Impressed, but not convinced, by Abernethy.

• Author: Tobias, Michael
• Position: Population AND ITS DISCONTENTS - Letter to the Editor

Your issue on "Population and Its Discontents" was superb. I was particularly impressed by Virginia Deane Abernethy's analysis of Malthus's second edition of "An Essay on the Principle of Population," in which Malthus sounds the optimistic chime of "moral restraint," and Abernethy--whose work I have long admired--goes on to calculate this human capacity, so as to adduce a stabilization number "unlikely to rise above 8 billion" by 2050. She bases this rather remarkable insight on a "fertility opportunity hypothesis" that proposes a direct link to energy use and efficiency (or inefficiency) as a potential disincentive to higher total fertility rates.

In my own analysis of population stabilization scenarios, however, I see other factors that could work in a different direction. Curiously, it is precisely this "opportunity hypothesis" which is at work in such pessimism. As the end of oil comes closer, I envision a dangerous lag-time between the narrowing availability of arable land, water, and other life-preserving resources, and the runaway ambitions of self-interest that have been stoked for some time now by the forces of globalization, which in some cases (such as China and the U.S.), are working to encourage larger families.

China, in spite of the traditional one-child family policy, almost from its inception allowed for a dozen exemptions based upon economic need. And today, more and more wealthier Chinese are opting to have more than one child. These are the same consumers--though their lives have unquestionably...