Call me Neo-Malthus

Greenpeace campaign fronted by noted Kiwi scientist Jim Salinger: “NZ needs to achieve 40% reduction in carbon emissions”
NZ govt, Monday 10 August: “Our target is between 10%-20%”
NZ govt, Tuesday 11 August: “but all you other countries better do 30%-40%”
Climate Action Network, Tuesday 11 August: “Will New Zealand name the countries it expects to do its share of the effort in its place?”
Don Nicolson, President of Federated Farmers, Tuesday 11 August: “Back in the early 19th century, Thomas Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population… The world was producing as much food as it ever could. The Greens would call it ‘Peak Food’… Neo-Malthusians can be seen in the anti-globalisation and green movements. Peak oil, peak food, peak carbon.”
Hot Topic, Weds 12 August: *cough*
Global climate system: “Taiwan suffers worst floods in 50 years”

7 thoughts on “Call me Neo-Malthus”

  1. Just on Malthus: Buckminster Fuller refuted Malthus several decades ago. His wonderful book Critical Path has the details, but the gist is we are getting more efficient at using resources, and better at identifying things as resources, to such an extent that in 1970 we had enough resources for everyone then living to have a first world standard of living.
    (An example of discovering resources is something I blogged a few weeks back: Africa Alone Could Feed The World. Basically pointing out that we have just realised there is maybe twice as much arable land which could be cultivated than is currently being cultivated.)

  2. Morgue I’d be wary of automatically assigning significant ‘worst in 50 years’ weather events to climate change as you seem to be doing. Storms, droughts, floods etc have always happened, and will continue to happen, regardless of climate change. It is only now that climate change has such a high media profile that weather events are being associated with it by the general population. Climate change will affect the periodicity and severity of such events, but not the fact of their occurence.

  3. Yeah, Malthus was exposed a loooong time ago for massively underestimating resource capacity and (arguably) misunderstanding how resource limits occur in complex systems. His logic was sound but he had the wrong premises.
    That’s why invoking him to take down Peak Oil is so damn ridiculous. Oil != food, as any fule kno.

  4. Sam – yeah, of course. I’m hoping the readership here will not take this for such a statement. My intent, rather, was to point out that Taiwan should have reminded us of the stakes.

  5. I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned anything about the Greenpeace “Sign On” campaign yet.

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