After have read our textbook, watched the video and research, I believe Malthusian arguments have other agenda rather than a social interest. It is apparent that during the eighteenth century, Malthus the primary issue was with the rising number of the poor in his homeland and that if people were poor, it was because there were too many of them. In addition, they are at fault for their condition, and if they stopped reproducing, there would be fewer of them which will be less strain on the world resources. Unfortunately, this logic remains at the heart of Malthusian concerns today. Yet in making this argument, they forget how the market of Capitalism works and that food is a commodity, and, like any other commodity, will be produced only if there is a demand. In addition, what is produced will depend on those that have the money and what they want to buy. Thus, an exceedingly inefficient use of land, water, and energy is used by farmers in poor countries dedicated millions of acres for land pasturing to raise cattle so that people in wealthy nations can purchase, however people in their own country can not afford to buy beef. As Nobel Prizing winning economist, Amarya Sen, argues through his book Hunger and Public Action, not because of a lack of food, but because they do not have the means to pay for it.
Another dimension we might want to look at is the world wealth distribution. Stutz and Warf, University Professors of Geography, explained the reason behind the inequity of allocation of riches through the Core and Periphery model in their book The World Economy (2012). The theory is that as general prosperity grows globally, the majority of that growth is benefited by a “core” region of wealthy countries in spite of being severely outnumbered in population by those in a “periphery” that are ignored. According to the authors, usually, the core or wealthy countries are the ones that are “industrialized, urbanized, and democratic” while the peripheral or poor countries are “rural, agriculturally based and dominated by authoritarian governments”. In addition, Stutz and Warf listed mentioned “the direction of the world economy is centered in the core regions are North America, Western Europe, and Japan, as well as the Pacific Rim. While Latin America, Africa, and Asia contain 3/4th of world population find themselves on the periphery of the world economy, suffering a sustained lack of foreign investment; this pattern is the result of centuries of colonialism and a world system in which the rules often work against them” (p.14).
Another topic is consumption. According to The Most Harmful Consumer Activities by Union of Concerned Scientists, the more developed nations with a fairly stable population growth, but who use 5-50 times the resources of the poor. The article listed the leading environmental damages are cars and trucks creating pollution and global warming than any other consumer spending category. Next are the meat, poultry, fruit, vegetable and grain productions which used large amount of water. Then household appliances, lighting, home heating, hot water and air conditioning which relies on electricity or oil contribute heavily to global warming and air pollution. However, these are basic standard of living of everyday life for people of developed countries.
By the year 200, will the Earth be able to support roughly 10 billion people? Perhaps. Overpopulation and sustainability are complex issues. People of the world must come to realize that fact that it is everyone’s problem. We are all in it together and to resolve these issues, everybody must scarify in some sort of way in order to save our planet and our species. It is a delicate balance. We want the developing countries to improve their economic situation and to improve their quality of life. This has been known to lower the birth rate. In addition, it advisable for the developed countries to consume less, perhaps this might lower the quality of life. We need to balance the quality of life between the rich and the poor, at the same time, hoping to balance the family size between the two classes.
Resources:
Elwell, Frank W., 2001. Malthus' Social Theory. Retrieved from
http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/users/f/felwell/www/Theorists/Malthus/SocMalthus.htm
Sen, Amarty and Dreze, Jean. Hunger and Public Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999.
Malthus, Thomas. (1798). Essay on The Principle of Population. Retrieved from:
http://www.esp.org/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf
Simon J.L. The ultimate resource. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Simon J.L. The ultimate resource II. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1996.
Stutz, Frederick P., and Warf, Barney. The World Economy: Geography, Business,
Development. 6th ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Union of Concerned Scientists. (2012) The Most Harmful Consumer Activities. Retrieved from:
http://www.overpopulation.org/solutions.html#Overconsumption
