critique Fischer's book in a future post, but for the moment consider this partly insightful, yet misguided quotation:

Impeccable Ignorance

Population Control Goes Out With a Whimper

Posted on September 6, 2013
by Stefano Gennarini, J.D.
Turtle Bay and Beyond

 Here are three articles from the past week that address the slow hard fall from grace of population control…

1. Jonathan Last’s Review of a book that exposes Paul Ehrlich for the fraud he was. Ehrlich, an entomologist, not a demographer or economist, wrote the all-famous “Population Bomb” in the 1960s and became a world celebrity by prophesying that resource scarcity would drive up commodity prices causing humanitarian disasters of biblical proportions. Needless to say, his poor science helped the world turn a blind eye to brutal population control programs for the past five decades. He was exposed repeatedly by Julian Simon, an economist, who rightly predicted that with population increases, production would also increase and commodity prices would go down. Simon believed human ingenuity could resolve resource scarcity, and he was right. He also insisted that what populations need are robust civil and political rights regimes to enable individuals and enterprises to flourish.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

No Bureaucratic Shadow 

Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, 20 February 2013

All the early returns indicate that the available supply of energy in North America is virtually inexhaustible. Using words like inexhaustible is problematic to Malthusians, but it looks to be a good description. Energy, it appears, is about as abundant as salt water. With the discovery of new reserves and the development of new technologies of extraction, it has become apparent that if we had an unregulated energy economy, we could drive back and forth across the country for pocket change on the gallon, and do so without getting permission from a single federal official. And that, at least to them, presents a problem.

Mass Liquidation Project

Facing the Facts

We posted recently on Malthusian Cassandras who are predicting the end of civilization and humanity as we know them. The only solution (we are told) is twofold: reduce population growth and globally redistribute property.

Now The Onion has got in on the act, "reporting" on a recent scientific convention in the US.  Here are some excerpts.  (Warning: contains advocacy of extreme justifiable violence.)

Malthusian Cassandras

Purblind Arrogance and Invincible Ignorance

Malthusian despair grips the Western world in a vicious vice.  It is a puzzling phenomenon if one considers that the economic theories of Thomas Malthus were discredited centuries ago.  But the puzzlement exists only if one also believes in a false, objective rationalism, ignoring the blind foolishness attenuating the human heart.  Did not the prophet say, "the heart is deceitful above all things and is desperately sick; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9)

We are sonorously told by modern sages that over-population threatens the continued existence of the planet.  Assuming that the world is one vast fixed, zero-sum game, our oh-so-wise cassandras insist that more mouths to feed means less food for everyone.  If one eats more, everyone else is condemned to eat less.  If a country expends more energy, there is less energy for every other nation. 

The latest voice is the respected and revered Royal Society.  Its purblind stupidity belies its reputation.

Western Civilisation

The Age of Vaunting Pride and Gnawing Doubt

The title of Dickens novel "Great Expectations" aptly summarizes a dominant theme in Victorian England (and the West in general at that time, for that matter).  There was a widespread, burgeoning belief that nirvana was just ahead.  Much of the optimism was due to advances in technology and science. 

To our jaded eyes, technological advances have become the norm.  Another "breakthrough" has become decidedly deja-vu.  But in the late eighteenth century this was not the case.  Consider Sebastien Mercier's account of the first balloon flight in November 21, 1783:

Cheering for the Seventh Billion

Beware Malthusians posing as progressives
 
Don’t be fooled by the fashionable new crowd of Malthus-bashing greens: they’re as misanthropic as old-style population scaremongers.
Brendan O’Neill
Wednesday 12 October 2011

As we approach the Day of Seven Billion, when the seven billionth human being will be born, a debate is raging. On one side, population scaremongers are fretting about the arrival of Child No.7,000,000,000, claiming that he or she will add to a growing human swarm that is heaping pressure on the environment. On the other side, liberal observers slam these Malthusians, claiming that their lament about overpopulation is ‘a mask for misanthropy’. As one headline put it: ‘Welcome baby seven billion – we’ve room for you on Earth.’

Well, that is what it looks like through a casual glance – that a fiery debate is taking place between followers of the Reverend Thomas Malthus on one side and hip questioners of the Malthusian thesis on the other. But this is deceptive.

Salute the Beckhams

Choosing Life, Not Death

When a culture turns away from the Lord and giver of Life, it ends up championing death.  The transformation is normally not immediate, but gradual.  Nevertheless, it is ineluctable.  The particular manifestation of death-devotion can vary.  As Germany transformed from a Christian nation to a champion of Enlightenment rationalism and idealism, it eventually elected a government which went on to exterminate six million Jews and millions of Gentiles--all in the name of the Volk and its superior "life".

The West generally has championed death through a perverse celebration of human rights.

We are From The Elite Commentariate . . .

Here to Help

There is an old saw about treating people like mushrooms: keep them in the dark and feed them lots of dung. This is precisely what a recent report by Oxfam is proposing as the solution to rising food prices and possible famine in the world. That, and oh, of course, world government.

Matt Ridley critiques the elitist Oxfam report

Get the fertiliser out. We can feed the world

Matt Ridley
 
Oxfam’s chief executive, Dame Barbara Stocking, claimed this week in a BBC interview that there will “absolutely not be enough food” to feed the world’s population in a few decades’ time.

Such certainty about the future is remarkable, so I downloaded Oxfam’s new “report” with interest.