Population, Sustainability, and Malthus: Crash Course World History 215 

And I can't help but wonder if movies will even exist anymore by that time.

h0m3st4r they may see our movies as the equivalent of mythical legends and ancient histories.

I think movies will still exist. Books and theater are still with us thousands of years later, after all. Most new forms of entertainment are in addition to, rather than instead of, existing forms of entertainment.

i think they'll look at our games and think i wish i had the original copy

Ajax Reed they would be long gone when digital distribution out-takes physical copies in the next 5 years. physical copies to digital will ratio 1:1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000. therefore near worthless as they have software and backwards compatibility.

+Luk Segundsdas and a large portion of the food produced is sent to feed animals, so that's another huge factor to food distribution.

@Wahid Kamruddin not exactly... the calories produced from animal products are much less than what is given to feed them. A vast amount of resources are used to create animal outputs. Neverthless there are major inefficiencies and a lack of proper distribution when it comes to food, unfortunately

👍👍👍

Not unevenly - anyone prepared to pay the cost can have as much food as they like. For some reason some people are unwilling to pay that cost.

There is a lot of food waste. That is for sure.

Who are you, the Homonym Explanation Force? I'd have to go back through the video but I'm sure you missed a few ;) No seriously, you don't have to proactively explain the obvious just in case some people want to debate climate change or evolution. They're going to do it anyway.

Penny Lane "Who are you, the Homonym Explanation Force? " Who are you, the "Benjamin's Google+ Comments" Clarification SWAT Team? "you don't have to proactively explain the obvious" Have you seen my conversations with atheists about evolution? I have to explain a lot to them at times.

Benjamin Abruzzo "I have to explain a lot to them at times." So, how many times did you change anyone's mind?

Penny Lane The definitions are used interchangeably by them, so not much.

Benjamin Abruzzo I meant for the reason you chose to debate them in the first place: to convince them that they are wrong about their beliefs. My point really being: it's pointless debating them, preemptively or not.

Stephen Richards Got em

Careful, you don't want to take someone's eye out with that edge.

nah. not even a little bit

Until we get a proper education system implemented. AND free!

So true...

same

Katie that's me Oh I miss that class

Final tomorrow gotta cram 😭

Same

Katie M yes in 2019 it’s my turn to cram

who doesn't !

so it's ok if u r not alone ....

we have done many horrific things but also gave the world the train,the factory, the modern computer (Turing) and the possibility to have this discussion (Berners-Lee) P.S what is your nationality?

you had me at "Turing".

sicklendhammerstudio, Doesn't make make up for what the british did to many people, including my own ( Québécois ) and many others. You can try to justify or make it seem less worse all you want, but what is done is done. Also I can't help but notice that the UK seems to make a lot of politically dumb/unacceptable decisions like Brexxit or fear-mongering and pandering to the scottish people to avoid them deciding to run themselves. You may have given the world many things you have taken much more from it.

Yup the human race is only 100 years old, and all that history stuff was written 30 years ago by some dude who now owns the word

*world

Its both

To refine your point, it could be argued that history is the interpretation of what has been written down.

Alfonzo333MC 'the past' is everything that has ever happened. 'history' is everything ever written down and researched about the past.

If Thanos weren't a fictional character, I'd say he definitely didn't. His whole shtick was Malthusianism.

@Brennan Lu Thanos has got nothing on Grand Moff Tarkin

@@Real_George_Orwell except an army of outriders

HockeyBoss123456789 10 11 12 yeah for homework😂

Damn Geography class brought me here...

None, except u!

Bro we all are

Bill Gates on Twitter brought me here

Funny how your comment came immediately before one by a guy saying that the real alien predators are the Jews. This thread is a total clusterfuck.

Just the nihilistic weekends

He could grow everything you need to make a cheeseburger... that doesn't mean he will.

+J Killa who is that

haha I saw that too.

I saw that in the thumb nail lol that's why I clicked it actually.

No that was because the guy he was talking about compared people to bunnies.

Copyright lawyer says no, wasn't her at all :P

Cubed Gamers Robin I saw that too. L'boro also my home town. I wonder how large charnwood forest was back then?

Now, please correct me if I am wrong, but do we still not pay some farmers not to plant crops on all their land, just to keep the wages up? Not only that, but do we not also grow a butt-load of corn to use not as food, but to turn into scientific/industrial products?

Compare to other nations, US has more advantage in agriculture. One is land, US has more land farm than others. Also technology also involved in this process.

Diana Peña Nuclear power is not sustainable. It's really not very complicated... it's impossible to safely dispose of nuclear waste! Seriously, how does one miss that!? If you're interested in how the world will be fed sustainably, look into permaculture, I'm confident in saying that it's the only option for the future.

PajamaMan You're not wrong, but you're not entirely correct either. We only pay farmers to not plant crops when there is an extreme surplus of food, which there isn't in most places. The world takes food and consumes it at an incredible rate, but we still have surplus enough to make it viable for first world countries to have high obesity rates. Prices fluctuate, but in the US, at least, they are rising due to drought, so subsidizing fallow farms is pretty pointless. Depending on how you define a butt-load, the corn thing could be right or wrong. The majority of corn we grow, which is the majority of food crops we grow, doesn't go towards industrial products, rather, it goes to meat. For every person who could be eating that ear of corn, there's a chicken eating ten and providing the same amount of energy in its breast that the person will later eat. It's incredibly inefficient and to a certain extent, wasteful. Most food we grow goes into food, one way or another. It could just be going into food more efficiently. Not that I think the world should go totally vegetarian. It's just not really possible. I enjoy meat as much as the next guy, and I really couldn't keep vegetarian, not when I could have delicious chicken meat daily for cheap (I'm a conformist consumer that way, but at least I admit it.) There are millions of people just like me without the self control to keep vegetarian, and in a capitalist world, you can't force them to. People vote with their purchases, and those purchases are buying meat, not corn, because it's delicious. There are plenty of other tricks that we could use to allow people to keep eating meat, but increase agricultural efficiency, though. Among these tricks are controversial ones like GMO crops or livestock, and less controversial ones like using insects and algae in food.

Agriculture in the US is still surprisingly good though. (Certainly nobodies about to starve). The point is globally things seem to be improving. And the growth in population is happily slowing down, not because were dying but because were choosing to get pregnant less. Something Malthus could never have imagined.

you can do that, after all we can't be more than 12 billion.

Even today, you can still argue for Malthus's theory by pointing to some countries struggle to control population growth - namely India and Nigeria. Also, using the increased demand for industry, which (to some) causes drastic climate change, is a case for it, as John Green has addressed. But if someone already argued against those points, then I can't help. BTW, why did you _have_ to argue in favor of Malthus?

ist not that hard at all.. there are too many people.. end of argument..

​@@earthlyng_official4599 yea, eventually you will run out of land to fit on. so there is a limit.

Ya I get that, so he is correct in some way. Right?

You're both right. That is the lesson here; we don't know when we will hit that cut off point where people will start to die of starvation worldwide. It hasn't come yet, but it has locally, and it will come a lot sooner now that we know global warming is a thing. If only our tech didn't cause global warming =( that would have been great.

Not realty right, just not completely wrong. He was sort of right about there *being* a carrying capacity, but in what kills us off, and in how population would only grow slowly, and basically everything else he was wrong. We know now that there is a final, maximum carrying capacity but it is HUGE and as technology improves, so does the current limit. All in all he was ~75% wrong, and in science 5% wrong is 100% not right.

Yes and no. I believe that with innovation and careful planning we can minimize our surface footprint by building up and down instead of out. There is great progress towards attaining full off grid self sustainability. As well as incorporated grid systems that maximize the resources invested into it. Subterranean and rooftop agriculture. Permaculture instead of monoculture. Non fossil based energy sources and water recycling. We can grow generally infinitely and as our robotics automation and space technology improve we will be able to do much much more, off planet. Ive said this many times but humanity is like a bacteria and we have the choice of being a beneficial bacteria or a parasitic one. As a whole we have (modern humans) behaved very parasitically and I think that many of the negative notions to growth are around that negative behavior. If we grow wisely we can increase and still have more than ever before and if we do it in a way that the earth benefits even better.

its also not known if the "stabilization methods" will have the same result, there might be a massive dying off of people, or it could be that people simply stop having kids, its not uncommon for parents to delay having a child due to resource issues aka money issues or even to just forgo having a child because of that same issue (especially if they already have one), rats do this commonly why not us? its kind of already happening in developed words, women are having fewer kids because modern mortality rates are much lower and one or two kids are much easier then 5 or 6. there is a chance things could level out, but then there's also the whole "we want to colonize mars" thing a whole other planet would change that equation considerably.

very good point.

Malthus' theory was just that, a theory. The video isn't stating that he used earlier predictions to come to this theory; instead Malthus used the natural world, specifically rabbits, to come to the understanding that once a population reached a so called "maximum threshold on its production capabilities" then it would not be able to sustain the population. What the video is saying is that the English used this "theory" to justify the Irish Potato Famine, in so, "well they've reached the maximum population that their land can sustain thus they must die."

well I would say that while it does not exactly line up with his life's time line it does accurately reflect the types of issues that would influence his theories, the idea that there is only so much food to be grown per area of land and not much can be done to change it so people will die anytime a saturation number is reached. but, man its hard not to love technology, be it mechanical muscles, better irrigation practices, or genetically engineered crops, its hard not to see the benefits as food per acre grew and starvation plummeted. so while the potatoes famine was not exactly in the era of Malthus' life, it did exemplify what he saw well enough to warrant comparison.

I thought John said that the English governors of Ireland used Malthus' theories in formulating their response to the famine and also saw the famine as validating his theories, not that the famine influenced Malthus' writings.

Famine was recorded in 1834 but sign of that was before that.

NutsinBrazil Population will peak this century and then next century it will fall, before we exhaust the planet humans will dwindle.

It was very educational.

impressive

never again with water... lets suppose never again means only until we lose these prophecies... possibly alexandria all over the world... possibly some magnetic pole shifting slingshot effect... but what do we know

Where's the videos man? We've been waiting Zogg from Betelgeuse​

***** Yes

Veritas Est Lux That's literally the point

Even the most absurdist myth has some kernel of truth at it's heart. While H. sapiens as a species is, on paper, quite capable of achieving the production and logistical challenges you state, it is well beyond the currently entrenched socio-cultural systems and their constantly reinforced individual psychological paradigms.

The human species doesn't need population control, but nations like China have obvious reasons to try to curb population growth. While Earth may have enough space, they don't have enough livable space to support their population's wants and needs. Historically, the solution to the 'not enough space' issue is usually 'take it from someone else using violence', but apparently we live in an age where that's not morally viable, finally. Lockheed Martin does look quite promising, but nuclear power has a lot of opposition. If it succeeds to the fullest potential, (which due to regulation by international law and competition with the fossil fuel industry, it probably won't), it could be a great boon to all of humanity. However, the combination of renewable energy plants cropping up all over the world, big fusion projects such as ITER and Lockheed Martin, and energy efficiency appearing in everything from cars to house paint to electronics, a major energy revolution is coming, if it isn't already here. We face a lot of problems today, starvation being one of them, but at least the world is trying to fix it, even if certain nations (I'm looking at you, US) aren't pulling their weight. We could face disaster in the next half century due to the negligence of the past, but for the first time in about 10 years, it looks like humanity may survive due to technological innovation.

Alexander Abrams-Flohr while many of your points are spot on, the idea we don't have enough space is false. there is plenty of space to increase the population. it just isn't in the hands of the people who need to live there and thus far in our history, has never been.

While feeding people is not really an issue for the very foreseeable future, lowering fertility rates is one of the key factors in order to promote economic development in that country. Countries that lower their fertility rates almost always experience economic development (I can't really think of an example where decreased fertility rate caused to hamper economic development)

***** Actually Japan is having quite a problem with it's severely low birthrate. It means more people quit working and rely on pensions than people entering the workforce, who pay for those pensions. There has to be a balance.

It’s been around for a long time. I am breaking the “law” it shouldn’t even be a pandemic😡😠

Louise

I agree!

We've been doing that for awhile. Carrots used to be purple.

+Drm Drm , aren't there still purple carrots in existence?

Yes, Gene-Mod food will be revolutionary, we can get food to grow faster, withstand harsher weather, but there might be a disaster if there were error in the programmed gene

Oli T No risk, no reward.

We are doing that right now. First to produce biofuels and in human consumption it's more complicated. No one wants to be the one who produces a crop which can harm millions.

Kagiso Lekoa and now we must the looming climate change/global warming

Not really. Scientific advancement should keep pace with population growth. Even if agricultural advances don't keep up, we'll pursue other avenues, like colonizing space. I guess that implies breaking out of the closed Gaia system, but still.

The thing is, will the population on earth continue to increase infinitely? If you look at a lot of "modern countries" today it seems that there is a point where human mortality rate is so low that humans actually start to reproduce at a rate equal to or lesser then the mortality numbers.

I think birth control and family planning programs are the factors you seem to be missing. As countries advance their health care systems, and consequently lower infant mortality, raise life expectancy, etc, they also tend to adopt western style family planning regimes. This results in smaller families, closer to the replenishment rate. You could say China was the first to recognize the problem 50 years ago with their one child policy.

+Irish Identity The idea that birth control is western is contentious. Third century India had a thriving society and lower birth rates. That is the period when the Kama Sutra was written. There used to be a theory that it was written as an instruction manual because most people didn't know good ways of having sex, so it was less enjoyable, so smaller birth rate. Now the idea that they had some form of birth control is more popular and the book was probably written to increase enjoyment, not create it.

Maureen Frost That's great and all but that's just not going to cut it. In some African countries the average person has 3 to 4 children without the economic resources to back it up. Algeria alone is projected to surpass the US in population in the coming decades. Earth can support it, but we as humans cannot distribute it. The best way to solve world hunger and overpopulation is to bring these nations into modernity thereby lowering the average birth rate. This will hardly be the apocalypse that this video speaks of, but I'd hate to see billions of people suffer just because they don't have the money to be if it from new farming technology.

We can probably reach a few trillion humans assuming we completely negate all other forms of life, including any domesticated animals since meat is going to be way too resource intensive. Jack Campbell hinted on this possibility with his book the lost fleet when they encounter an extremely xenophobic species who completely annihilates every animal that's not a Kick (nickname humans give them). The Kick's Home planet was just one Huge Vertical farm (meaning layered agricultural development). Humans could go this route also, but unfortunately I doubt we'd get along very well in those kind of tight spaces. Furthermore, we always seem to fight over who is the King of the Hill making any kind of social unity impossible (even under Communism you still have an Inner Circle).

It cannot grow exponentially forever. John knows that. BUT the question is - would it result in disaster described by malthus? mass famine. That is largely a myth.

You guys seem to be understimating the power of birth control, Only until recently did we have the power to reliable decide how many children to have. There are countries like Japan and the Nordic states where the population is shrinking instead of growing.

Actually it can be boundless if we can learn to capture and transform energy into mass and mass into any atom and learn to contain all of it so that none of it escapes. You see, vacuum constantly spawns energy into existence, which then dissappears right after. If we can learn to harvest that energy before it dissappears, we will have an infinite source of energy and thus the upper limit is gone. But until then, it is all finite.

Optimum is near 300 millions. This quantity of humans don,t make a lot of damage and too much footprints that can't be reversed.

Agreed, but it would also be necessary to use huge tracts of land producing solar power. If you've ever been to west Texas in the summer, you know that this is easily possible,and can be done using land that nature doesn't want, unlike current farming methods using huge tracts of land where nature really wants to be.

Do not believe no one noticed this flaw: plants need light

Permaculture is the solution to the food problem. A good permaculturist can feed 5 people/year/acre without synthetic chemicals.

Diana Peña I agree. Renewable energy may work on a local level to curb fossil fuel dependency, but it's just not reliable enough to meet humanity's voracious energy needs. The world where seven blocks of a city go into blackout because it's cloudy or because the wind isn't blowing is a world where you have mass riots. The world where every influential government and every private corporation who cares works to produce massive and expensive fusion energy plants is one with a high gap between rich and poor, but everyone gets a certain improvement on the quality of life. It's not the ideal solution, which would be something like a portable fusion reactor so cheap you can put one in everyone's backyard, but it's one of the best.

Unused skyscrapers generally aren't a thing and growing underground means providing all of the light. The best structures for centralized hydroponic agriculture would be purpose built on cheap land.

I believe it has to do something with IQ as well. Remember that in Third World countries compared to America, they are often lacking in education and the intellectual, and people are far more likely to breed despite their terrible conditions. Social and cultural development & a sense of responsibility plays a vital role in determining how many children people have.

XZDrake Remember that development is not a one way trip though, especially depending on the contemporary cultural status quo of the people/nation. Max Weber wrote some interesting things on the subject, such as the Spirit of Capitalism. For the third world countries to have the same trend as the developed world, it'll also require a social revolution & change of values.

SinerAthin maya'smomhere: So, SinerAthin, You who Has the First World IQ are suggesting the job of reducing world population be delegated out to People who, maybe cannot be convinced by any charlatan's move that: this is Their idea...or...just as soon as They get a move-on to recognize the obvious benefits of adjusting their traditions here&there to suit what they most likely cannot and will not benefit from...to cooperate with a new witch doctor (no offence to the true intended)... and well I just am sure They are not as children for some new foreign flashy camera- bible- toting smiling fellow...You for instance?! !oh! Do go forth, see, teach, learn from them with my blessing ! PS-we users gotta quit it, the using of...the everything...one world for all time . anonymousmom@live.com

XZDrake I believe Asia, in particular China(and its close neighbors) outbred Europe, due to their more advanced agriculture systems enabling them to support a far greater population than Europe. Industrialization in and of itself does not really lead to lower birth rates though. The industrial revolution lead to huge baby booms in the nations where it occurred. It was not until later down the line that births began to lower.

XZDrake I was talking about WAY before 1500. The Chinese practically invented something similar to the modern state before Europe even ascended from the dark ages. Granted, China suffered through long periods of isolation & stagnation which caused the west to fly past them.

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

pyr666 firstly, English is a very general word, the vast majority of the English were in abject poverty (i.e. the working class). So I assume you mean the English ruling class. Secondly, no one was forced to export food, they were offered money for the food and the land owners decided to sell it. The fact that these land owners were all English is inconsequential as rich Irish landowners did the exact same thing what is what the rich do best, look out for themselves. Thirdly, the north of England was also effected by the famine and so British aid was directed to mitigate the crisis in Britain first.

pyr666 yup they had a hidden agenda

@@Jake-ir3gw ya eejit. For your Thirdly, Ireland was part of the UK at the time. Twas under British rule. 2nd point; they were west brits.

+Darth Mortus There are today few countries that still remains in the 2. and 3. demographical phase. Most of Asia; S. America and Africa are entering the 4. phase, in which the population is more or less stabile. Only the countries that experiences political or environmental instability are still experiencing high birthrates (but not that high population growth because of equaly high mortality rates). While most non-western countries still experience a minor population growth, the exponential increase we experienced in the 20th century is over, as most predictions now suggest that the world population will stabilize on about 9 billion people. This prediction is made on the fact that general life quality world wide is rapidly increasing, meeting the needs of which theoretically is needed to enter the demographical phase of a stabilizing population.

I don't really buy that. I don't have time to research and refute you guys but I know India is still seeing much growth and with close to a billion people even if the growth is slowing down it will still put a lot of new people on this little globe of ours. And then there is Africa which is a massive clusterfuck and may even see more pop growth when it becomes more stable and prosperous. Add in a few countries in South America and some in East Asia and it gets a bit grimmer. And muslims still have a large pop growth. Where do you think those migrants come from? The way they operate is simple, some go to rich Western countries and bring more of their family after they settle in, or they send money to them and they use this extra money to have more children than their state can really support, shit happens and suddenly you have throngs of desperate people coming over. This system of supporting huge families who have lots of children (because women are so repressed there) through relatives sending money from the West is well known in the Middle East and Balkan muslim states. Honestly I don't like feminism but what needs to be done to reduce pop growth in muslim countries is weaponize feminism and export it to those places :D Let it do good for a change. :P

+Darth Mortus An important point about undeveloped countries is they usually suffer corrupt and oppressive governments that restrict economic development and basically unable to develop their economies and the wealth needed they kind of hit Malthus' population ceiling. The developed world had similar population booms, but didn't suffer because they had the economic freedom to grow their economies and wealth. Every human being you add brings not only a set of needs, but productive potential and technology can enhance that productive potential. The problem for the undeveloped worlds is their productive potential is inhibited by corrupt governments. A quickly expanding population isn't really a problem if you leave that population free to support itself. The real problem that arises from people from third world countries moving to first world countries is more a cultural collision than anything else. So long as those immigrants enter the country and work and pursue their own opportunities overall it's a net positive for that country. The issue arises when you're dealing with local workers who don't want to compete, immigrants not willing to conform to the local population. The financial impact on social and welfare systems. The impact on political systems and how it can change political outcomes. Culture is particularly important because certain cultures create certain economic and political outcomes. It's no accident Northern and Western Europeans have been historically wealthier than their Southern and Easter counter parts, or that Anglo-America is wealthier than Latin America despite it being more resource rich.

Teralek hey i like communism as much as the next guy but calm down

@@Gamerroemer yeah man, that one exclamation mark is way overboard, my god :P

As did Queen Victoria. It wasn't nearly enough, but to say we gave "no aid, nor allowed anyone else to give it either" ( 4.10) is at best a gross oversimplification, and worst an outright lie.

mankytoes yeah, well, it was kind of a small amount. The hugely in-debt Ottomans basically gave more than the richest empire in the world (so much so that British diplomats actually asked the Ottoman Sultan to decrease his donation so as to not cause embarrassment for Victoria).

Yeah what he said wasn't true I guess (can't be bothered to rewatch the vid and check honestly), but this show tends to be PC and mention non-Western things and occasionally undermine Western ones.

Oh yeah the benevolent Ottoman empire..just ask the 1.5 massacred Armenians how benevolent they were. Oh, and a present day Turkey were it's illegal to even mention the massacre let alone teach it!!

You're forgetting desertification. Although I think there have been actual studies on how the amount of arable land will change, by like actual scientists who spent a good amount of time thinking about it and researching it as a full-time job, that you can look up instead of armchair-theorizing. I think they said yields would go down overall because of desertification, but I could be wrong.

But in the North the Ground would still be frozen and there might not be enough water for them to use. Forrest would have to die aswell.

Suchti322 I'm talking about the land thats on the margins. Land that is ALMOST profitable to farm but not quite. It would become profitable. I'm not saying that people in northern canada would be farming.

Rowan Evans Either way, we can safely say that the negative effects of land that is presently farmable becoming unfarmable would be at the very least severely mitigated by the land that is presently unfarmable becoming farmable.

However, it takes a while to cultivate new land, so it would certainly be disruptive to food supplies, with all the farmers moving north. Also, land will be lost to rising sea levels, which you haven't considered. That could be significant for the agriculture of low lying areas. Finally, lets say global warming continues until the south pole is suitable for agriculture. From then on, we're just going to be losing land to desertification.

?

Hof H Developed nations have birthrates below 2.1, which means without immigration their populations will fall. Developing nations don't need more population. They need to educate the ones they have, and build infrastructure. But that's where population growth is happening.

Sir, unless you were knighted by a current Monarch you are not a Sir.

flinx i see the issue here. you dont understand what industrializing does to a country and why industrialized countries stop growing. Industrialization occurs which builds infrastructure and better overall standard of living. because of this fewer people die from diseases. As a result you no longer need to reproduce as much, and b/c wealthy people from poor nations want to move to a country with better infrastructure, education, healthcare, a more stable economy etc. they move to industrialized countries which means immigration is always happening to industrialized nations keeping the population stable if not growing. Underdeveloped and developing countries who have yet to go through there industrial revolution have a greater population increase usually because of the mortality causing people to make more in case one dies. AND because there is a lot of unused resources in their country because they have yet to go through their industrial revolution. before a nation becomes industrialized they need more hands to harvest those resources, they dont have machines like we do. And even then its a good thing the population is dropping, we already have too many people to live on this earth sustain-ably. we are killing ourselves through screwing too often!

XZDrake Population density is meaningless if you don't consider the land. The Sahara desert is enormous and doesn't have water to support high density. The jungles do have water, but cutting them down is like cutting down the Amazon rain forest. That's bad too. It isn't desirable to keep growing populations until they use up available resources. Africa has 1.1 billion people and that's plenty already. Those people need better education, housing, clean water, sanitation, nutrition. Increasing the population does nothing to help those issues, in fact it slows down progress on those things.

Smarter people + less of annoying stupid ignorant people like you = less problem

augie nelson I **would like** very much to agree with you readily;but John not having covered "the population bomb" book gets me

More people more problem solvers. Such as the inventors of the pill and condom, hence the slowdown in more people.

augie nelson hes right though

***** that does not make sense