Andrew Sage

Particularly in the late 20th century and early 2000s, there was a lot of conversation around, you know, this population bomb, this worry that there were too many people

Now at least early on in the population boom I think it makes some sense to have concerns.

You know there had never been this many people on the earth at any point in time prior.

You know if you're watching the numbers climb and climb and climb you might have thought we were headed straight for a planet covered in cities and some kind of collapse.

But even before we even hit a billion people, the idea of overpopulation being a significant problem wasn't new.

In the late 1700s, Thomas Malthus argued that population would always outpace food supply.

And his prediction was that there'd be too many people, not enough resources, and a decline into famine, disease, and mass death.

Now, he was obviously proven wrong, but in 19th century Britain, Malthus' ideas helped justify the harsh welfare policies that that government ended up implementing, like the spread of workhouses around the country.

Also, we speak about famine as if it's this natural phenomenon that can't be helped, that is just almost like a hurricane or a tornado.

But famines are usually not actually the result of not having enough food.

You know, Amartya Sen found that famines usually happen despite food surpluses.

The issue is usually distribution and not scarcity.

You know, a famous example being, you know, during the Irish famine, Ireland was still exporting tons of food to feed its colonial overlord.

So we fast forward to 1968 and the biologist Paul Ehrlich publishes The Population Bomb.

He describes visiting Delhi and feeling the crush of overpopulation, convinced that mass starvation was imminent in the 1970s.

Now, I think that book that he published was one of the main influences in the widespread panic around overpopulation.

You know, governments start to scramble about it.

A lot of policies were born likely from people reading that very book.

You know, some of these policies were fairly benign.

You know, you promote family planning, you improve access to contraceptives, you improve education for women especially.