Is the World Over Populated?
By Amy Beange
If any truth has been ingrained in the culture by the environmental movement it is the idea that Earth is in a precarious state. In essay after essay, article after article, and book after book, words like “fragile” and “delicate balance” compete with “before it’s too late” and “our children will pay the price”. The overall impression is that the Earth is a fragile china shop and we humans are the lumbering bulls rampaging through it.
One of the environmental movement’s big ideas is that Earth is on the precipice of destruction because the human population has grown to the point of unsustainability. This concept has been around at least since Thomas Malthus argued in 1798 that because resources grow in a linear fashion (a straight line angled upward) and populations grow exponentially (a curved line angled upward at an ever sharper angle) sooner or later the human population would outstrip earth’s ability to feed everyone.
“In 1970 [Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich] told CBS News ‘Sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come, and by the end I mean an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.’”
The concept of overpopulation was taken up by Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 book “The Population Bomb” in which he wrote that by 1970 “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death” and that “nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.” In 1970 he told CBS News “Sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come, and by the end I mean an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.”
About then governments began to put into place anti-population measures designed to quell the reproductivity of those human populations thought most in need of quelling, i.e., those living in what was then called the Third World or the developing world. According to Smithsonian magazine, India sterilized 8 million men and women in 1975 alone and China enacted it’s one child policy “that led to huge numbers—possibly 100 million—coerced abortions, often done in poor conditions, contributing to infection, sterility and even death. Millions of forced sterilizations occurred.”
If the world truly risks population growth that will outstrip the ability to feed ourselves, it should arouse deep concern. But is it true? We might check by asking, “Can we feed ourselves today?” Admittedly, people are starving in various places, which might seem to indicate Ehrlich’s nightmare is coming true. But do we know for certain the problem is too many people?
The Journal of Sustainable Agriculture published an article in 2012, which tells us “for the past two decades, the rate of global food production has increased faster than the rate of global population growth” and that we currently produce 1.5 times as much food as the population needs. The title of the article? “We Already Grow Enough Food for 10 Billion People…and Still Can’t End Hunger”.
What the Sustainable Agriculture article tells us is that our problem is not that there are too many people around but that we have not yet managed to adequately steward our resources. We produce enough food, but we can’t seem to get it to everyone in a timely fashion. It is estimated that one-third of the food produced for human use is lost or wasted each year. Loss comes in part from spoilage due to inadequate cold storage and exposure to pests. Wastage also occurs where food is cheap and plentiful. Grocery stores dispose of aesthetically unappealing fruit and vegetables and families toss products they bought but did not use in time. According to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, “when including all stages of the food supply chain, 369 kilograms of food per capita is wasted in Canada every year.” So, the problem is not too many people, but that people struggle to care for one another, which should not be news to any of us.
When I consider the concept of overpopulation and planet fragility from a Biblical viewpoint, a thought occurs. God created the planet to be inhabited by people and His express declaration to us was that we “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28)
If God is the omnipotent, omniscient Creator that we believe Him to be, we can presume that when He designed the planet He had His entire plan of redemption in mind—He knew what He was going to do in history and when He was going to do it. He knew very well what the earth’s carrying capacity is and how we were going to fill it. The modern population explosion did not come as a surprise to God.
“God does seem to delight in human life, telling us to “go to it” and produce sizeable families, both at the time of the initial creation and at the “re-creation” after the Flood.”
God does seem to delight in human life, telling us to “go to it” and produce sizeable families, both at the time of the initial creation and at the “re-creation” after the Flood. Moreover, He has given us such inspiring verses as “children are a treasure from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward” (Psalm 127:3), and in anchoring His promises within the lives of a multiplied people: “I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth” (Genesis 13:16).
If this is true, it seems we do not have to be concerned about population sizes; if God is in control of the human enterprise, he will manage the people/resource balance. When we reach His desired number, he will act to curtail reproduction. Meanwhile, we may still plan our families and aim for a predetermined number, but the decisions we make should not be driven by the argument that there are too many of us.
The latest prognostications peg the world’s peak population at about 11 billion souls by the turn of the 22nd century. Since we currently produce enough food to feed 10 billion (leaving aside questions about distribution), it is not a stretch to believe that we will continue to develop our capacity to supply the necessary resources for that extra billion-persons by the time it is needed.
We only need to look to the past to see the human capacity to improve his lot. Over the last couple of centuries, we have developed higher-yield crops that are also more resistant to drought and pests, and we are also improving our abilities to preserve and transport what we produce. But none of this is a strictly modern phenomenon. The agricultural improvements of the 20th century simply built on improvements that began in the middle ages with the introduction of three-field crop rotation, the shift from oxen to horses for plowing, and the development of the rigid collar and the heavy plow. No one can know with certainty what we will develop in the next 80 years, but we have every reason to expect that we will still be able to produce enough for everyone. The planet appears quite robust in this way.
As a thought experiment let us say this is the case—that God created the world, that He knows its true carrying capacity, and that He will help us to act accordingly. It puts me in mind of the conquest of Canaan. God promised Abraham that his descendants would spend 400 years in Egypt where they would go into slavery. But He promised that they would multiply, become a great nation, and come out at the appointed time; “in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). The implication seems to be that God had a set time in mind for the Amorites to go their own way before bringing judgment on them. When the time was right, God rescued his people and used them as His instrument of justice upon the Amorites.
Likewise, with Christ’s first advent. The Bible tells us that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son” (Galatians 4:4). We can see that Christ came at an opportune moment—crucifixion was in vogue and the empire was relatively peaceful with reliable roads and communication—so that everything worked together for the accomplishment of the gospel and its rapid spread.
We also see this divine planning in The Revelation when God addresses the souls under the altar—he tells them he will avenge them until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who would also be killed, “is completed” (Revelation 6:11).
“May we always look on human life, not as a pestilence or burden, but as a gift and blessing.”
Perhaps it is the same with the earth’s population. When the time is right, i.e., when we have accomplished His purpose of filling the earth, along with whatever other purposes He has for us, God will act to bring redemption history to a conclusion. This does not mean we are free to do as we wish, but that we work together with God to manage this planet in such a way that our management does not need to be accomplished in the midst of worries over runaway fecundity. God is not so shortsighted as that. Our mission to fill and subdue the earth has not been revoked. Building families and building culture is what makes for satisfying lives, something that is being brought home to us in this current season of isolation and distancing. More than ever we see how important people are, and how important families are. May we always look on human life, not as a pestilence or burden, but as a gift and blessing.
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