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Books

Myths About The Population Explosion

The Limits to Growth:

Report for the Club of Rome. 1972. Signet Books. $1.45.

The Diseconomies of Growth:

H.V. Hodgsons. 1972. Ballantine Paperback. $1.45. Reviewed by Brendon Smith.

The Report for the Club of Rome's project on the predicament of mankind, published as "The Limits to Growth", forsees a world where industrial production has sunk to zero, where population has suffered a catastrophic decline. In the near future, says the report, air sea and land will be polluted beyond redemption with civilisation becoming a distant memory.

Prepared for the Club of Rome, an organisation of distinguished industrialists, bankers and scientists from 25 countries, the report gives us the conclusion that within seventy years our social and economic system will collapse unless drastic changes are made soon.

Apart from the colourful, if dire, world new of the future, the most interesting aspect of this study, in actual fact conducted by a team of M.I.T. scientists, is that a computer was used for the first time to produce a complete examination of the future. The machine was fed masses of data on population and industrial growth rates, Agricultural yields and so on.

However, even before the report was published critics were validly attacking the methodology used. The computer takes the assumptions of its programmes and shows only the adverse trends of elements in the world environment. The simplistic-approach taken by the team was probably governed by the one-track nature of the computer. However with this methodology the report could do nothing else than join the many texts already vividly describing the catastrophic future instead of analysing strategies to avoid such a prospect.

And there is a mass of material which shows just what can be done to reverse environmental mismanagement. The case of London's experience with river and air pollution comes to mind. The river Thames is now the cleanest it has been for over a hundred years with the fish population growing, while the smog for which the city was noted has been greatly reduced by the imposition of 'smoke-free' areas.

While we will not dismiss this report outright as it does have the effect perhaps of shocking people into considering more closely environmental matters, the fact is that the work is flawed even from its beginning. When the statistics used were published they were found to be incorrect. Moreover the whole exercise is handicapped by the fact that the past is a shaky gauge of the future and that the conclusions coming out of the computer depends totally on the quality of the assumptions programmed in. The assumptions in this use are of those who take great delight in picturing the worst conditions possible for the future while hoping that their standard of living is not reduced. Their employers for this project make the whole affair suspect especially since the inaccurate and unscientific methods used have come to light. No allowance is made for remedial activities to be undertaken nor for the change in population growth rates for which there is every scientific reason to believe is inevitable.

The Diseconomies of Growth is a more valuable text for it considers in somewhat of a more reasoned way use of t he environment. It's author, Hodgson, attacks the cull of growth. He maintains, of course, that there is a limit to economic growth as we know it, but instead of going off into details of his vision of the final apocalypse he looks to the use of our resources. The dominance of the West, its economic and social despotism, comes under strong attack.

Growth on the western model makes for imbalance as Hodgson points out. But the remedies for this lack of equilibrium seem to be, according to the author, placed almost totally on the heads of the under-developed nations. Moves by the west that would, for example, impose population control should be closely examined. Hodgson says that the poor Pakistani or Nigerian has a life-style that causes him to have more children than we of the west think his personal and national means can support; so we bid him change his life-style, forsake his religious taboos, adopt our attitudes towards child-bearing, and when he asks "why, what business is it of yours, is this not a plot to keep my people weak while you grow stronger?" we can only answer that the limited resources of the world will not just go round. But can we say this without hypocrisy?

In Diseconomies of Growth the validity of the often near hysterical cry "over-population!" is debunked It is shown that of population growth and economic growth the latter has contributed more to the world's troubles with waste of resources and pollution than has population growth.

"There is no doubt that slower population growth would make it easier," he states. Time and time again Hodgson points out that we cannot shift the quill of unmitigated growth from ourselves by blaming unmitigated fertility.

To talk about the 'quality of our life' without talking about the limitation or redistribution of our land and resources is an exercise in self-deception. The resources of the world are not being run down so much by the numerous poor people, but by the 20% of the world population from the affluent nations. A citizen of the US consumes 50 times as much as does an average Indian, and the resource consumption rate can't be much less for the rising New Zealander than it is for the American.

A social scientist at a Congressional hearing in America stated that if the US standard of economic activity arrived among the undeveloped nations there would be an increase of 200 times the present demand for natural resources. So it is understandable that foundations and trusts set up by the economic giants in the world are in the forefront of the campaign against over-population'. Gandhi's dictum is still valid today 'There is enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed'.

In conclusion we see that the greater relevancy of Hodgson's Diseconomics of Growth as against The Limits to Growth arises from his reaction to the hypercritical and superficial solution to the industrial growth and population questions.

Correctly Hodgson introduces the relationship of people, resources and land. The first solution to present difficulties must be to share what we have and introduce true management of resources through a change in economic and political systems

So it becomes clear that there has to be drastic change in the patterns of resource usage, in the pattern of life tor the peoples of rich nations.