Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant sitting across from me. Um, and
Speaker 1: that makes the Stuff you Should Know the podcast? There
Speaker 1: you go on the infur nation. That's far is Is
Speaker 1: there somebody fast forwarding through this part right now? Huh? Yes?
Speaker 1: So Chuck? Right it is Chuck. Yes. Still have you
Speaker 1: noticed how often I say right? Yeah? It's mind numbing.
Speaker 1: Plus someone will right in and say, do you know
Speaker 1: usually right all the time? And um, it sounds like
Speaker 1: I'm eating hard candy all the time. I know that's
Speaker 1: not the case. You've never eaten anything in here. I
Speaker 1: can attest to that. Uh yeah, I'm overly celebratory, okay, Chuck. Uh.
Speaker 1: As you know, I was a student of anthropology, still
Speaker 1: consider myself such um And I first came upon this
Speaker 1: term called carrying capacity when I was I took this
Speaker 1: life changing anthropology class, right uh And I don't remember
Speaker 1: the teacher's name anymore, but he was awesome. He introduced
Speaker 1: me to probably my favorite article or essay of all time. Uh,
Speaker 1: the worst Mistake in the History of the human race,
Speaker 1: right by Jared Diamond. Awesome stuff. Um any dustin Diamond
Speaker 1: by Mike Diamond, by Jared Diamond, the guy who wrote
Speaker 1: Collapse and Guns, Germs and steel and stuff. Um, that's
Speaker 1: required reading in my opinion. I just think you should
Speaker 1: that essay, not necessarily as books. Um, but this I
Speaker 1: was also introduced to carrying capacity and this there's this
Speaker 1: really cool video. He showed it to get the point across.
Speaker 1: And it's just a map of the world, right, and
Speaker 1: it's um it's there's red dots. It shows population growth
Speaker 1: and each red dot equals I think a million people.
Speaker 1: And so it starts out in Africa, in Ethiopia, I
Speaker 1: believe the creadle of humanity. And it starts there and
Speaker 1: all you know, very slowly, there's like a it's time
Speaker 1: elapse obviously, so the years go by like that, and
Speaker 1: um uh, like the red dots start appearing very slowly,
Speaker 1: start moving out of Africa, spreading to Asia, to Europe
Speaker 1: all that, and then um it starts to to pop
Speaker 1: up around North America and South America and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you get to the I think like
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, maybe a little later, the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, this map just goes red
Speaker 1: and it's really jarring. It really gets to point across
Speaker 1: it like how quickly population has grown in the world
Speaker 1: and the impacts of it. You know, that's why he
Speaker 1: coupled this with carrying capacity, because it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: population and growth. Who cares? Then you say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: there's a limit to the amount of resources we have, um.
Speaker 1: And that limit is called the carrying capacity of Earth,
Speaker 1: meaning how much Earth can sustain human life. And there's
Speaker 1: supposedly a point to it, right, Yeah, I got some stats.
Speaker 1: There's my intro here. Here's a couple of stats, Josh,
Speaker 1: the United Nations population Division estimates. Because five babies are
Speaker 1: born every second, and you're like crying all that poop,
Speaker 1: the world is going to have seven billion people by
Speaker 1: years in they think seven billion. Yeah, we're at six
Speaker 1: point nine two and change right now, So I mean
Speaker 1: we're close. And um to to illustrate your point there
Speaker 1: about the red dots spreading like a disease, that is humans, um,
Speaker 1: fewer than a billion people in eighteen hundred. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was like eight hundred million. Eight hundred dude. That mean
Speaker 1: it seems like ancient history, but it ain't that long ago.
Speaker 1: Three billion people in nineteen sixty and only six billion
Speaker 1: people as recently as nine. Between nineteen fifty, chuck in nine,
Speaker 1: the global population doubled from two point five billion to
Speaker 1: five billion. That is cra azy. And behind this, that's
Speaker 1: what they call exponential growth. It's not just adding like
Speaker 1: a million people a year slow. Insteady, you're adding a
Speaker 1: fixed number. It's you're adding you know, population is doubling
Speaker 1: in forty years. That's exponential growth. And that is the
Speaker 1: basis of what a guy named Thomas Robert Malthus uh In,
Speaker 1: an eighteenth century English clergyman, predicted in his essay Um,
Speaker 1: an essay on the principle of population, basically saying human
Speaker 1: growth is exponential. We have a big problem because the
Speaker 1: growth of food is not. It's linear. It's right, and
Speaker 1: we're in trouble eventually. And he was fairly controversial at
Speaker 1: the time. He was debated by a lot of people,
Speaker 1: one of which was this dude named William Godwin, and
Speaker 1: he had a theory called the perfectibility of society, which
Speaker 1: is basically, you know, did we we're humans and we
Speaker 1: no matter how much we grow, we will be able
Speaker 1: to counter that with advances and technology to allow us
Speaker 1: to grow. So they debated like crazy. Godwin subsequently was
Speaker 1: one of the first proponents of anarchism, and Malthus talked
Speaker 1: about eugenics way back then before it was eugenics. He said,
Speaker 1: I could see something like this being possible, but he
Speaker 1: said it's probably not something we should do. And he
Speaker 1: also incidentally was the one of the first people to
Speaker 1: uh to support or popularize the economic theory of rent.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, well he was just all over the place,
Speaker 1: wouldn't he. Well, but all kind of ties into population
Speaker 1: because eugenics tied into it because he was talking about
Speaker 1: controlling population and rent, he theorized, was only possible with
Speaker 1: a surplus of re sources um, which allows you to
Speaker 1: own a second place and rent it or rent a
Speaker 1: tool or you know whatever people renting man. So what
Speaker 1: Mauthis is talking about is generally classified as economics, right,
Speaker 1: but it's also it stretches into all sorts of dirty,
Speaker 1: nasty little areas like greed, um ecology, population control. So eugenics,
Speaker 1: um family planning, abortion and fanticide, all sorts of stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: That has a lot of implications, far reaching implications, right,
Speaker 1: And so I didn't realize that there was somebody who
Speaker 1: was a contemporary of him that argued, like, no humans
Speaker 1: will use technology to outstrip, to outpace this mauth Mouthusian
Speaker 1: curse is what it's called. Right, Yeah, that was more
Speaker 1: than God when there was a few people too. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that it was at the time, but I
Speaker 1: know that over the centuries people have been like mauth Is,
Speaker 1: that was a great idea, but you really missed the mark.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna use you as an example of how
Speaker 1: badly somebody can can get it wrong, right, Because it
Speaker 1: wasn't just technology. There's another aspect of it called the
Speaker 1: demographic transition, which is basically as um as we get
Speaker 1: better with this technology, one of the things we come
Speaker 1: up with this birth control um and while we're while
Speaker 1: our mortality rates are are lowering, so to our fertility rates,
Speaker 1: and we eventually come to this thing called the replacement rate,
Speaker 1: which is two point one children per household leads to
Speaker 1: zero population growth, right, And I think they set in
Speaker 1: Western Europe the number was one point four in the
Speaker 1: late nineties. Like some people are afraid that that Mauthis
Speaker 1: was correct at this point, and other people say that,
Speaker 1: like in Europe and Asia they worry about the opposite
Speaker 1: because you know, they have the problem over there that
Speaker 1: they're not enough young people to take care of the
Speaker 1: retirees one day. Exactly, it's negative population growth. So who's
Speaker 1: right they do estimate? Um, who's who they is? I
Speaker 1: don't know, but it just said researchers estimate that population
Speaker 1: is not gonna level off until mid century at about
Speaker 1: nine billion. Well that's at best. If that's if we
Speaker 1: do level off, we could continue to keep going the
Speaker 1: rate we're at now, the replacement rate that leads to
Speaker 1: zero population growth, which is two point one right now,
Speaker 1: we're at two point six worldwide and with Africa UM
Speaker 1: skewing us the other way. Subsidaria in Africa has about
Speaker 1: a five point one fertility rate, which means for every
Speaker 1: household there's five point one children born. Does that point
Speaker 1: one child? You always feels so bad for hus the
Speaker 1: knee down, you know, on one leg um. But the uh,
Speaker 1: if we can get to zero population growth, then we're
Speaker 1: not going to really have to deal with the Mauthusian
Speaker 1: curse possibly ever, but we're not. Then that's that's but
Speaker 1: that's one thing that's um that mouth Is didn't account
Speaker 1: for is things like as society has become more educated,
Speaker 1: fertility rates tend to drop dramatically. So that's that's another
Speaker 1: way to put it off too. So he was scoffed at,
Speaker 1: Like you said, there's a lot of people out there
Speaker 1: who think he he was he missed the mark. But um,
Speaker 1: people have been doing a little bit of math lately
Speaker 1: and have figured out that, Um, it's entirely possible that
Speaker 1: he's right. That's somewhere down the line, He's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And at the basis we should say of Mouths, his
Speaker 1: whole thing is a lack of food and water really,
Speaker 1: and we need air, food, water, shelter and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: But what he was mainly centered on was eventually the
Speaker 1: food growth will not match up with the population growth.
Speaker 1: And a billion people go hungry every day already. So
Speaker 1: so I might argue that that's already the case. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about carrying capacity, chuck Um, if we had
Speaker 1: not transitioned, which we have, which kind of proves the
Speaker 1: UM positive positivists camp Um that we can be technological.
Speaker 1: If we hadn't transition from hunter gatherer to agriculture UM,
Speaker 1: the care and capacity of Earth would have been reached
Speaker 1: at about a hundred million people. Yes, because there's just
Speaker 1: so many animals running around that we can kill. There's
Speaker 1: only so many berries that are going to occur naturally
Speaker 1: on the on the vine. Right. But we did transition
Speaker 1: to agriculture UM before we hit the hundred million mark,
Speaker 1: possibly maybe not UM farming, and we we began to
Speaker 1: use technology which is growing crops to feed ourselves. And
Speaker 1: then we reached another point right UM where we hit
Speaker 1: what was called the green revolution, remember that UM, where
Speaker 1: there was a lot of people who were saying about
Speaker 1: a billion people are going to die because we are
Speaker 1: no longer We're not going to be able to provide
Speaker 1: food for all the people here. Um. We've we've come
Speaker 1: up with great vaccines and all this other technology that's
Speaker 1: lowering the mortality rate. But that just means people are
Speaker 1: living longer and they need food longer over the over
Speaker 1: their lifespan. Right, So what are we gonna do? Norman
Speaker 1: Borlog comes along and says, you know what we're gonna
Speaker 1: doing exactly tapioca pudding for everybody and a care bear
Speaker 1: in every garage. No, they go ahead with what he
Speaker 1: said because he was a genius. He said, we're gonna
Speaker 1: maximize the yield that we get out of arable land.
Speaker 1: We're not just gonna plant some seeds and be like,
Speaker 1: hope you grow. We're going to apply tons of pesticide,
Speaker 1: tons of fertilizer, and we're going to squeeze corn the
Speaker 1: size of your torso out of every every plant. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wasn't some like awful mad That sound makes him
Speaker 1: sound like some awful mad scientists, though in the eyes
Speaker 1: of a lot of environmentalists he he well, I mean
Speaker 1: think about all the runoff, all the soil depletion. Also,
Speaker 1: didn't he also want a Nobel Prize? Sure? Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: credited with saving that billion people that were predicted to
Speaker 1: starve because he came in just in time because Earth
Speaker 1: would have reached this carrying capacity for agriculture. So we've
Speaker 1: had at least two different events where we were able
Speaker 1: to leap forward through technology and avoid the Malthusian curse. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: So there are people out there who say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're we're going to avoid it again, but what
Speaker 1: will that be? Sure and come up with another one.
Speaker 1: So I'm sorry, chok, we would have hit the carrying
Speaker 1: capacity a hundred million where we hunter gatherers? Right? What
Speaker 1: are the predictions now? Well, they say, and this is
Speaker 1: where what I think is really interesting and completely sad,
Speaker 1: is that we have a potential caring capacity of two
Speaker 1: billion to forty billion, clearly past the two So one
Speaker 1: might ask, how can it be that big of a range,
Speaker 1: And the answer is lifestyle. And here's a very sad
Speaker 1: sat If the entire earth live like middle class Americans,
Speaker 1: not the super rich, who you know, probably consume more
Speaker 1: energy and the like than your average human, just regular
Speaker 1: middle class American folks consume about three point three times
Speaker 1: the subsistence level of food and two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: times the subsistence level of water clean water. And that
Speaker 1: means the Earth if we if everyone was like us,
Speaker 1: the Earth could only support about two billion people. So
Speaker 1: what's going on is of the Earth is consuming I
Speaker 1: don't have the percentage, but the other seventy percent of
Speaker 1: the Earth is left with what's left, which is really
Speaker 1: really it's just a it's a uh disparity in the
Speaker 1: allocation of resources and that's consumed. So that's why it
Speaker 1: can be a range of two billion to forty billion
Speaker 1: because of the different lifestyles. If if everyone lived like
Speaker 1: there would be plenty for everyone and no one would
Speaker 1: be starving. No, if everybody lived like we would all
Speaker 1: we would be like sorry, well the um Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's where the forty billion number comes in. I've seen
Speaker 1: thirty and I've seen forty on the high end for
Speaker 1: the carrying capacity, and that's where every square inch of
Speaker 1: arable land is being cultivated to its maximum yield, and
Speaker 1: all people live in high rises that are as high
Speaker 1: as we can build them right now, right um, And
Speaker 1: we're mining UM asteroids for uh, for UM minerals and
Speaker 1: all that. We're not we're no longer going we're no
Speaker 1: longer going to the Earth. We're going into outer space. Possibly.
Speaker 1: I don't think that that shouldn't have started about fifty
Speaker 1: years ago, right um. But the that forty billion prediction
Speaker 1: is um based on the absolute minimum requirements, and everybody,
Speaker 1: forty billion people living on the planet UM all using
Speaker 1: the minimum amount, which is four liters of water a
Speaker 1: year and about three ms of food a year, mostly grains,
Speaker 1: and you can basically kiss meat goodbye because we need
Speaker 1: that land to grow our grains rather than grow grains
Speaker 1: to feed cows, which is another way that the West
Speaker 1: consumes resources more than more than its fair share through
Speaker 1: a meat rich diet, which just you're not only eating
Speaker 1: the meat, you're eating the grains that the meat ate. Right,
Speaker 1: So chuck, and let me ask you something. If you
Speaker 1: had if you went home and turned on your tap
Speaker 1: and there was hot water and it was flowing, and
Speaker 1: it was as much as you liked, right, would you
Speaker 1: care how you were getting that? What do you mean
Speaker 1: how it was being delivered through my faucet? Yes? Uh?
Speaker 1: Is this the trict question? No, it's not. Let me rephrase.
Speaker 1: If you went home and turned on your hot water
Speaker 1: and there's as much hot water as you wanted, and
Speaker 1: it was you knew it was coming from a sustainable source,
Speaker 1: would you care if it was sustainable? Yeah? I guess not.
Speaker 1: But I'm kind of like a water saver. So your
Speaker 1: water saver. What if you knew you didn't really have
Speaker 1: to save water because it was so sustainable, you wouldn't care.
Speaker 1: No one cares as long as we have the luxuries
Speaker 1: that were afforded. It does, and you don't care if
Speaker 1: it came from burning banana appeals, No one cares. The
Speaker 1: problem is that the problem with the course that we're
Speaker 1: on apparently right now, is that we are um using
Speaker 1: technology not to get more from less, but to get
Speaker 1: more from more, more cheaply. Right. Yeah, it's um it's
Speaker 1: a uniquely human thing they call it in the article,
Speaker 1: which is pretty much true. But technological advancement is in
Speaker 1: many ways leading to our habitat destruction. Ideally, at this
Speaker 1: point everyone would be on solar and the massive companies
Speaker 1: would be solar powered and all that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And that's another great point is you know, you don't
Speaker 1: care where your electricity comes from. Do you care if
Speaker 1: it comes from a solar panel or wind? No, of
Speaker 1: course you don't. You just want your electricity. So if
Speaker 1: we had invested, or if we could invest our technological
Speaker 1: advances into um get what we have now from less
Speaker 1: from solar radiation or wind power, then we would be
Speaker 1: that that's true cutting edge technology, rather than you know,
Speaker 1: figuring out ways to deplete things faster, more cheaply, which
Speaker 1: is the way we're going. Yeah, like thinking of let's
Speaker 1: say a more efficient oil driller or a more efficient
Speaker 1: way of getting coal from a mountain, i e. Mountaintop removal.
Speaker 1: So they're using technology, but they're using in ways that
Speaker 1: are also destroying the habitat. And sustainability is all about
Speaker 1: finding the right balance in your habitat. So here's here's
Speaker 1: the conclusion I came to from reading this right the
Speaker 1: argument from the positivists camp. I don't even think I'm
Speaker 1: using that word correctly. But um, the people who are
Speaker 1: the optimists camp, sure duh, right are Um they're saying, no,
Speaker 1: mouth has was incorrect because he failed to account for
Speaker 1: human ingenuity. And as population grows, so to do the
Speaker 1: number of geniuses, and that's where innovation comes from. Right, Um.
Speaker 1: The I think the the optimists are missing a point
Speaker 1: in their model, and that is greed. You can't really
Speaker 1: sway greed to to benefit human ecology, can you know?
Speaker 1: And you can't convince an entire population of people to
Speaker 1: change their lifestyles, which is what it would take. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm saying you you can't because they don't care.
Speaker 1: But if you could deliver them that same amount of
Speaker 1: hot water, that same electricity, and it was coming from
Speaker 1: a sustainable source. No one's going to fight that, right.
Speaker 1: It's having to get them to fight that fight to
Speaker 1: get the people who are controlling it to change over.
Speaker 1: They're not going to do that. So there's that fatal
Speaker 1: flaw in that model that the gloom and doom camp
Speaker 1: has over the UM optimist camp, and that they don't
Speaker 1: account for for greed. Have you ever seen who killed
Speaker 1: the electric car? No? I never did. I encourage people
Speaker 1: to see that. That's pretty scary. The e V one was.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if you remember, but the
Speaker 1: e V one was. It was ready to go. There
Speaker 1: were TV commercials you can look up EV one commercial
Speaker 1: on YouTube and they were running them on television. Electric
Speaker 1: electric cars are here, They're not coming, they are here,
Speaker 1: and boom it was gone. Yeah, I'll check it out
Speaker 1: and I'll give you a few guesses as to why
Speaker 1: it left so quickly. And not only were they gone, dude,
Speaker 1: they literally gathered them all up and crushed them many time. Exactly. Yeah, sad,
Speaker 1: but go go rented. It's cool. Yeah, and um powerful
Speaker 1: lobbies out there. What else you got? I got nothing, man.
Speaker 1: This is this is a good one to chew on
Speaker 1: for people. I think I think so too. We just
Speaker 1: encourage people like we always do, just to you know,
Speaker 1: we're not saying, you know, quit your job and go
Speaker 1: like build solar panels for a living and live on
Speaker 1: a on a wind farm. You can do that, that'd
Speaker 1: be awesome. But little little things, little positive steps, they've
Speaker 1: say a little water, say a little power. I disagree, man,
Speaker 1: what I don't think the onus is on the people.
Speaker 1: I think the onus is on the the people who
Speaker 1: are misdirecting technological advancement. I'd say it's on bothagree you
Speaker 1: don't think that this is on the people to conserve
Speaker 1: I think I think it. I think it is. I
Speaker 1: think we've put it on the people, but I don't
Speaker 1: think it's going to make enough of an impact. All right,
Speaker 1: I think it's on the policy makers. That's who I
Speaker 1: think it's on. I would I think I think it's
Speaker 1: on both. Um. Okay, well that's a debate to be
Speaker 1: played out on the Facebook page if you ask me, right, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: we should set a form um. So if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more, type and has the Earth reached its
Speaker 1: carrying capacity? Or Thomas Malthus M A L T h
Speaker 1: U s in this search part how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: It will bring up some pretty cool stuff. Well, then
Speaker 1: that means it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this, uh, how to make a my
Speaker 1: teenage son listen to your show from Portland, Oregon. Hi,
Speaker 1: guys and Jerry. When you have a teenager, you will
Speaker 1: quickly learn that you can't just tell them what to
Speaker 1: do and expect them to do it. I remember those days.
Speaker 1: It's so frustrating because as a parent, you know that
Speaker 1: your kid will love something and get lots out of it,
Speaker 1: but you can't come right out and say it, or
Speaker 1: they will never ever try the thing you told them
Speaker 1: to try. For example, your podcast. I knew for a fact,
Speaker 1: like I know that it will reign in Portland, that
Speaker 1: my thirteen year old son Ethan would really love stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know because I love the podcast. I've turned
Speaker 1: other people onto it and they love it. But I
Speaker 1: knew I had to be sneaky in order for my
Speaker 1: son to give it a try. Ethan is a fencer
Speaker 1: and at the time was also working on a research
Speaker 1: project about Renaissance jousting and tournaments. So one Saturday I
Speaker 1: was working in the kitchen. I played how nights were
Speaker 1: Uh to catch his interest. Every time he came in
Speaker 1: the kitchen, I'd hit play. When he leave, I'd hit pause.
Speaker 1: I would figure he would just think, Man, these guys
Speaker 1: take a long time to finish the center. He would
Speaker 1: hang around the kitchen longer and longer each time, and
Speaker 1: I could tell I almost had him on the line
Speaker 1: like I was noodling. Although you would say I had
Speaker 1: him on the arm. Yeah, there's no mine. When it
Speaker 1: was over, he said he already knew everything you talked
Speaker 1: about in the podcast, but I could tell he was intrigued.
Speaker 1: Then I hit him with the Scooby Doo Show and
Speaker 1: that was it. You had another fan. Now he has
Speaker 1: downloaded the app for his iPod and listens each night
Speaker 1: as he's going to sleep. And that tent, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: from Afton in a very sneaky mom thank you in Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 1: That also kind of ties into the Colts and Brainwashing
Speaker 1: episodes two, didn't it? Yeah? And she said um. When
Speaker 1: she replied, I asked her if I could read this.
Speaker 1: She said sure, And she said, I guess he'll know
Speaker 1: my little trick now, but he'll get such a kick
Speaker 1: out of being mentioned Ethan the fencer, he will forget
Speaker 1: the yeah, and at least he can rest assured that
Speaker 1: she's not like putting anything in his soup to get
Speaker 1: him to do what she wants. She uses more subtle
Speaker 1: tactics than that. Right. I wish you could put something
Speaker 1: in soup to make people listen to this. I'd be
Speaker 1: putting it in soup. Yeah, that's a good idea. I
Speaker 1: put it in all soups. I'll tell you what, if
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions of what we can put in
Speaker 1: people's soup to get them to listen to stuff you
Speaker 1: should know and to get them to go give us
Speaker 1: a review on iTunes. Huh, yeah, that that helps us out.
Speaker 1: When you do that, Uh, you should send us an
Speaker 1: email and you should send it to a specific email dress.
Speaker 1: That is stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
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