Malthus Revisited

The BBC is reporting a report to this year's AAAS meeting theorizing the coming energy shortage will produce a commensurate decrease in population.

As the world's reserves of oil and gas run out over the coming decades, the birth-rates of societies are likely to fall considerably, a US scientist says.

According to some estimates, the global population may rise from its current 6.3 billion today to almost 9bn by 2050.

But Virginia Abernethy told a Seattle meeting that the loss of fossil fuels would hit world economies very hard.

"Economic hardship discourages people from marrying young and from having closely spaced children," she said.

The anthropologist and professor emerita of psychiatry from Vanderbilt University was speaking here in Washington State at the annual gathering of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"The availability of energy has been a major factor in population growth," said Professor Abernethy.

"In the modern context, energy use per capita affects economic activity. So a prolonged decline in energy use per capita will tend to depress the economy which, in turn, will cause a decline in the fertility rate."

I don't buy it. The relationship between wealth and birth rate seems to me to be the other way around — wealthy countries have lower birth rates. The sanguine prediction above states a potential Malthusian crises will be self-regulating. This is not a new tune for Virginia Abernethy. Let's just hope that she is on key.

Comments

[*** Dave]

Yeah, that seems just backwards to me -- most countries have seen birth rates *fall* as wealth has *risen*. Presumably the revese would be true.

On the other hand, Malthusian predictions have come and gone, so I don't know that I have that much faith in this one, either.

[Rich]

Let's hope you're right, Dave. Malthusian predictions largely failed because of cheap and plentiful fossil fuels that allowed for extremely efficient agriculture. If cheap fossil fuels cease to be the case, Thomas Malthus may get the last laugh.