Right, so... population came up in another thread and it was suggested we discuss it here - doesn't seem to have happened, but I'll make a start:
So, "over-population" seems to recieve a fair bit of mainstream media attention, and has been the subject of numerous books. The reason for this is, I think, largely because it allows our governments and corporate leaders to say "Oh, it's not our fault, we don't need to change the way capitalism rapes the earth, it's all the fault of ****** [insert name of dark people from far away places here]". If it wasn't for poverty, and a lack of security, healthcare and education, then birthrates wouldn't be as high as they are in certain places (India, for example). By blaming excessive population growth, instead of the social and economic structures that foster it, you shift analysis from the cause to the effect. Which doesn't seem, to me, to be particularly helpful.
It might be helpful here to look at one of the most famous proponents of the "over-population" phenomenon, Paul Erlich. "The Population Bomb" is not a very good book. Ehrlich engaged in some reckless prophesying based on erroneous neo-Malthusian presumptions. There are numerous available examples. For one, writing in 1968 Ehrlich claimed that "the next nine years will probably tell the story" (p.17) because "the undeveloped world is rapidly running out of food. And famine, of course, could be one way to reach a death-rate solution to the population problem. In fact, the battle to feed humanity is already lost; in the sense that we will not be able to prevent famines in the next decade or so." (p.29) Populations outstripping food supplies on the scale that Ehrlich envisioned never materialized. And Amartya Sen has persuasively shown that historically modern famines are typically due to the inaction of states or inept public policies and not due to food shortages.
Over time Ehrlich's prophesying has grown more careful and more sophisticated, although not less neo-Malthusian and not less apocalyptic. The new measured approach of the Ehrlichs easily falls under the rubric of Amartya Sen's description of the new population prophets: "the new prophets have learned not to attach specific dates to the crises they foresee, and past failures do not seem to have reduced the popular appetite for this creative genre."
Moreover, the Ehrlichs' representation of demographic transition theories (which include the notion that fertility rates flatten at the mature stages of industrial development) is impoverished. The demographic transition theory that he presents is actually the evolutionary capitalist's demographic transition theory (a.k.a modernization theories), they hold that demographic transition is an automatic process, bound to happen everywhere. Whereas for a long time now significant elements of the left have been arguing that the capitalist world-economy is STRUCTURED- on unequal exchange, debt slavery, and exploitation of labour and the environment, and that there is no automatic or evolutionary trajectory towards industrial maturity for everyone. I think the operative (yet not wholly definitive) slogan is "the development of underdevelopment." It's not that we have seen no development at all, but rather we have seen relationships of dependence, impeded development and highly selective development, as each country and region takes its place in the international division of labour and power. We can't afford to wait for automatic development, conscious human agency is required. We have to "make it happen" by organising for social change.
Bookchin's description of "The Population Bomb" as indicative of "amoral" and "one-dimensional" thinking is on target, although these statements are less true of the Ehrlichs' recent works. (See
Bookchin's "The Population Myth: II" )
Once again there are many available examples. Ehrlich discusses "What Needs To Be Done" in chapter 4. We'll need to advertise and establish drastic policies and we'll need to "adopt some very tough foreign policy positions relative to population control", but in order to be legitimate, first we will need to get our house (the U.S.) in order. And how is that to be achieved? The first solution that Ehrlich discusses is the addition of temporary sterilants to the water and/or food supply! Sadly, for Ehrlich, this option isn't even open to us because of "the criminal inadequacy of biomedical research in this area." (p.123) A few sentences later Ehrlich equivocates: "I suspect you'll agree with me that society would probably dissolve before sterilants were added to the water supply by the government...Some other way will have to be found." Yet one page later leaves one with little doubt as to where Ehrlich's heart lies. He proposes the establishment of a federal Department of Population and Environment "with the power to take whatever steps are necessary to establish a reasonable population size" which would "promote intensive investigation of new techniques of birth control, possibly leading to the development of mass sterilizing agents such as were discussed above." (p124-25)
The fertility rate solutions of "The Population Bomb" are overwhelmingly biased towards advocacy of coercive techniques. Socio-economic development hardly appears in the picture; female empowerment not at all. Over time the Ehrlichs have jettisoned consideration of regressive and coercive techniques and come to favour socio-economic development, female empowerment, and "humane" family planning. To their credit the Ehrlichs have listened to their more constructive critics and colleagues and in terms of solutions have changed their tune to a predominantly "humane" and "collaborative" advocacy.
The economic illiteracy of "Population Bomb" is also glaringly obvious. While there are a scant handful of perfunctory calls to fundamentally change the economic system, the role that economic and political institutions have in generating the environmental crisis is not analyzed. A section dealing with environmental deterioration caused by pollution and synthetic pesticides concludes by simplistically naming them "symptoms of the Earth's disease of overpopulation." (p.115) In this case, the following quote from John Bellamy Foster seems apropos:
"the world's natural and physical scientists, who have done so much to alert us to the dangers facing humanity and the planet as we know it are ill-equipped to understand the roots of the problem (or even the enormity of the threat looming before us), since they are generally unable to account for the social problems that underlie this ecological crisis, which demand explanations that go beyond such factors as biology, demography and technology—to address historical forms of production, and particularly capitalism." (John Bellamy Foster- The Scale of Our Ecological Crisis, Monthly Review)
So, I've waffled for way too long already, but from all that one can start to understand why and how "population" has been so handy for defenders of the (political and economic) status quo.
That said, I understand that there ARE upper limits on the numbers of people who can be sustained, both nationally and globally. Finding out those limits is obviously not a simple task though. As Bookchin states in
Death of a Small Planet ""We have yet to determine how many people the planet can sustain without complete ecological disruption. The data are far from conclusive, but they are surely highly biased-generally along economic, racial, and social lines. Demography is far from a science, but it is a notorious political weapon whose abuse has disastrously claimed the lives of millions over the course of the century." Robin Hahnel, Professor of Ecological Economics at American University has also said (about carry capacity and his reasons for not including it in Participatory Economics) that it was potentially a good concept but that currently they are notoriously difficult and controversial calculations. So, we're unlikely to be able to come to any specific conclusions in this area... That doesn't mean 'ignore it' just that we should be aware of what assumptions we're making, and whose interests are served.
I'm sure I should have said more, but for the moment I imagine that post was way too long for most people to bother reading anyway so I'll stop. A few links though, just in case anyone is interested in further reading:
"Population - Delusion and Reality" Amartya Sen - Good artricle outlining some of the main issues, from a nobel prize winning economist.
"Population" Mike Albert - includes instructive analysis of some of the reactionary forms which population advocacy has taken.
"Global Ecology and the Common Good" John Bellamy Foster - which explains how the roots of overconsumption really lie in the production system - rather than any innate human needs - what Foster calls the "Treadmills of Production." This link is well worth reading.
"Who Funds Anne Erlich" Bernardo Issel - For some dirt on the Erlichs.
