malthus

i suppose if i had taken economics at a liberal arts college rather than at a business school i would have heard of the reverend thomas malthus. an anglican parson born in 1766, malthus was a negative voice during a time of widespread optimism. he was the first to put forward a theory about the relationship between the earth’s natural resources and the people who consume them.

here’s what he said, in a nutshell: population grows logarithmically (2, 4, 8, 16…). food supply grows arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4). therefore, population will tend to outrun the food supply. his theory makes intuitive sense, which is why it was quickly picked up and circulated among the intelligentsia of his day.

as is often the case, the theory’s simplicity is also its downfall. history has shown that the growth rates of localized populations tend slow as their affluence rises (and that rising affluence is a natural result of a growing population). advances in agricultural and transportation technology are also unaccounted for in his model.

but these concerns have not rendered the malthusian growth model completely irrelevant. ’sustainability’ is a buzzword that even shows up in vogue magazine these days, and concerns surrounding peak oil and the rapid development in china and india have revived malthus’ concern about population growth outstripping natural resources.

what do you think? could humankind outstrip the earth’s resources? can technology be relied upon to close the (potential) gap? is there anything that malthus’ argument has to say to us today?

for further study, see GEO130: Natural Resources and Population at UC Berkeley, i think around lectures 5-7.