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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as

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Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant sitting across from me. Um, and

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Speaker 1: that makes the Stuff you Should Know the podcast? There

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Speaker 1: you go on the infur nation. That's far is Is

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Speaker 1: there somebody fast forwarding through this part right now? Huh? Yes?

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Speaker 1: So Chuck? Right it is Chuck. Yes. Still have you

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Speaker 1: noticed how often I say right? Yeah? It's mind numbing.

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Speaker 1: Plus someone will right in and say, do you know

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Speaker 1: usually right all the time? And um, it sounds like

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Speaker 1: I'm eating hard candy all the time. I know that's

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Speaker 1: not the case. You've never eaten anything in here. I

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Speaker 1: can attest to that. Uh yeah, I'm overly celebratory, okay, Chuck. Uh.

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Speaker 1: As you know, I was a student of anthropology, still

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Speaker 1: consider myself such um And I first came upon this

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Speaker 1: term called carrying capacity when I was I took this

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Speaker 1: life changing anthropology class, right uh And I don't remember

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Speaker 1: the teacher's name anymore, but he was awesome. He introduced

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Speaker 1: me to probably my favorite article or essay of all time. Uh,

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Speaker 1: the worst Mistake in the History of the human race,

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Speaker 1: right by Jared Diamond. Awesome stuff. Um any dustin Diamond

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Speaker 1: by Mike Diamond, by Jared Diamond, the guy who wrote

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Speaker 1: Collapse and Guns, Germs and steel and stuff. Um, that's

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Speaker 1: required reading in my opinion. I just think you should

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Speaker 1: that essay, not necessarily as books. Um, but this I

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Speaker 1: was also introduced to carrying capacity and this there's this

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Speaker 1: really cool video. He showed it to get the point across.

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Speaker 1: And it's just a map of the world, right, and

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Speaker 1: it's um it's there's red dots. It shows population growth

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Speaker 1: and each red dot equals I think a million people.

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Speaker 1: And so it starts out in Africa, in Ethiopia, I

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Speaker 1: believe the creadle of humanity. And it starts there and

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Speaker 1: all you know, very slowly, there's like a it's time

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Speaker 1: elapse obviously, so the years go by like that, and

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Speaker 1: um uh, like the red dots start appearing very slowly,

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Speaker 1: start moving out of Africa, spreading to Asia, to Europe

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Speaker 1: all that, and then um it starts to to pop

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Speaker 1: up around North America and South America and then all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden you get to the I think like

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Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, maybe a little later, the Industrial Revolution,

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Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, this map just goes red

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Speaker 1: and it's really jarring. It really gets to point across

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Speaker 1: it like how quickly population has grown in the world

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Speaker 1: and the impacts of it. You know, that's why he

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Speaker 1: coupled this with carrying capacity, because it's like, well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: population and growth. Who cares? Then you say, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: there's a limit to the amount of resources we have, um.

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Speaker 1: And that limit is called the carrying capacity of Earth,

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Speaker 1: meaning how much Earth can sustain human life. And there's

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Speaker 1: supposedly a point to it, right, Yeah, I got some stats.

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Speaker 1: There's my intro here. Here's a couple of stats, Josh,

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Speaker 1: the United Nations population Division estimates. Because five babies are

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Speaker 1: born every second, and you're like crying all that poop,

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Speaker 1: the world is going to have seven billion people by

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Speaker 1: years in they think seven billion. Yeah, we're at six

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Speaker 1: point nine two and change right now, So I mean

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Speaker 1: we're close. And um to to illustrate your point there

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Speaker 1: about the red dots spreading like a disease, that is humans, um,

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Speaker 1: fewer than a billion people in eighteen hundred. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: was like eight hundred million. Eight hundred dude. That mean

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Speaker 1: it seems like ancient history, but it ain't that long ago.

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Speaker 1: Three billion people in nineteen sixty and only six billion

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Speaker 1: people as recently as nine. Between nineteen fifty, chuck in nine,

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Speaker 1: the global population doubled from two point five billion to

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Speaker 1: five billion. That is cra azy. And behind this, that's

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Speaker 1: what they call exponential growth. It's not just adding like

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Speaker 1: a million people a year slow. Insteady, you're adding a

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Speaker 1: fixed number. It's you're adding you know, population is doubling

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Speaker 1: in forty years. That's exponential growth. And that is the

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Speaker 1: basis of what a guy named Thomas Robert Malthus uh In,

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Speaker 1: an eighteenth century English clergyman, predicted in his essay Um,

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Speaker 1: an essay on the principle of population, basically saying human

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Speaker 1: growth is exponential. We have a big problem because the

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Speaker 1: growth of food is not. It's linear. It's right, and

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Speaker 1: we're in trouble eventually. And he was fairly controversial at

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Speaker 1: the time. He was debated by a lot of people,

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Speaker 1: one of which was this dude named William Godwin, and

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Speaker 1: he had a theory called the perfectibility of society, which

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Speaker 1: is basically, you know, did we we're humans and we

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Speaker 1: no matter how much we grow, we will be able

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Speaker 1: to counter that with advances and technology to allow us

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Speaker 1: to grow. So they debated like crazy. Godwin subsequently was

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Speaker 1: one of the first proponents of anarchism, and Malthus talked

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Speaker 1: about eugenics way back then before it was eugenics. He said,

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Speaker 1: I could see something like this being possible, but he

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Speaker 1: said it's probably not something we should do. And he

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Speaker 1: also incidentally was the one of the first people to

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Speaker 1: uh to support or popularize the economic theory of rent.

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Speaker 1: Really yeah, well he was just all over the place,

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Speaker 1: wouldn't he. Well, but all kind of ties into population

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Speaker 1: because eugenics tied into it because he was talking about

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Speaker 1: controlling population and rent, he theorized, was only possible with

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Speaker 1: a surplus of re sources um, which allows you to

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Speaker 1: own a second place and rent it or rent a

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Speaker 1: tool or you know whatever people renting man. So what

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Speaker 1: Mauthis is talking about is generally classified as economics, right,

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Speaker 1: but it's also it stretches into all sorts of dirty,

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Speaker 1: nasty little areas like greed, um ecology, population control. So eugenics,

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Speaker 1: um family planning, abortion and fanticide, all sorts of stuff. Um.

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Speaker 1: That has a lot of implications, far reaching implications, right,

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Speaker 1: And so I didn't realize that there was somebody who

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Speaker 1: was a contemporary of him that argued, like, no humans

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Speaker 1: will use technology to outstrip, to outpace this mauth Mouthusian

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Speaker 1: curse is what it's called. Right, Yeah, that was more

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Speaker 1: than God when there was a few people too. I

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Speaker 1: didn't realize that it was at the time, but I

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Speaker 1: know that over the centuries people have been like mauth Is,

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Speaker 1: that was a great idea, but you really missed the mark.

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Speaker 1: And we're gonna use you as an example of how

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Speaker 1: badly somebody can can get it wrong, right, Because it

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Speaker 1: wasn't just technology. There's another aspect of it called the

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Speaker 1: demographic transition, which is basically as um as we get

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Speaker 1: better with this technology, one of the things we come

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Speaker 1: up with this birth control um and while we're while

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Speaker 1: our mortality rates are are lowering, so to our fertility rates,

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Speaker 1: and we eventually come to this thing called the replacement rate,

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Speaker 1: which is two point one children per household leads to

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Speaker 1: zero population growth, right, And I think they set in

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Speaker 1: Western Europe the number was one point four in the

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Speaker 1: late nineties. Like some people are afraid that that Mauthis

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Speaker 1: was correct at this point, and other people say that,

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Speaker 1: like in Europe and Asia they worry about the opposite

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Speaker 1: because you know, they have the problem over there that

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Speaker 1: they're not enough young people to take care of the

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Speaker 1: retirees one day. Exactly, it's negative population growth. So who's

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Speaker 1: right they do estimate? Um, who's who they is? I

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Speaker 1: don't know, but it just said researchers estimate that population

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Speaker 1: is not gonna level off until mid century at about

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Speaker 1: nine billion. Well that's at best. If that's if we

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Speaker 1: do level off, we could continue to keep going the

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Speaker 1: rate we're at now, the replacement rate that leads to

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Speaker 1: zero population growth, which is two point one right now,

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Speaker 1: we're at two point six worldwide and with Africa UM

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Speaker 1: skewing us the other way. Subsidaria in Africa has about

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Speaker 1: a five point one fertility rate, which means for every

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Speaker 1: household there's five point one children born. Does that point

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Speaker 1: one child? You always feels so bad for hus the

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Speaker 1: knee down, you know, on one leg um. But the uh,

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Speaker 1: if we can get to zero population growth, then we're

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Speaker 1: not going to really have to deal with the Mauthusian

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Speaker 1: curse possibly ever, but we're not. Then that's that's but

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Speaker 1: that's one thing that's um that mouth Is didn't account

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Speaker 1: for is things like as society has become more educated,

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Speaker 1: fertility rates tend to drop dramatically. So that's that's another

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Speaker 1: way to put it off too. So he was scoffed at,

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Speaker 1: Like you said, there's a lot of people out there

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Speaker 1: who think he he was he missed the mark. But um,

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Speaker 1: people have been doing a little bit of math lately

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Speaker 1: and have figured out that, Um, it's entirely possible that

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Speaker 1: he's right. That's somewhere down the line, He's right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And at the basis we should say of Mouths, his

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Speaker 1: whole thing is a lack of food and water really,

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Speaker 1: and we need air, food, water, shelter and all that stuff.

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Speaker 1: But what he was mainly centered on was eventually the

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Speaker 1: food growth will not match up with the population growth.

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Speaker 1: And a billion people go hungry every day already. So

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Speaker 1: so I might argue that that's already the case. So

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Speaker 1: let's talk about carrying capacity, chuck Um, if we had

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Speaker 1: not transitioned, which we have, which kind of proves the

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Speaker 1: UM positive positivists camp Um that we can be technological.

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Speaker 1: If we hadn't transition from hunter gatherer to agriculture UM,

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Speaker 1: the care and capacity of Earth would have been reached

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Speaker 1: at about a hundred million people. Yes, because there's just

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Speaker 1: so many animals running around that we can kill. There's

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Speaker 1: only so many berries that are going to occur naturally

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Speaker 1: on the on the vine. Right. But we did transition

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Speaker 1: to agriculture UM before we hit the hundred million mark,

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Speaker 1: possibly maybe not UM farming, and we we began to

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Speaker 1: use technology which is growing crops to feed ourselves. And

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Speaker 1: then we reached another point right UM where we hit

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Speaker 1: what was called the green revolution, remember that UM, where

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Speaker 1: there was a lot of people who were saying about

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Speaker 1: a billion people are going to die because we are

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Speaker 1: no longer We're not going to be able to provide

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Speaker 1: food for all the people here. Um. We've we've come

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Speaker 1: up with great vaccines and all this other technology that's

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Speaker 1: lowering the mortality rate. But that just means people are

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Speaker 1: living longer and they need food longer over the over

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Speaker 1: their lifespan. Right, So what are we gonna do? Norman

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Speaker 1: Borlog comes along and says, you know what we're gonna

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Speaker 1: doing exactly tapioca pudding for everybody and a care bear

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Speaker 1: in every garage. No, they go ahead with what he

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Speaker 1: said because he was a genius. He said, we're gonna

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Speaker 1: maximize the yield that we get out of arable land.

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Speaker 1: We're not just gonna plant some seeds and be like,

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Speaker 1: hope you grow. We're going to apply tons of pesticide,

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Speaker 1: tons of fertilizer, and we're going to squeeze corn the

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Speaker 1: size of your torso out of every every plant. Right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he wasn't some like awful mad That sound makes him

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Speaker 1: sound like some awful mad scientists, though in the eyes

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Speaker 1: of a lot of environmentalists he he well, I mean

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Speaker 1: think about all the runoff, all the soil depletion. Also,

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Speaker 1: didn't he also want a Nobel Prize? Sure? Yeah, he's

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Speaker 1: credited with saving that billion people that were predicted to

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Speaker 1: starve because he came in just in time because Earth

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Speaker 1: would have reached this carrying capacity for agriculture. So we've

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Speaker 1: had at least two different events where we were able

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Speaker 1: to leap forward through technology and avoid the Malthusian curse. Right, Yes,

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Speaker 1: So there are people out there who say, well, you know,

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Speaker 1: we're we're we're going to avoid it again, but what

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Speaker 1: will that be? Sure and come up with another one.

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Speaker 1: So I'm sorry, chok, we would have hit the carrying

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Speaker 1: capacity a hundred million where we hunter gatherers? Right? What

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Speaker 1: are the predictions now? Well, they say, and this is

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Speaker 1: where what I think is really interesting and completely sad,

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Speaker 1: is that we have a potential caring capacity of two

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Speaker 1: billion to forty billion, clearly past the two So one

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Speaker 1: might ask, how can it be that big of a range,

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Speaker 1: And the answer is lifestyle. And here's a very sad

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Speaker 1: sat If the entire earth live like middle class Americans,

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Speaker 1: not the super rich, who you know, probably consume more

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Speaker 1: energy and the like than your average human, just regular

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Speaker 1: middle class American folks consume about three point three times

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Speaker 1: the subsistence level of food and two hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: times the subsistence level of water clean water. And that

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Speaker 1: means the Earth if we if everyone was like us,

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Speaker 1: the Earth could only support about two billion people. So

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Speaker 1: what's going on is of the Earth is consuming I

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Speaker 1: don't have the percentage, but the other seventy percent of

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Speaker 1: the Earth is left with what's left, which is really

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Speaker 1: really it's just a it's a uh disparity in the

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Speaker 1: allocation of resources and that's consumed. So that's why it

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Speaker 1: can be a range of two billion to forty billion

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Speaker 1: because of the different lifestyles. If if everyone lived like

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Speaker 1: there would be plenty for everyone and no one would

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Speaker 1: be starving. No, if everybody lived like we would all

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Speaker 1: we would be like sorry, well the um Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: that's where the forty billion number comes in. I've seen

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Speaker 1: thirty and I've seen forty on the high end for

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Speaker 1: the carrying capacity, and that's where every square inch of

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Speaker 1: arable land is being cultivated to its maximum yield, and

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Speaker 1: all people live in high rises that are as high

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Speaker 1: as we can build them right now, right um, And

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Speaker 1: we're mining UM asteroids for uh, for UM minerals and

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Speaker 1: all that. We're not we're no longer going we're no

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Speaker 1: longer going to the Earth. We're going into outer space. Possibly.

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Speaker 1: I don't think that that shouldn't have started about fifty

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Speaker 1: years ago, right um. But the that forty billion prediction

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Speaker 1: is um based on the absolute minimum requirements, and everybody,

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Speaker 1: forty billion people living on the planet UM all using

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Speaker 1: the minimum amount, which is four liters of water a

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Speaker 1: year and about three ms of food a year, mostly grains,

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Speaker 1: and you can basically kiss meat goodbye because we need

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Speaker 1: that land to grow our grains rather than grow grains

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Speaker 1: to feed cows, which is another way that the West

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Speaker 1: consumes resources more than more than its fair share through

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Speaker 1: a meat rich diet, which just you're not only eating

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Speaker 1: the meat, you're eating the grains that the meat ate. Right,

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Speaker 1: So chuck, and let me ask you something. If you

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Speaker 1: had if you went home and turned on your tap

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Speaker 1: and there was hot water and it was flowing, and

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Speaker 1: it was as much as you liked, right, would you

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Speaker 1: care how you were getting that? What do you mean

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Speaker 1: how it was being delivered through my faucet? Yes? Uh?

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Speaker 1: Is this the trict question? No, it's not. Let me rephrase.

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Speaker 1: If you went home and turned on your hot water

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Speaker 1: and there's as much hot water as you wanted, and

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Speaker 1: it was you knew it was coming from a sustainable source,

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Speaker 1: would you care if it was sustainable? Yeah? I guess not.

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Speaker 1: But I'm kind of like a water saver. So your

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Speaker 1: water saver. What if you knew you didn't really have

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Speaker 1: to save water because it was so sustainable, you wouldn't care.

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Speaker 1: No one cares as long as we have the luxuries

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Speaker 1: that were afforded. It does, and you don't care if

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Speaker 1: it came from burning banana appeals, No one cares. The

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Speaker 1: problem is that the problem with the course that we're

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Speaker 1: on apparently right now, is that we are um using

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Speaker 1: technology not to get more from less, but to get

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Speaker 1: more from more, more cheaply. Right. Yeah, it's um it's

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Speaker 1: a uniquely human thing they call it in the article,

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Speaker 1: which is pretty much true. But technological advancement is in

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Speaker 1: many ways leading to our habitat destruction. Ideally, at this

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Speaker 1: point everyone would be on solar and the massive companies

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Speaker 1: would be solar powered and all that kind of thing.

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Speaker 1: And that's another great point is you know, you don't

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Speaker 1: care where your electricity comes from. Do you care if

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Speaker 1: it comes from a solar panel or wind? No, of

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Speaker 1: course you don't. You just want your electricity. So if

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Speaker 1: we had invested, or if we could invest our technological

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Speaker 1: advances into um get what we have now from less

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Speaker 1: from solar radiation or wind power, then we would be

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Speaker 1: that that's true cutting edge technology, rather than you know,

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Speaker 1: figuring out ways to deplete things faster, more cheaply, which

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Speaker 1: is the way we're going. Yeah, like thinking of let's

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Speaker 1: say a more efficient oil driller or a more efficient

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Speaker 1: way of getting coal from a mountain, i e. Mountaintop removal.

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Speaker 1: So they're using technology, but they're using in ways that

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Speaker 1: are also destroying the habitat. And sustainability is all about

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Speaker 1: finding the right balance in your habitat. So here's here's

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Speaker 1: the conclusion I came to from reading this right the

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Speaker 1: argument from the positivists camp. I don't even think I'm

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Speaker 1: using that word correctly. But um, the people who are

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Speaker 1: the optimists camp, sure duh, right are Um they're saying, no,

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Speaker 1: mouth has was incorrect because he failed to account for

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Speaker 1: human ingenuity. And as population grows, so to do the

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Speaker 1: number of geniuses, and that's where innovation comes from. Right, Um.

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Speaker 1: The I think the the optimists are missing a point

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Speaker 1: in their model, and that is greed. You can't really

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Speaker 1: sway greed to to benefit human ecology, can you know?

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Speaker 1: And you can't convince an entire population of people to

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Speaker 1: change their lifestyles, which is what it would take. That's

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Speaker 1: what I'm saying you you can't because they don't care.

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Speaker 1: But if you could deliver them that same amount of

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Speaker 1: hot water, that same electricity, and it was coming from

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Speaker 1: a sustainable source. No one's going to fight that, right.

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Speaker 1: It's having to get them to fight that fight to

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Speaker 1: get the people who are controlling it to change over.

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Speaker 1: They're not going to do that. So there's that fatal

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Speaker 1: flaw in that model that the gloom and doom camp

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Speaker 1: has over the UM optimist camp, and that they don't

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Speaker 1: account for for greed. Have you ever seen who killed

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Speaker 1: the electric car? No? I never did. I encourage people

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Speaker 1: to see that. That's pretty scary. The e V one was.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if you remember, but the

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Speaker 1: e V one was. It was ready to go. There

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Speaker 1: were TV commercials you can look up EV one commercial

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Speaker 1: on YouTube and they were running them on television. Electric

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Speaker 1: electric cars are here, They're not coming, they are here,

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Speaker 1: and boom it was gone. Yeah, I'll check it out

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Speaker 1: and I'll give you a few guesses as to why

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Speaker 1: it left so quickly. And not only were they gone, dude,

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Speaker 1: they literally gathered them all up and crushed them many time. Exactly. Yeah, sad,

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Speaker 1: but go go rented. It's cool. Yeah, and um powerful

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Speaker 1: lobbies out there. What else you got? I got nothing, man.

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Speaker 1: This is this is a good one to chew on

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Speaker 1: for people. I think I think so too. We just

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Speaker 1: encourage people like we always do, just to you know,

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Speaker 1: we're not saying, you know, quit your job and go

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Speaker 1: like build solar panels for a living and live on

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Speaker 1: a on a wind farm. You can do that, that'd

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Speaker 1: be awesome. But little little things, little positive steps, they've

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Speaker 1: say a little water, say a little power. I disagree, man,

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Speaker 1: what I don't think the onus is on the people.

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Speaker 1: I think the onus is on the the people who

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Speaker 1: are misdirecting technological advancement. I'd say it's on bothagree you

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Speaker 1: don't think that this is on the people to conserve

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Speaker 1: I think I think it. I think it is. I

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Speaker 1: think we've put it on the people, but I don't

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Speaker 1: think it's going to make enough of an impact. All right,

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Speaker 1: I think it's on the policy makers. That's who I

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Speaker 1: think it's on. I would I think I think it's

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Speaker 1: on both. Um. Okay, well that's a debate to be

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Speaker 1: played out on the Facebook page if you ask me, right, yeah, man,

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Speaker 1: we should set a form um. So if you want

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Speaker 1: to learn more, type and has the Earth reached its

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Speaker 1: carrying capacity? Or Thomas Malthus M A L T h

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Speaker 1: U s in this search part how stuff works dot Com.

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Speaker 1: It will bring up some pretty cool stuff. Well, then

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Speaker 1: that means it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this, uh, how to make a my

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Speaker 1: teenage son listen to your show from Portland, Oregon. Hi,

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Speaker 1: guys and Jerry. When you have a teenager, you will

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Speaker 1: quickly learn that you can't just tell them what to

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Speaker 1: do and expect them to do it. I remember those days.

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Speaker 1: It's so frustrating because as a parent, you know that

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Speaker 1: your kid will love something and get lots out of it,

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Speaker 1: but you can't come right out and say it, or

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Speaker 1: they will never ever try the thing you told them

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Speaker 1: to try. For example, your podcast. I knew for a fact,

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Speaker 1: like I know that it will reign in Portland, that

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Speaker 1: my thirteen year old son Ethan would really love stuff.

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Speaker 1: You should know because I love the podcast. I've turned

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Speaker 1: other people onto it and they love it. But I

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Speaker 1: knew I had to be sneaky in order for my

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Speaker 1: son to give it a try. Ethan is a fencer

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Speaker 1: and at the time was also working on a research

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Speaker 1: project about Renaissance jousting and tournaments. So one Saturday I

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Speaker 1: was working in the kitchen. I played how nights were

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Speaker 1: Uh to catch his interest. Every time he came in

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Speaker 1: the kitchen, I'd hit play. When he leave, I'd hit pause.

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Speaker 1: I would figure he would just think, Man, these guys

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Speaker 1: take a long time to finish the center. He would

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Speaker 1: hang around the kitchen longer and longer each time, and

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Speaker 1: I could tell I almost had him on the line

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Speaker 1: like I was noodling. Although you would say I had

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Speaker 1: him on the arm. Yeah, there's no mine. When it

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Speaker 1: was over, he said he already knew everything you talked

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Speaker 1: about in the podcast, but I could tell he was intrigued.

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Speaker 1: Then I hit him with the Scooby Doo Show and

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Speaker 1: that was it. You had another fan. Now he has

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Speaker 1: downloaded the app for his iPod and listens each night

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Speaker 1: as he's going to sleep. And that tent, Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: from Afton in a very sneaky mom thank you in Portland, Oregon.

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Speaker 1: That also kind of ties into the Colts and Brainwashing

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Speaker 1: episodes two, didn't it? Yeah? And she said um. When

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Speaker 1: she replied, I asked her if I could read this.

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Speaker 1: She said sure, And she said, I guess he'll know

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Speaker 1: my little trick now, but he'll get such a kick

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Speaker 1: out of being mentioned Ethan the fencer, he will forget

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Speaker 1: the yeah, and at least he can rest assured that

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Speaker 1: she's not like putting anything in his soup to get

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Speaker 1: him to do what she wants. She uses more subtle

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Speaker 1: tactics than that. Right. I wish you could put something

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Speaker 1: in soup to make people listen to this. I'd be

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Speaker 1: putting it in soup. Yeah, that's a good idea. I

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Speaker 1: put it in all soups. I'll tell you what, if

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Speaker 1: you have any suggestions of what we can put in

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Speaker 1: people's soup to get them to listen to stuff you

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Speaker 1: should know and to get them to go give us

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Speaker 1: a review on iTunes. Huh, yeah, that that helps us out.

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Speaker 1: When you do that, Uh, you should send us an

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Speaker 1: email and you should send it to a specific email dress.

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Speaker 1: That is stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff

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00:23:48,840 --> 00:23:51,480
Speaker 1: from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we

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00:23:51,520 --> 00:23:58,040
Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought

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Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camery. It's ready,

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Speaker 1: are you