6 Billion and a Sense of Hope

Thomas Malthus’ population bomb exploded, but it didn’t cause all the damage he and more modern doomsayers predicted. The world’s population, according to the United Nations, reached 6 billion, more or less, on Tuesday, having doubled in less than 40 years. But the growth is slowing dramatically, and some predict that it will level off soon as poorer societies gain ground economically. Although there still are millions going unfed around the world, it is also true that in more than two dozen developed countries the concern is “birth dearth.”

First were the economists, Britain’s Malthus chief among them, who applied “systemic thinking” to predict disastrous consequences from population growth. They were gradually replaced by naturalists, like Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, who in 1968 published “The Population Bomb,” warning that humankind was racing toward oblivion because of unstoppable growth. MIT researchers, using computer models, predicted in 1972 that the world would run out of gold in 1981 (plentiful now but with less glitter), oil a decade later and arable land by 2000.

Today, economists are among the most Pollyannaish of forecasters. The late professor Julian Simon of the University of Maryland declared that the world has an endless supply of everything. He argued that, with their creative intelligence, humans will always develop alternatives to resources they are depleting and find means to clean up the environmental mess they leave behind.

Simon may be too sunny about the consequences of unfettered use of natural resources, but his approach balances the gloom of many population theorists.