1798: Population pressure - The book of science

Population pressure
Pressure of liberty
Overpopulation
Commentary

Population pressure

“Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.”
Simple mathematics and his convictions
as a retired Anglican clergyman
led Thomas Robert Malthus to assert
that natural or “positive” checks to overpopulation
increase the death rate,
but that “preventive” checks
could reduce the birth rate.
Malthius advocated the education of the lower class
about voluntary abstinence.
This began the study of principles and mechanisms
that influenced social scientists and politicians
and ended the dole in eighteen thirty-four
leaving the old, the sick, and the poor
to die in the streets.

Pressure of liberty

Have we finally learned
violence can not solve problems?
Have we learned
other people are human like ourselves?
Evidence to the contrary—
our wars and armaments
our tariffs and border security
our nationalism and tribalism
our hatreds and fears.
Infant mortality,
epidemics,
famines,
natural disasters,
emigration,
repression,
wars, genocides, terrorism,
and other crimes against humanity
are harsh measures
but do the job
that good people like ourselves
can’t take responsibility for.
Other people are free to mess up their own lives
but not to mess with us.

Overpopulation

Assuming people continue to act as they have acted
our population on this planet would continue to grow.
Assuming science and agriculture
could keep ahead of our needs
if only distribution were equitable
although we know distribution is never equitable,
then we will not need to practice genocide or infanticide
or watch others cruelly suffer
or eat each other;
however, we may need to continue to ignore
evidence of inhumanity and ignorance
leading to misery and evil
as our best efforts to help
continue to fall short.

Wouldn’t it be enough for each couple to have only one child? The grand one-child policy in China shows it is not only not enough, but that there are unanticipated problems. Many other states lack the will, the means, or the control, so the world population continues to grow.

Reading Malthus’s book on Population and appreciating “the struggle for existence” described in it, Darwin was inspired in 1838 to think of the fundamental theory of the descent of the species: “it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.”