Climate change may be due to manmade causes such as the demonstrated effects of the Industrial Revolution of the early 19h century, or the exponential growth in human population in recent decades.
The matter of the effects of industrial activity largely speaks for itself, but the question of population growth deserves some explanation. To that end, I turn to the 18th century economist, Thomas Malthus, who offered a novel thesis of population growth in 1798.
His fundamental assumption was that, while the resources that mankind depended upon for basic survival and growing prosperity were increasing at a linear rate, human population was increasing at an exponential rate. As Malthus explained, there would come a point where the carrying capacity of the planet would be overwhelmed by the increase in population which would lead to what economists call a "Malthusian Crisis". When that happens, large numbers of people will die from such causes as hunger and thirst. Dreaded diseases will ravage the populace in the souks of Baghdad and Cairo; in the slums of Mumbai and Lagos. Frightened national leaders will fight wars over the control of increasingly scarce resources, and the die-off could be beyond our ability to comprehend, especially if nuclear weapons come into play.
The matter of the effects of industrial activity largely speaks for itself, but the question of population growth deserves some explanation. To that end, I turn to the 18th century economist, Thomas Malthus, who offered a novel thesis of population growth in 1798.
His fundamental assumption was that, while the resources that mankind depended upon for basic survival and growing prosperity were increasing at a linear rate, human population was increasing at an exponential rate. As Malthus explained, there would come a point where the carrying capacity of the planet would be overwhelmed by the increase in population which would lead to what economists call a "Malthusian Crisis". When that happens, large numbers of people will die from such causes as hunger and thirst. Dreaded diseases will ravage the populace in the souks of Baghdad and Cairo; in the slums of Mumbai and Lagos. Frightened national leaders will fight wars over the control of increasingly scarce resources, and the die-off could be beyond our ability to comprehend, especially if nuclear weapons come into play.
Malthus's dire predictions never came to pass, in part because he failed to take into account the degree to which advances in science and technology increased the carrying capacity of the planet. Mankind learned to understand the disease process and developed the insights and tools needed to successfully overcome the problem of unnaturally early death. We transformed agriculture so that a relatively small number of farmers could easily feed the world, and those displaced from the farms could find more appropriate employment that treated them as men rather than animated agricultural implements.
The 19th century saw the development of mechanised agricultural implements that vastly reduced the number of people needed to work farms, and the 20th century brought us rapid growth in more effective agronomy, culminating in the so-called "Green Revolution of the 1960s that transformed India and Pakistan from regular importers of food to self sufficiency.
The downside of that achievement is that the transformation to high-yielding agriculture requires the extensive use of fertilizers ,and expensive hybrid seeds which has led to the marginalisation of traditional family farms in favor of the industrial behemoths that increasingly provide the bulk of our food at least in the developed world
The 19th century saw the development of mechanised agricultural implements that vastly reduced the number of people needed to work farms, and the 20th century brought us rapid growth in more effective agronomy, culminating in the so-called "Green Revolution of the 1960s that transformed India and Pakistan from regular importers of food to self sufficiency.
The downside of that achievement is that the transformation to high-yielding agriculture requires the extensive use of fertilizers ,and expensive hybrid seeds which has led to the marginalisation of traditional family farms in favor of the industrial behemoths that increasingly provide the bulk of our food at least in the developed world
But now that climate change is wreaking havoc over the land, it may be time to revisit the dark predictions of Rev Malthus, if only as a reminder of what awaits us if we don't begin addressing the coming apocalypse. It's useful to remember what the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse represented: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. That will be mankind's fate if we don't begin taking immediate steps to deal with the problems facing us. We'll be living in a Malthusian dystopia for however long it takes to rebalance the planet's carrying capacity.
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