Bare Cupboards

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | Dec. 3, 2022

“Hundreds of millions will starve over the course of the next decade.”

Stanford professor Paul R. Ehrlich said that when discussing the world's growing population in his book, The Population Bomb. That was in 1968, and the world population was just a bit more than 3.5 billion. The United States had about 200.4 million people at the time. (It should be noted the book was co-authored by Ehrlich’s wife, Anne, but she did not receive credit. She is the associate director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University.)

Ehrlich, the professor emeritus of population studies of the department of biology at Stanford University and president of their Center for Conservation Biology, has subsequently acknowledged his dire predictions have not come to pass, though he believes his overall premise—way too many people for the planet to sustain—still holds true. And he still believes we’re ultimately headed toward a doomsday scenario and a dystopian future.

In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, he said, “Collapse of civilization within decades is a near certainty.” He outlined his logic in a 2020 interview with The New York Times, saying,“We have a finite planet with finite resources and in such a system we cannot have infinite population growth.”

Ehrlich continues to believe the optimum population for our globe is about 2 billion or less. We recently passed 8 billion and, according to the United Nations, half that number now live in just seven countries—China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Brazil in descending population order.

There is significant evidence Ehrlich is mostly right.

According to the World Food Programme, a United Nations organization, 345 million people in 82 countries are facing acute food insecurity, defined as the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of nutritious and affordable food. (The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a slightly different definition of food insecurity—lack of access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.)

Famines or near famines already exist in nearly a dozen African nations plus Yemen in the Middle East. Haiti, the poorest country in our western hemisphere with half its population living below the World Bank’s definition of poverty, is perpetually in a state of famine or near famine. The available statistics are daunting and proof that Ehrlich’s predictions were only slightly overblown.

According to Oxfam International, 11 people die every minute from starvation or poor nutrition, more than the death rate for COVID-19 even at its peak. And the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that a staggering 3 million children a year die from starvation or poor nutrition, nearly half of all childhood deaths. Even worse, another 8 million children are at immediate risk.

And this is not a problem for just the rest of the world. While we shake our heads sadly about those poor countries that always seem to be on the verge of some sort of calamity, we should be looking right next door. This isn’t an issue that only impacts “them.” As of June 2022, according to Americanprogress.org, 24 million households in the United States, including nearly 12 million with children, reported they often or sometimes do not have enough to eat. That’s one of the many reasons breakfast and lunch programs at our public schools are so important; those might be the only real meals some children receive all day.

We’ve made little progress in slowing population growth—Ehrlich, in his darker moments, believes contraception should be free, widely available, and mandatory, and that abortion should be universally legal.

We have made some progress in developing food sources. Back in the mid-20th century, an American agronomist named Norman Borlaug led efforts to create more sustainable crops sometimes referred to as the Green Revolution. Among the accomplishments was the development of a high-yield, disease and drought resistant semi-dwarf wheat. For those efforts and others to feed an increasingly hungry world, Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. The Nobel Committee estimated that Borlaug’s contribution to the development of the semi-dwarf wheat, which represents more than 90 percent of the wheat grown today, saved as many as one billion lives.

(Contrary to the accusations of some, semi-dwarf wheat is not a genetically modified organism [GMO]. It was engineered over the course of decades by hybridizing wheat varieties, painstakingly matching the most desirable strains until current, hardier, and healthier varieties were developed.)

Our planet’s overpopulation has led to climate change, plastic islands in our oceans, overcrowded cities, air made difficult to breathe, and water unsafe to drink. And we can’t feed all the people already here. If too many cupboards are bare, the future will be empty for too many children.