Demonstration two begins much the same way. Cage. Two mice. This time, however, we follow a different procedure. Instead of putting in the same amount of food every day, we start with one amount and increase it daily. However much the pair of mice eat the first day, we put in fifty percent more the second day. However much they eat the second day, we put in fifty percent more the third day. Before long there are four mice. No matter, we follow our procedure. Whatever they eat in a day, we put in fifty percent more the next. Before long there are eight mice, sixteen mice, thirty-two mice. No matter, whatever they eat in one day, we put in fifty percent more the next. Sixty-four mice, a hundred twenty-eight, two hundred fifty, five hundred, a thousand. Whatever the mice eat in one day, we put in fifty percent more the next, carefully extending the sides of the cage as needed to avoid stressful overcrowding. Two thousand, four thousand, eight thousand, sixteen thousand, thirty-two thousand, sixty-four thousand. At this point, someone runs in and yells, “Stop! Stop! This is a population explosion!”
Golly! I guess you’re right! What shall we do?
I have a suggestion. Let’s start by answering this question: How much did the sixty-four thousand mice eat yesterday? Answer: five hundred kilos of food. Okay. Well, ordinarily, we’d put seventy-five hundred kilos of food into the cage tomorrow, but let’s abandon that procedure now. Our new procedure will be based on this theory: Yesterday five hundred kilos was enough for them, so why shouldn’t five hundred kilos be enough for them today?
So today we put just five hundred kilos of food into the cage, same as yesterday.
Now watch closely. There are no food riots. Why should there be? The mice have just as much to eat today as they did yesterday.
Now watch closely again. No mice are starving. Why would there be?
Now it’s tomorrow, and again we put just five hundred kilos of food into the cage.
Again, watch closely. There are still no food riots. Still no mice starving.
We do it again on day three. Again, no food riots, no mice starving.
But aren’t new mice being born? Of course—and old mice are dying.
Day four, day five, day six. I’m waiting for the food riots, but there are no food riots. I’m waiting for the famine, but there is no famine.
There are sixty-four thousand mice, and five hundred kilos of food will feed sixty-four thousand mice. Why should there be riots? Why should there be famine?
Oh—and I almost forgot to mention it—the population explosion stopped overnight. What else could it do? Population growth has to be supported by increased food availability. Always. Without exception. Less food—decline. More food—growth. Same food—stability. That’s what we’ve got here: Stability.
Demonstration three. This demonstration is identical to demonstration two right up to the end. Sixty-four thousand mice, five hundred kilos of food, stability. Then the head of the department charges in and says, “Who needs sixty-four thousand mice? These mice are eating us out of house and home. What’s special about sixty-four thousand mice anyhow? Why not eight thousand? Why not four thousand?”
Oh my, what a crisis. Quick—check the Yellow Pages, see if anyone makes condoms for mice! What, no condoms for mice!?! Well, look under Family Planning! What, no family planning for rodents!?!
No, you know this would not be the reaction. You know this because you understand the B in the ABCs of ecology. We don’t need birth control. All we need is food control.
Someone says, here’s what we do. Yesterday five hundred kilos of food went into the cage. Today we’ll reduce that by a kilo. Oh no, another objects. A kilo is too much. Let’s reduce it by a quarter of a kilo. So that’s what they do. Four hundred ninety-nine and three quarters kilos of food go into the cage. Tension in the lab as everyone waits for food riots and famine—but of course there are no food riots and no famine. Among sixty-four thousand mice, a quarter of a kilo of food is like a flake of dandruff apiece.
Tomorrow four hundred ninety-nine and a half kilos of food go into the cage. Still no food riots and no famine.
This procedure is followed for a thousand days—and not once is there a food riot or a famine. After a thousand days only two hundred fifty kilos of food are going into the cage—and guess what? There are no longer sixty-four thousand mice in the cage. There are only thirtytwo thousand. Not a miracle—just a demonstration of the laws of ecology. A decline in food availability has been answered by a decline in population. As always. Semper et ubique. Nothing to do with riots. Nothing to do with famine. Just the normal response of a feeder population to the availability of food.
Objections
I’ve been surprised by how challenging people find these ideas. They feel menaced by them. They get angry. They feel I’m attacking the foundation of their lives. They feel I’m calling into question the blessedness of the greatest blessing of civilized life. They somehow feel I’m questioning the sacredness of human life itself.
I’d like to deal with some of the objections people make to these ideas. I do this not to discourage you from expressing objections of your own but because I can express these objections as rudely as I like to myself without making anyone nervous.
I’ll deal with the most general objection first, which is that humans are not mice. This is of course absolutely true, especially at the individual level. Each of us as an individual is capable of making reproductive choices that mice absolutely cannot make. Nonetheless—and this is the point that ecology makes and that I’ve made here today—our behavior as a biological population is indistinguishable from the behavior of any other biological population. In defense of that statement, I offer the evidence of ten thousand years of obedience to this fundamental law of ecology: An increase in food availability for a species means growth for that species.
I’ve been told that it doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve been told that it’s possible for us to increase food production and simultaneously reduce our population. This is basically the position taken by birth-control advocates. This is basically the position taken by well-intentioned organizations that undertake to improve indigenous agricultural techniques in Third World countries. They want to give technologically undeveloped peoples the means of increasing their population with one hand and birth-control aids with the other hand—even though we know full well that these birth-control aids don’t even work for us! They’re certain that we can go on increasing food production while ending population growth through birth control. This represents a denial of the B in the ABCs of ecology.
History—and not just thirty years of history but ten thousand years of history—offers no support whatever for the idea that we can simultaneously increase food production and end population growth. On the contrary, history resoundingly confirms what ecology teaches: If you make more food available, there will be more people to consume it.
Obviously the matter is different at the individual level. Old Macdonald on his farm can increase food production and simultaneously hold his family’s growth to zero, but this clearly isn’t the end of the story. What’s he going to do with that increase he produced on his farm? Is he going to soak it in gasoline and burn it? If so, then he hasn’t actually produced an increase at all. Is he going to sell it? Presumably that is what he’s going to do with it, and if he does sell it, then that increase enters the annual agricultural increase that serves to support our global population growth.
I’m often told that even if we stop increasing food production, our population will continue to grow. This represents a denial of both the A and the B of the ABCs of ecology. The A in the ABCs of ecology is this: We are food. We are food because we are what we eat—and what we eat is food. To put it plainly, each and every one of us is made from food.
When people tell me that our population will continue to add new millions even if we stop increasing food production, then I have to ask what these additional millions of people will be made of, since no additional food is being produced for them. I have to say, “Please
bring me some of these people, because if they’re not made of food, I want to know what they are made of. Is it moonbeams or rainbow dust or starlight or angel’s breath or what?”
Almost invariably someone asks if I’m not aware that population growth is much slower in the food-rich North than in the food-poor South. This fact seems to be offered as proof that human societies are not subject to the laws of ecology, which (it is assumed) predict that the more food the faster the growth. But this is not what ecology predicts. Let me repeat that: Ecology does not predict that the population in a food-rich area will grow more rapidly than the population in a food-poor area. What ecology predicts is: When more food is made available, the population will increase. Every year more food is made available in the North, and every year the population increases. Every year more food is made available in the South, and every year the population increases.
Then I will be told very emphatically that more food is not being made available in the South. The population is growing like wildfire, but this growth is not being supported by any increase in food. All I can say about this is, if what you say is true, then we are clearly in the presence of a miracle. These people are not being made from food, because, according to you, no food is being made available for them. They must be made of air or icicles or dirt. But if it turns out—as I strongly suspect it will—that these people are not made of air or icicles or dirt but ordinary flesh and blood, then I’ll have to say, what do you think this stuff is? [Here B grabbed the skin on his arm.] Do you think you can make this flesh and blood out of nothing} No, the existence of the flesh and blood is proof that these people are being made out of food. And if there are more people here this year, this is proof that there is more food here this year.
And of course I have to deal with the starving millions. Don’t we have to continue to increase food production in order to feed the starving millions? There are two things to understand here. The first is that the excess that we produce each year does not go to feed the starving millions. It didn’t go to feed the starving millions in 1995, it didn’t go to feed the starving millions in 1994, it didn’t go to feed the starving millions in 1993, it didn’t go to feed the starving millions in 1992—and it won’t go to feed the starving millions in 1996. Where did it go? It went to fuel our population explosion.
That’s the first thing. The second thing is that everyone involved in the problem of world hunger knows that the problem is not a shortage of food. Producing more food does not solve the problem, because that’s simply not the problem. Producing more food just produces more people.
Then people will ask, “Don’t you realize that our agricultural base is already being destroyed? We’re eliminating millions of tons of top-soil every year. Even the sea isn’t yielding as much food as before. Yet the population explosion continues.” The point of the objection is contained in that last sentence: Our food production capacity is declining, yet the population explosion continues. This nonfact is offered as proof that there is no connection between food and growth. Once again, I’m afraid I must insist that this is magical thinking. Our population explosion can no more continue without food than a fire can continue without fuel. The fact that our population continues to grow year after year is proof that we’re producing more food year after year. Until people start showing up who are made of shadows or metal filings or gravel—when that happens, then I’ll have to back off this point.
When all else fails, it will be objected that the people of the world will not tolerate a limit on food. That may be, but it has nothing to do with the facts I’ve presented here.
No one has ever specifically asked me what I have against birth control, but I’ll answer the question anyway. I don’t have a thing against birth control as such. It just represents very poor problem-solving strategy. The rule in crisis management is, Don’t make it your goal to control effects, make it your goal to control causes. If you control causes, then you don’t have to control effects. This is why they make you go through airport security before you get on the plane. They don’t want to control effects. They want to control causes. Birth control is a strategy aimed at effects. Food-production control is a strategy aimed at causes.
We’d better have a look at it.
Questions and Answers
[All Qs as summarized by B for non-German-speaking listeners]
Q. You mention in one of your “demonstrations” that the walls of the cage are expanded to accommodate an increased population of mice. It seems to me this invalidates the demonstration, inasmuch as there is no way for us to expand the walls of this planet to accommodate an increased human population.
A. What the nations of Europe did, beginning in the sixteenth century, was precisely to expand the walls of their cage to accommodate an increased population—into the New World, Australia, Melanesia, and Africa.
Q. It’s difficult for me to see how you have improved on Thomas Malthus, who was making similar predictions a century ago.
A. Malthus’s warning was about the inevitable failure of totalitarian agriculture. My warning is about its continued success.
Q. Your models of population growth fail to take into account the well-established correlation between standard of living and population growth. Countries with a high standard of living have a growth rate near zero or even below zero (as in Germany!), whereas countries with a low standard of living are the ones that account for the greatest growth. This shows that food production and population growth aren’t necessarily connected.
A. The argument you’ve presented is the sort of argument the tobacco industry likes: “One of my best friends never touched a cigarette in her life, didn’t grow up among smokers, and didn’t work among smokers, but she died of lung cancer at age thirty-seven. On the other hand, my father has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day since he was seventeen and is still hale and hardy at age sixty-three. This shows that smoking and cancer aren’t necessarily connected.”
When our population system is assessed as a whole—on a global scale, rather than country by country—there is no doubt whatever that, as a whole, our population is increasing catastrophically, so that studies conducted by international groups like the United Nations predict without reservation that there will be twelve billion of us here in forty years or so.
Q. The point you are ignoring is that population growth can be slowed if living conditions are improved.
A. In the New World five hundred years ago, the non-native population was zero. Today the non-native population is three hundred million. This growth was not a result of poor living conditions. It was a result of the causes I have outlined here tonight.
Q. The farmers of the world do not primarily produce food to feed an expanded population, as you suggest. This is not the force to which they are responding. More and more farmers are engaged in producing crops that don’t feed anyone at all, crops like coffee, cotton, and tobacco.
A. Where is the food coming from to feed our expanding population then? If it isn’t being produced by farmers, who is producing it? This is a biological fact that is simply beyond dispute: If a hundred million people are added to the population, these people will be made from food and nothing else.
Q. According to Karl Marx, the population of every culture is determined by the constraints of its livelihood. For example, foraging peoples, in order to pursue their lifestyle, must maintain a very small population. They could feed more, but only by abandoning some aspect of their lifestyle. In other words, their lifestyle forces a limit on them. Our lifestyle will force a limit on us as well.
A. I see. And meanwhile, food production has nothing to do with it?
Q. As far as I am concerned, food production has nothing to do with it.
A. I can only point out that the biological sciences see the matter differently.
Q. It seems to me that we don’t need to do anything about our growing population. The system itself will take care of it.
A. You mean by collapsing. Yes, that
’s perfectly true. If you learn that the building you’re living in has a structural fault that will soon cause it to collapse under the force of gravity, you’re certainly at liberty to let the system take care of it. But if your children are living in the building when it finally collapses, they may not think as highly of this solution as you do.
The Great Remembering
25 May, Schauspielhaus Wahnfried, Radenau
There’s a drug known as angel dust or PCP that has the effect of blinding people to their physical limitations and vulnerability. Under its influence, people will manically plunge into feats that are beyond the design limitations of the human body, so that they heedlessly break bones, rip flesh, and tear ligaments, imagining themselves to be indestructible, only becoming aware of the damage they’ve done to themselves when the drug wears off.
Our culture has its own form of angel dust, which blinds us to our biological limitations and vulnerability. Under its influence, we have manically plunged into feats that are beyond the design limitations not only of our species but of any species on earth, so that we have heedlessly broken bones, ripped flesh, and torn ligaments, imagining ourselves to be indestructible. Only now, like the addict when his drug begins to wear off, are we beginning to count the wounds we have inflicted on ourselves during our maddened riot. But even as we make that count, we keep taking the drug, because we haven’t yet identified it as the source of our mania.
The drug I’m talking about is the Great Forgetting. Just as angel dust blinds its users to the fact that they’re flesh and bone, the Great Forgetting blinds us to the fact that we are a biological species in a community of biological species and are not exempt or exemptible from the forces that shape all life on this planet. The Great Forgetting blinds us to the fact that what cannot work for any species will not work for us either. As angel dust tempts people to do things that would be mortally hazardous for any human, the Great Forgetting tempts us to do things that would be mortally hazardous for any species.