CAN MAN SURVIVE?

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 81, 29 December 1928, Page 21

CAN MAN SURVIVE?

PROBLEM OF POPULATION

It Is exactly one hundred and thirty years since Thomas Malthus published his “Essay on Population,”, that “torpedo launched at the Utopias of Godwin and Condorcet,” states a Melbourne “Argus” reviewer of Sir George Knibbs’s book “The Shadow of the World’s Future.” The intervening decades have been taken up by the wonderful industrial development which Keynes called “that magnificent episode of the nineteenth century which can never be repeated.” The gloomy declarations of Malthus that the world’s peoples were fast outrunning their resources were apparently falsified by the tremendously increased production of the modern economic system, but this increased production was accompanied by an amazing increase in world population, which has again brought the wheel full circle. We are again faced by the problems which Malthus predicted, and many eminent thinkers have returned to the fundamental position stated by him. “The devil has again been unchained by the newer Malthusians, who are afraid that the fruits of European organisation and industry will be dissipated by the fecundity of the world’s peoples.” To this tribe of devil-worshippers Sir George Knibbs admittedly belongs. “The Shadow of the World’s Future” is for him the looming problem of overpopulation, with its attendant miseries. “It is obvious,” he says, “that the rate of population increase witnessed on the earth during the last century and a quarter cannot continue in any circumstances whatsoever; It must diminish.” The case which he makes out from a study of the statistics of population and resources is mathematically unassailable. He shows clearly the amazing slowness of the rate of man’s increase upon the earth, even assuming the longest possible period of occupation, and then points to the great acceleration in that rate since 1800, to the rapid rise in the standard of living, and to the lengthened average of human life among the white races. The problem of problems thus becomes that of an overcrowded world. He then proceeds to attack the almost universal assumption that the development of science and industry will easily take care of the problem, by showing that population increase is rapidly overhauling the utmost that science can do in the eflicient use of resources. These resources are just as rapidly diminishing. Food supplies, minerals, forests, fertilisers, all tend to scarcity in the face of demands of larger and more luxuriously minded populations. The possibilities .which more intensive agriculture and the use of the tropics offer- are fairly examined, but it. is evident that these developments can but postpohe the evil day. An interesting attempt to forecast the world’s ultimate population, allowing for the highest possible measure of human efficiency, the freest possible migration, and the complete elimination of war, is made. The maximum number of human beings that the world’s surface can carry is demonstrated to be a relatively small multiple of the present population. Taking the highest estimate —11,000.000 against the present 1.950.000 —Sir George Knibbs shows that this maxi-

mum would be reached in 260 years if the present rate of increase remained constant. Should, however, the rate of increase of the white races be attained by the whole world, a period of 150 years would suffice for this consummation. But “long before that figure has been attained the population difficulty will have become terribly acute; and it has to be borne in mind that, from time to time, the trouble about populations and their food supplies is certain to be painfully accentuated by the inescapable vicissitudes of Nature.” One of the gloomiest aspects of the problem is constituted by the menace of war owing to the collision of economic interests, and to the competition to survive. Further, there can be no evasion of the necessity for equitable consideration of the rights of all peoples, and this involves the problem of racial admixture, which is one of tremendous difficulty. A consideration of the related problems of international economics, nationalism, and migration, brings Sir George Knibbs to his central thesis, that the economic efficiency of the human race must continue to advance rapidly in order to meet the double tax of increased numbers and a more elaborate standard of living, and that the chief hope of the future lies in the economic and social pressure against unrestricted increase, i.e„ birth control. The advance in human knowledge has shown “that it is easily possible to have far better conditions In the reproduction of human beings. To secure them, practically, is worth while. Yet the task of securing human interest seems to be one of hopeless magnitude.” With the possible exception of the mathematical calculations of probable population limits, these conclusions are neither new nor unexpected, but Sir George Knibbs has rendered a' signal service in focusing the thought of the last hundred years upon the population problem, and in lighting the path along which the peoples of the world are moving. His apprehension of the menace to white civilisation is entirely justified, but sufficient allowance has not been made for man's facility in adapting himself and his institutions to changing conditions. The pressure of population upon resources will undoubtedly accomplish In the future what it has done in the past, by retarding the Tate of increase. The next two decades in Japan will Indicate the way in which an intelligent people will meet a.problem which must, sooner or later, become universal. The real problem is not a question of “catastrophic dearths, but oflowered standards, truncated leisure, forgone pleasures, -baffled desires.” In some terrible way the future of man is bound up with the struggle to survive ; and, even if we could prevent it, the prevention of the struggle might not be the best possible way to help man towards his destiny. One feels that Sir George Knibbs, in a spirit of benevolence, has painted a forbidding picture. But, in the words of D. 11. Robertson, “If’ the priests of devilworship appear sometimes to take an unduly, grim pleasure in administering it, it need not be assumed that they are hard of heart, or that they would-not be as glad as anyone to find an Exodus from their pre-occupation with Genesis and Numbers, and to get on with the journey to the Promised Land.”