It’s Wednesday and so a few topics that have interested me over the last week plus some promotion etc. I have been going back in time lately re-reading some of the classic books that spawned the environmental movements in the 1970s. At that time, researchers were predicting doom because they foresaw that the population growth was becoming excessive and outstripping the capacity of the world to regenerate itself. Many of the leading offerings of the day were heavily criticised not only because they were inherently (as a matter of logic) opposed to capitalism. Ironically, the Left also refused to take up population control type advocacy because they considered it coercive and biased against the poor. They preferred to argue about redistribution rather than degrowth. The Left’s credibility now in that regard is rather in tatters and unless the progressive elements in the environmental movement return to a focus on reducing population growth the game will be up. I am researching those issues at present.
The Population problem
When I was still at high school, the book – The Population Bomb – came out (1968).
It was written by the American academic researchers – Paul R. Erlich – and – Anne H. Erlich.
It was a controversial book and predicted among other things:
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate …
Sure enough its main thesis was highly contested by the growth lobby and the fact that several of its more strident predictions did not come to fruition in the time frame proposed was used to discredit its veracity.
I read it in the early 1970s and understood it to be a wake-up call rather than an exact depiction of the likely traverse over the coming decade or so.
And the book did focus mainly on the capacity of the world population to adequately feed itself rather than taking broader perspectives on how the growing population would deplete the available resources and damage the natural carrying capacity of the environment.
Those latter concerns are more prominent these days.
The Erlichs proposed rather radical population control policies which ran up against the religious lobby, particulary, but also the ‘freedom’ types, who selectively define liberty to suit themselves.
Even the standard Marxists claimed that the book ignored distribution of resources and could be used to justify genocide and eugenics.
For example, one of my favourite authors – Ronald L. Meek – wrote in his 1971 book of edited readings – Marx and Engels on the population bomb – that the Population Bomb was really a claim that there were “too many people for the world’s resources” and was thus in the same lineage as the work of Thomas Malthus, who was heavily criticised by Marx and Engels.
The context for the book was an on-going debate beginning as far as I was aware with the release of the book – Road to Survival – by William Vogt in 1948.
This book foreshadowed a deterioration in the ecological health of the planet as the population growth would create resource demands that would exceed the capacity of the natural environment.
Vogt was opposed to Capitalism because he understood that its inherent logic meant that the human resource demands would overshoot capacity.
The combination of being anti-capitalism and pro-birth control meant Vogt attracted widespread and powerful enemies which meant its agenda didn’t really influence policy making.
But his work did inspire other writers and researchers, including the Erlichs, who took up the anti-population growth message.
Even Marriner Eccles, the former Federal Reserve Bank head, who is often quoted (usually incorrectly) by Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) enthusiasts as supporting MMT propositions, understood the basis of the environmental problem was excessive population growth.
In a five-paragraph column in the New York Times (May 15, 1961) with the title ‘The Population Explosion’, Marriner Eccles said that population growth was the “most vitally important problem facing the world today”.
In May 1970, the Ramparts magazine published an article by American writer Steve Weissman entitled – Why the Population Bomb is a Rockefeller Baby.
It was a response to the influence the top-end-of-town was having in the newly created organisations such as the – US Population Council – which advocated stringent birth control methods be deloyed.
It didn’t escape the radicals that the likes of the oil baron John D. Rockefeller III was the inaugural president of the Council and it was heavily backed in financial terms by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.
Groups like this advocated poorer cohorts be pressured into reducing their birth rates and the Left construed this as being a way to resolve the poverty and unemployment – kill them off.
The Population Bomb got caught up in all that.
Weissman wrote:
This sudden interest of the world’s rich in the world’s poor, whatever the humanitarian impulse, made good dollars and cents. World War II had exhausted the older colonial empires, and everywhere the cry of nationalism sounded: from Communists in China and Southeast Asia, from neutralists in Indonesia and India, from independence movements in Africa and from use of their own oil and iron ore and, most menacing, the right to protect themselves against integration in an international marketplace which systematically favored the already-industrialized …
Faced with this distortion between fertility and development, developed country elites could see no natural way of stopping population growth. All they could see was people, people, people, each one threatening the hard-won stability which guaranteed access to the world’s ores and oil, each one an additional competitor for the use of limited resources.
So of course the Left opposed population control because (probably correctly) they saw that it would become an attack on the poor and further entrench the hegemony of the rich capital owners who wanted the resource access for themselves.
But in joining that opposition, the baby was thrown out with the bath water and we are now in an unsustainable mess.
I was recalling all that debate from my youth and early university days as I was reading about – Earth Overshoot Day – which:
… marks the date when we have used all the biological resources that the Earth can renew during the entire year.
Back when the Population Bomb was released that date occurred in late December.
This year it was August 1, 2024.
In Australia it was pronounced for this year to be April 5.
At present, on a global scale, it means we are using the natural resource base 1.7 times more than it can regenerate.
And the date we overshoot is getting closer to the beginning of the year, which raises the exhaustion.
Obviously, this is unsustainable.
Which is why degrowth is essential.
All sorts of plans are proposed by environmentalists to reduce consumption (which will reduce production).
Unfortunately, the overall problem is, as the Erlich’s and those who came before them, understood – there are too many people for the regenerative capacity of the natural resource basis.
And until that problem is adequately addressed we are just flapping about the edges.
Yes, the distribution of resource use is all wrong and the rich consume far beyond their reasonable share.
I agree with the standard Left argument there.
But advocating population control does not have to be targetted at the poor exclusively.
The issue is also tied up with the so-called ‘intergenerational battles’ – what we are leaving our grand children.
The mainstream economists all claim that with ageing populations and declining birth rates, governments will run out of money to provide the requisite medical and pension services because there will be less tax revenue forthcoming.
So they have become obsessed with increasing birth rates to continue economic growth.
Of course, these arguments are spurious and the rest of us are too ignorant of macroeconomics to see through them.
There is always enough government money to bail out banksters and provide weapons to the likes of the IDF to massacre innocent civilians in Gaza but when it comes to improving the well-being of the poor – sorry not enough.
The challenge for the Left and the Degrowth proponents (which I count myself among) is to craft an anti-growth agenda that includes population control but is not coercive and biased against the poor.
The reality is that unless we can come up with that sort of strategy, the deteriorating climate and the overshoot will reduce the population through famine etc, just as the Erlich’s originally conceived.
But if we leave it to the whim of nature then the outcome will be ugly indeed.
Episode 4 of our Manga, the Smith Family and their Adventures with Money comes out this Friday
The scene is the economics class at the local high school and Ms Allday has invited Chris Edwards to address her students.
He is a banker who used to work at the central bank and is an old university mate of Elizabeth Smith, who more recently has become a suitor of her, sensing the relationship with Ryan is crumbling.
Ms Allday, the teacher thinks that Chris will straighten the students out about the material in the textbook.
The students, particularly Kevin and Brian have been asking her uncomfortable questions about government currencies and she wants them to stop reading blog posts and to concentrate on learning the material in the textbook.
Unfortunately, things turn out badly for her as Chris sets her straight and reinforces the student rebellion against the textbook Groupthink.
You can follow the – Smith Family and their Adventures with Money – throughout Season 2, with new episodes appearing fortnightly.
Book Event – Melbourne, September 12, 2024
Readings Bookshop in Melbourne is hosting an event – Bill Mitchell with Alan Kohler – which will be held at the Hawthorn Shop (687 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, Victoria, 3122) on Thursday, September 12, starting at 18:30.
I will be there with ABC Finance personality Alan Kohler to discuss my new book (co-authored by Warren Mosler) – Modern Monetary Theory: Bill and Warren’s Excellent Adventure.
Copies of the book will be available at discount prices and my pen might come out if you want it signed.
Readings have increased the capacity for the event, after their usual audience size was oversubscribed.
The event is free but you need to book a ticket.
You can find more details and booking information – HERE.
Music – Road to Cairo
This is what I have been listening to while working this morning.
I was looking through a box of old albums in my cupboard last night and dug this one out – a 1969 release – Let the Sun Shine In (Polydor) – by – Brian Auger and The Trinity – who featured the singer – Julie Driscoll.
They were a Hammond B3 organ led band which achieved some popularity in the late 1960s.
Brian Auger – was a jazz organist who made the cross-over to rock and R&B as the British invasion gathered pace.
The distinctive feature of the band was the absence of an electric guitar.
I loved electric guitar but I also loved the B3,which is why I liked this band.
This song – Road to Cairo – was written by American singer-songwriter – David Ackles – and was released as a single in October 1968.
But I first heard it when it came out on the album which I got the following year.
I had enrolled in a record club as a high school student and the albums were very cheap.
One album I acquired under that scheme was this one which had 13 tracks of all their major hits.
Here is an interesting interview piece with Brian Auger (March 29, 2012) – Brian Auger In Conversation – which documents some of his dealings with Jimi Hendrix leading up to the latter’s premature death.
That is enough for today!
(c) Copyright 2024 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.
