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SYSK Selects: Was Malthus right about carrying capacity? · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, Chuck here, Good morning or good afternoon. Wherever
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: this finds you on your Saturday. I hope you're enjoying yourself,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: and I have a nice selection for you. From July
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  Speaker 1: two th eleven for this Saturday select was Malthis right
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  Speaker 1: about carrying capacity? What is what is that all about?
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  Speaker 1: You say, what am I talking about? Who is this? Malthis? Well,
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  Speaker 1: all the answers are right here. It's a really interesting one.
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  Speaker 1: And uh and here's what I say. If you don't
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  Speaker 1: know what any of those words mean aside firm was
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: right and about, then listen right now because you're about
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  Speaker 1: to learn something cool. July nine eleven was Malthis right
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  Speaker 1: about carrying capacity. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W.
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  Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant sitting across from me. Um, and that makes
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  Speaker 1: the stuff you should know the podcast. There you go.
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  Speaker 1: The only incarnation thus far is is there somebody fast
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  Speaker 1: forwarding through this part right now? Huh? Yes? So Chuck? Right?
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: It is Chuck? Yes. Still have you noticed how often
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  Speaker 1: I say right, yeah, it's mind numbing. Plus someone will
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  Speaker 1: right in and say, do you know usually write all
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  Speaker 1: the time? Um, it sounds like I'm eating hard candy
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  Speaker 1: all the time. I know that's not the case. You've
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  Speaker 1: never eaten anything in here. I can attest to that. Uh. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I'm overly celebratory. Okay, yes, chuck. Uh. As you know,
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  Speaker 1: I was a student of anthropology, still consider myself sure
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  Speaker 1: such um And I first came upon this term called
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: carrying capacity when I was I took this life changing
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: anthropology class all right, uh, and I don't remember the
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  Speaker 1: teacher's name anymore, but he was awesome. He introduced me
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  Speaker 1: to probably my favorite article or essay of all time. Uh,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the worst mistake in the history of the human race,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: right by Jared Diamond. Awesome stuff. Um any dustin Diamond
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  Speaker 1: by Mike Diamond, Okay, by Jared Diamond, the guy who
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: wrote Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel and stuff. Um,
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  Speaker 1: that's required reading in my opinion. I just think you
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  Speaker 1: should that that essay not necessarily as books. Um. But
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  Speaker 1: this I was also introduced to carrying capacity. And this
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: there's this really cool video he showed us to get
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  Speaker 1: the point across. And it's just a map of the
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  Speaker 1: world right, and it's um it's there's red dots. It
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  Speaker 1: shows population growth and each red dot equals I think
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  Speaker 1: a million people. And so it starts out in Africa,
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  Speaker 1: in uh Ethiopia, I believe, the cradle of humanity, and
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  Speaker 1: it starts there and all, you know, very slowly, there's
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  Speaker 1: like a it's time elapse obviously, so the years go
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  Speaker 1: by like that, and um uh, like the red dots
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  Speaker 1: start appearing very slowly, start moving out of Africa, spread
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  Speaker 1: in the Asia, to Europe, all that, and then um
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  Speaker 1: it starts to to pop up around North America and
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  Speaker 1: South America, and then all of a sudden you get
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  Speaker 1: to the I think like the sixteenth century, maybe a
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  Speaker 1: little later the Industrial Revolution, and all of a sudden,
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  Speaker 1: this map just goes red and it's really jarring. It
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  Speaker 1: really gets to point across it like how quickly population
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  Speaker 1: has grown in the world and the impacts of it.
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  Speaker 1: You know, That's why he coupled this with caring capacity,
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  Speaker 1: because it's like, well, yeah, population and growth, who cares.
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  Speaker 1: Then you say, oh, well, there's a limit to the
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  Speaker 1: amount of resources we have. Um. And that limit is
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  Speaker 1: called the carrying capacity of Earth, meaning how much Earth
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  Speaker 1: can sustain human life, and there's supposedly a point to it, right, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I got some stats. There's my intro. Take it from here.
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  Speaker 1: Here's a couple of stats, Josh, the United Nations population
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  Speaker 1: Division estimates, because five babies are born every second, and
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: then you go like crying all that poop, the world
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  Speaker 1: is going to have seven billion people by years in
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  Speaker 1: they think seven billion. Yeah, we're at six point nine
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  Speaker 1: two and change right now. Yeah, so I mean we're close.
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  Speaker 1: And um to to illustrate your point there about the
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  Speaker 1: 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,
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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 crasas and behind this, that's what
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  Speaker 1: they call exponential growth. It's not just adding like a
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  Speaker 1: million people a year, slow and study you're adding a
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  Speaker 1: fixed number. It's you're adding you know, populations, doubling in
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  Speaker 1: forty years. That's exponential growth. And that is the basis
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  Speaker 1: 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, no did we we're humans and we no
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  Speaker 1: matter how much we grow, we will be able to
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  Speaker 1: counter that with advances in technology to allow us to grow.
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  Speaker 1: So they debated like crazy. Godwin subsequently was one of
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  Speaker 1: the first proponents of anarchism, and Malthus talked about eugenics
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: way back then before it was eugenics. He said, I
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  Speaker 1: could see something like this being possible, but he said
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  Speaker 1: it is probably not something we should do. And he
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  Speaker 1: also incidentally was the one of the first people to
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: uh to support or popularize the theory, the economic theory
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: of rent. Really yeah, well he was just all over
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  Speaker 1: the place, wouldn't he. Well, but all kind of ties
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  Speaker 1: into population because eugenics tied into it because he was
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: talking about controlling population and rent he theorized was only
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  Speaker 1: possible with a surplus of resources, um, which allows you
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: to own a second place and rent it, I guess,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: or rent a tool or you know whatever people rented
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: back then. So what Mouths is talking about is generally
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  Speaker 1: classified as economics, yeah right, but it's also it stretches
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  Speaker 1: into all sorts of dirty, nasty little areas like greed
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  Speaker 1: um at college, population control, So eugenics, um, family planning,
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  Speaker 1: abortion and fanticide, all sorts of stuff um. That has
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  Speaker 1: a lot of implications, far reaching implications, right, And so
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  Speaker 1: I didn't realize that there was somebody who was a
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: contemporary of him that argued, like, no, humans will use
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  Speaker 1: technology to outstrip, to outpace this math Mathusian curse is
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  Speaker 1: what it's called. Right, Yeah, there was more than God
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  Speaker 1: when there was a few people too. I didn't realize
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  Speaker 1: that it was at the time, but I know that
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  Speaker 1: over the centuries people have been like Mouths. That was
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: a great idea. But you really missed the mark, and
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: we're going to 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
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: demographic transition, which is basically as um, as we get
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  Speaker 1: better with this technology. Uh, one of the things we
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: come up with this birth control um and while we're
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: while our mortality rates are are lowering, so to our
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: fertility rates. Right, and we eventually come to this thing
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  Speaker 1: called the replacement rate, which is two point one children
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  Speaker 1: per household leads to zero population growth, right, and I
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: think they set in Western Europe the number was one
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  Speaker 1: point four in the late nineties. Like, some people are
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: afraid that that Mauthis was correct at this point, and
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  Speaker 1: other people say that like in Europe and Asia they
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: worry about the opposite because you know, they have the
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: problem over there that they're not enough young people to
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  Speaker 1: take care of the retirees one day. Exactly, it's negative
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  Speaker 1: population growth. So who's right they do estimate? Um, who's
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  Speaker 1: who they is? I don't know, but it just said
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  Speaker 1: researchers estimate that population is not gonna level off until
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  Speaker 1: mid century, at about nine billion. Well that's at best
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  Speaker 1: if that's if we do level off, we could continue
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  Speaker 1: to keep going the rate we're at now, the replacement
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  Speaker 1: rate at least to zero population growth, which is two
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  Speaker 1: point one. Right now, we're at a two point six
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  Speaker 1: worldwide and with Africa, UM skewing us the other way.
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  Speaker 1: SUBSI in Africa has about a five point one fertility rate,
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  Speaker 1: which means for every household there's five point one children born.
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  Speaker 1: Does that point one child? He always feels so bad
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  Speaker 1: for him. It's a knee down, you know, on one leg. Um.
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  Speaker 1: But the uh, if we can get to zero population
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  Speaker 1: growth and we're not going to really have to deal
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  Speaker 1: with the Malthusian curse possibly ever, but we're not, then
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  Speaker 1: that's that's But that's one thing that's um that Mouths
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  Speaker 1: didn't account for is things like as society has become
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  Speaker 1: more educated, fertility rates tend to drop dramatically. So that's
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  Speaker 1: that's another way to put it off too. So he
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  Speaker 1: was scoffed at, Like you said, there's a lot of
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  Speaker 1: people out there who think he was he missed the mark.
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  Speaker 1: But UM people have been doing a little bit of
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  Speaker 1: math lately and have figured out that UM it's entirely
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  Speaker 1: possible that he's right, that somewhere down the line he's right. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: And at the basis we should say, of mouths, this
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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 caring capacity. Chuck, Yeah, this is cool. Um.
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  Speaker 1: If we had not transitioned, which we have, which kind
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  Speaker 1: of proves the um positive positivists camp um that we
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  Speaker 1: can be technological. If we hadn't transitioned from hunter gatherer
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  Speaker 1: to agriculture UM, the caring capacity of Earth would have
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  Speaker 1: been reached out about a hundred million people a long
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  Speaker 1: time ago. Yes, because there's just so many animals running
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  Speaker 1: around that we can kill. There's only so many berries
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  Speaker 1: that are going to occur in actually on the on
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: the vine, right. But we did transition to agriculture UM
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  Speaker 1: before we hit the hundred million mark, possibly maybe not
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  Speaker 1: um farming, and we we began to use technology which
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: is growing crops to feed ourselves. And then we reached
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: another point, right um, where we hit what was called
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the green revolution, remember that, Yeah, normal barolog um where
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of people who are saying about
• 11:32
  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
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: food for all the people here. Um, we've we've come
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: up with great vaccines and all this other technology that's
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: lowering the mortality rate, but that just means people are
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: living longer and they need food longer over the over
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: their lifespan. Right, so what are we gonna do? Norman
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Borlog comes along and says, you know what we're gonna
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: doing exactly, tapioca pudding for everybody, for the elderly, and
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: a care bear in every garage. Now they'll go ahead
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: with it with what he said because he was a genius.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: He said, we're gonna maximize the yield that we get
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: out of arable land. We're not just gonna plant some
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: seeds and be like, hope you grow. We're going to
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: apply tons of pesticide, tons of fertilizer, and we're going
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: to squeeze corn the size of your torso out of
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  Speaker 1: every every plant. Right, Yeah, he wasn't some like awful
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: mad That sound makes him sound like some awful mad scientists,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: though in the eyes of a lot of environmental let's
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: he he well, I mean think about all the runoff,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: all the soil depletion. Also, didn't he also win a
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Nobel Prize? Sure? Yeah, he's credited with saving that billion
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  Speaker 1: people that were predicted to starve because he came in
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  Speaker 1: just in time because the Earth would have reached this
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  Speaker 1: carring capacity for agriculture. So we've had at least two
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: different events where we were able to leap forward through
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: technology and avoid the Malthusian curse. Right, yes, So there
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: are people out there who say, well, you know, we're
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: we're we're going to avoid it again, but what will
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: that be? Sure and come up with another one? So
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  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Chuck, we would have hit the carring capacity
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  Speaker 1: a hundred million where we hunter gatherers, right man, what
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: are the predictions now? Well, they say, and this is
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: where what I think is really interesting and completely sad,
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  Speaker 1: is that we have a potential carring capacity of two
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: billion to forty billion. Were clearly past the two So
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: one might ask how can it be that big of
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: a range. And the answer is lifestyle. And here's a
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: very sad statu. If the entire earth live like middle
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: class Americans, not the super rich, who you know, probably
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: consume more energy and the like than your average human
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: just regular middle class American folks consume about three point
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  Speaker 1: three times the subsistence level of food and two hundred
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  Speaker 1: and fifty times the subsistence level of water clean water.
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  Speaker 1: And that means the Earth, if we ever everyone was
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  Speaker 1: like us, the Earth could only support about two billion people.
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  Speaker 1: So what's going on is of the Earth is consuming
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I don't have the percentage, but the other seventy 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
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: allocation of resources and what's consumed. So that's why it
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: can be a range of two billion to forty billion
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: because of the different lifestyles. If if everyone lives like
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: there would be plenty for everyone and no one would
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: be starving. No, if everybody lived like we would all
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: we would be like sorry, well the um Yeah, that's
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: that's where the forty billion number comes in. I've seen
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: thirty and i've seen forty on the high end for
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: the carrying capacity, and that's where every square inch of
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: arable land is being cultivated to its maximum yield. And
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: all people live in high rises that are as high
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: as we can build them right now, right um. And
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: we're mining UM asteroids for h for UM minerals and
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: all that we're we're no longer going, we're no longer
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: going to the Earth. We're going into outer space. Possibly.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: I don't think that that shouldn't have started about fifty
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: years ago, right um. But the that forty billion prediction
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: is um based on the absolute minimum requirements, and everybody,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: forty billion people living on the planet UM, all using
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: the minimum amount, which is four liters of water a
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: year and about three ms of food a year, mostly grains.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: And you can basically kiss meat goodbye because we need
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: that land to grow our grains rather than grow grains
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: to feed cows, which is another way that the West
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: consumes resources more than more than its fair share, through
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: a meat rich diet, which is you're not only eating
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the meat, you're eating the grains that the meat eight. Right,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: So Chuck, let me ask you something. If you had
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: if you went home and turned on your tap and
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: there was hot water and it was flowing, and it
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: was as much as you liked, right, Would you care
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: how you were getting that? What do you mean how
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: it was being delivered through my faucet? Yes? Uh, this
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: is trick question. No it's not. Let me rephrase. If
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: you went home and I answering it wrong and turned
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: on your hot water and there was as much hot
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: water as you wanted and it was you knew it
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: was coming from a sustainable source, would you care if
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: it was sustainable? I guess not, But I'm kind of
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: like a water saver, So your water saver. What if
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: you knew you didn't really have to save water because
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: it was so sustainable, you wouldn't care. No one cares,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: as long as we have the luxuries that were afforded.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: You point it doesn't. You don't care if it came
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: from burning bananappeals, No one cares. The problem is that
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: the problem with the course that we're on apparently right now,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: is that we are UM using technology g not to
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: get more from less, but to get more from more
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: more cheaply. Right. Yeah, it's um. It's a uniquely human
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: thing they call it in the article, which is pretty
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: much true. But technological advancement is in many ways leading
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: to our habitat destruction. Ideally, at this point everyone would
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: be on solar and the massive companies would be solar
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: powered and all that kind of thing. And that's another
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: great point is you know, you don't care where your
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: electricity comes from. Do you care if it comes from
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: a solar panel or wind? No, of course you don't.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: You just want your electricity. So if we had invested,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: or if we could invest our technological advances into um
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: getting what we have now from less from solar radiation
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: or wind power, then we would be that that's true
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: cutting edge technology, rather than you know, figuring out ways
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: to deplete things faster, more cheaply, which is the way
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: we're going. Yeah, like thinking of let's say, a more
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: efficient oil driller or a more efficient way of getting
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: coal from a mountain, i e. Mountaintop removal. So they're
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: using technology, but they're using in ways that are also
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: destroying the habitat. And sustainability is all about finding the
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: right balance in your habitat. So here's here's the conclusion
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I came through from reading this, right, the the argument
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: from the positivists camp. I don't even think I'm using
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: that word correctly. But um, the people who are the
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Optimists camp, sure duh right are Um they're saying no
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: mouths was incorrect because he failed to account for human
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: ingenuity and as population grows, so to do the number
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: of geniuses, and that's where innovation comes from. Right. Um.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: The I think the the Optimists are missing a point
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: in their model, and that is greed. You can't really
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: sway greed to to benefit human ecology, can you know?
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: And you can't convince an entire population of people to
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: change their lifestyles, which is what it would take. That's
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying you you can't because they don't care.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: But if you could deliver them that same amount of
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: hot water, that same electricity and it was coming from
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: a sustainable source, no one's going to fight that, right
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: right right. It's having to get them to fight that
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: fight to get the people who are controlling it to
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: change over. They're not going to do that. So there's
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: that fatal flaw in that model that the gloom and
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Doom camp has over the um Optimist camp, and that
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: there they don't account for for greed, have you ever
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: seen who killed the electric car? No, I never did.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: I encourage people to see that. That's pretty scary. The
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: e V one was, I mean, I don't know if
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: you remember, but the e V one was. It was
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: ready to go. There were TV commercials you can look
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: up EV one commercial on YouTube and they were running
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: them on television. Electric electric cars are here, They're not coming,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: they are here, and boom, it was gone. Yeah, I'll
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: check it out and I'll give you a few guesses
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: as to why it left so quickly. And not only
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: were they gone, dude, they literally gathered them all up
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: and crushed them really like so many et Atari game
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: cartridges exactly. Yeah, sad, but go go rented. It's cool. Yeah,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: that's why skame a little bit that you should know why.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: But J Clark and um powerful lobbies out there. What
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: else you got? I got nothing, man, This is this
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: is a good one to chew on for people. I
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: think I think so too. We just encourage people like
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: we always do, just to you know, we're not saying,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: you know, quit your job and go like build solar
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: panels for a living and live on a on a
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: wind farm. You can do that. That'd be awesome, but
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: little little things, little positive steps. They've saved a little water,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: save a little power. I disagree, man, what I don't
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: think the onus is on the people. I think the
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: onus is on the the people who are misdirecting technological advancement.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I'd say it's on both. I disagree. You don't think
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: the onus is on the people to conserve. I think
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: I think it. I think it is. I think we've
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: put it on the people, but I don't think it's
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: going to make enough of an impact. All right, I
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: think it's on the policy makers. That's who I think
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: it's on. I was, I think I think it's on both. Um. Okay,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: well that's a debate to be played out on the
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Facebook page if you ask me. Right, yeah, man, we
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: should set up before um. So, if you want to
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: learn more, type in has the Earth reached its carrying capacity?
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Or Thomas Malthus M A L. T. H U S
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: in the search bar how stuff works dot Com. It
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: will bring up some pretty cool stuff. Well, then that
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: means it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh, you're
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: gonna call this, uh how to make a my teenage son?
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Listen to your show from Portland, Oregon, Hi, guys and Jerry.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: When you have a teenager, you will quickly learn that
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: you can't just tell them what to do and expect
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: them to do it. I remember those days. It's so
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: frustrating because as a parent, you know that your kid
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: will love something and get lots out of it, but
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: you can't come right out and say it, or they
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: will never ever try the thing you told them to try.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: For example, your podcast. I knew for a fact, like
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: I know that it will reign in Portland, that my
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: thirteen year old son Ethan would really love stuff. You
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: should know because I love the podcast. I've turned other
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: people onto it and they love it. But I knew
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: I had to be sneaky in order for my son
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: to give it a try. Ethan is a fencer and
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: at the time was also working on a research project
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: about Renaissance jousting and tournaments. So one Saturday, I was
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: working in the kitchen. I played how Nights Work Uh
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: to catch his interest. Every time he came in the kitchen,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: I'd hit play. When he leave, I'd hit pause. I
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: would figure he would just think, Man, these guys take
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: a long time to finish the Center. He would hang
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: around the kitchen longer and longer each time, and I
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: could tell I almost had him on the line like
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: I was noodling. Although you would say that had him
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: on the arm. Yeah, there's no line. When it was over,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: he said he already knew everything you talked about in
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: the podcast, but I could tell he was intrigued. Then
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: I hit him with the Scooby Doo Show and that
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: was it. You had another fan. Now he has downloaded
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: the app for his iPod and listens each night as
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: he's going to sleep. And that is Yeah, that's from
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Afton in a very sneaky mom thank you in Portland, Oregon.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Thanks at That also kind of ties into the Colts
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: and brainwashing episodes two, didn't Yeah, and she said um.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: When she replied, I asked her if I could read this,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: She said, you are, And she said, I guess he'll
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: know my little trick now. But he'll get such a
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: kick out of being mentioned Ethan the Fencer. Yes, he
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: will forget that. Yeah, and at least he can rest
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: assured that she's not like putting anything in his soup
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: to get him to do what she wants. She she
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: uses more subtle tactics than that. Right, I wish you
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: could put something in soup to make people listen to this.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: I'd be putting it in soup. Yeah, that's a good idea.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: I'll put it in all soups. I'll tell you what,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions of what we can put
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: in people's soup to get them to listen to stuff
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: you should know and to get them to go give
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: us a review on iTunes. Huh, yeah, that that helps
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: us out. When you do that, Uh, you should send
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: us an email and you should send it to a
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: specific email dress. That is Stuff Podcast at how stuff
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: works dot com.