Population growth is not bad

Critics of growth are wrong

In a recent episode, Bill Maher claimed that we need to reduce population growth in his new rule, “Let the Population Collapse.” You can find the link to the video here, though it lacks substance and is a waste of time so I recommend you don’t watch it.

Photo from Vox.com

In the segment, Maher mocks Mathew Yglesias’ argument for “One Billion Americans” something I strongly support, and will write more about at a later date. Maher opens his critique of Yglesias’ argument claiming that while, we have enough space, we don’t have enough ‘resources.’ Maher follows that line with “Didn’t we just run out of baby formula?” showing he probably hasn’t read “One Billion Americans” nor has he thought about the dynamics between population and resources. The obvious rebuttal is that people not only consume things, but they also create things. Baby formula is one of those things. If America had a billion people, we’d have about three times as many people, roughly three times as many babies, and "(probably) three times as many people making baby formula to feed all the babies.

Maher then says “You can make a billion Americans but they’re all not going to want to live in North Dakota.” Not everyone would live in North Dakota, but he overlooks the fact that we really could have a lot more people living in the upper midwest and rural areas. The fact that America has many places that are probably nicer to live in than North Dakota makes it seem like North Dakota is a terrible place to live. However, if you think about how the rest of the world lives, living in North Dakota is an amazing place to live compared with San Salvador or Mombasa. I find place-based immigration proposals to fight depopulation intriguing—instead of an employer being the one to sponsor a visa, a state sponsors the person, and they can only work in that state for X number of years, before being able to move wherever they want. This could effectively fight depopulation in regions of the country that are facing economic and cultural flight due to depopulation.

Maher then, quite comically, brings up Thomas Malthus’ theory from 1798, where “population grows exponentially, but water and food do not, hasn’t really changed.” While Malthus was a revolutionary economist for his time, this theory has made him rather infamous because it turned out to be totally wrong (also, Maher’s characterization of Malthus’ theory isn’t entirely accurate either, but Maher gets so much wrong in the episode it really isn’t worth correcting him on this.) Agricultural productivity increased (which Maher acknowledges), making Malthus’ claims largely irrelevant at today’s level of agricultural science. But, Maher claims that food growing is “still finite.” While yes, it sort of is, that doesn’t mean it’s worth being concerned about in the context of population growth. The largest agricultural exporter is the United States. The second largest food exporter is the Netherlands. Yes, that tiny little country that should be underwater. The Dutch have advanced greenhouses that grow food at super space efficient levels. Space is not the issue to food production, and the world is nowhere near the ‘limit’. Much of the US’s grain is used to feed livestock, and because of the biological science of trophic levels, this means there is a big calorie “waste” in the production of meat. If food became sufficiently scarce, we could alleviate a shortage of calories by eating the grains directly rather than eating meat.

Maher’s response to the problems of depopulation is “isn’t running out of water an even bigger problem.” Maher repeats “running out of water” many times throughout the episode but doesn’t explain how we “run out of water.” Earth has plenty of water. It is in fact covered with it. Here is a picture of earth if you don’t believe me:

Excuse my smarminess. In all seriousness though, I don’t understand what Maher’s concern is. Yes, of course most of the water is salt water. But there are desalination plants which convert sea water into drinkable water, something already done in Israel where there are few sources of fresh water. Obviously, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care about water management. Desalination is more expensive than taking water directly from a clean river, so ways to manage water better (through pricing mechanisms) would be welcome. But the idea that with one billion Americans we would just die of thirst is ludicrous. And this brings me to my main point, which is that humans can adapt, and specific resource constraints are overblown.

Here is an unorthodox but fascinating Twitter thread I saw a few months back:

Jason Crawford @jasoncrawford

But the deeper reason is that there’s really no such thing as a *natural* resource. All resources are artificial. They are a product of technology. And economic growth is ultimately driven, not by material resources, but by *ideas*.

To summarize, wealth is really only created and consumed by the fashioning of resources through ideas. Ideas are what create wealth, and better ideas are what generate wealth and improve our living standards. Resources may be fixed, but ideas can be used to find replacement resources and use resources more efficiently. In the 1800s people lit lamps with whale oil. When everyone realized we were going to run out of whales, the world didn’t just stop using light, people switched to kerosene. Then electricity.

Many people have a curious conception that if X is a natural resource then it is scarce, limited, and necessary, and that if we deplete it we might all die. I’ve come up with a little test called the Scarce Factor Test, to see if a resource really is an integral factor to our society, and to think differently about how we view said resource. The test involves three questions.

Is the resource:

Scarce? (is its availability threatened by our consumption of it?)

Unscalable? (can the supply be increased?)

Necessary? (is there no substitute?)

Let’s start with the air we breathe. Is it scarce? Well, no, not really. Air quality is lower than in some places, which is a genuine local concern, but it isn’t globally scarce by any means. So air fails the Scarce Factor Test. What about fresh water? Fresh water is indeed scarce. It is limited and it’s consumption by one group of people can affect the consumption of other groups (look no further than the Colorado river). Is it necessary? Yes, absolutely. We are not going to change our biology such that we won’t need water. Is it impossible to increase supply? No, the supply can be increased through desalination plants. So water fails the Scarce Factor Test too. Oil? It’s scarce, but it’s also scalable, and (with some time) its consumption can be substituted for using different machines, making it not necessary.

As you can see, it’s difficult to find a resource that passes this test. That is to prove a point. The point is that in basically every case, resources can be substituted, or the supply can be expanded. Now these come with costs, but these costs are rarely examined. Public discussion of resources and scarcity usually consists of “Oil has limited proven reserves, so in 30 years when all the oil runs out all our cars will come to a shuddering halt and the world will end.” This fear of “peak oil” was created in the 1970s, it is one of the most notorious resource apocalypse claims, and clearly has not come to pass.

The important thing is we need to use cost benefit analyses in our thinking. I am of the view that CO2 emissions are a very big problem. Building lots of solar and electric cars are important in fighting climate change and mitigating the associated costs. At the same time, I don’t think we should, this year, ban gasoline car sales, ban flying on planes, and stop producing cement, steel, and oil. The environmental gains pale in comparison to the real economic devastation that would be unleashed. We shouldn’t just consume every resource with abandon, because costs of switching to different forms of consumption may be high, but we also shouldn’t limit the growth of economies or the growth of America’s population based on blanket claims about the “scarcity” of natural resources and our impending collapse.

Maher’s episode may ring true to some people because things going on around us can seemingly be explained by too big a population. We’ve had supply chain issues, a baby formula shortage, high gas prices, high home prices, and a mass shortage of grain. Yet none of these things come from a sudden appearance of people, or too many people. They are supply shocks, be it Covid lockdowns in China, war in Ukraine, regulations on oil production, or economic sanctions. Population is not the issue, the issue largely comes down to governance and the choices societies make; Governments and individuals chose to carry out lockdowns, wars, or regulations. The environment can be protected without being dogmatic.