Climate Change

16 Pages 4063 Words

can allow no more. What will be made clear, nevertheless, is that the relationship between man and earth is clearly changing. More specifically, man is outgrowing the earth. If the relationship is to continue—indeed prosper—then a new balance needs to be found. The issue of climate change holds one important key to this balance. Man and the Environment Thomas Malthus is well remembered for his position as a doomsayer. When looking at the rates of population growth in Victorian England, he saw unchecked growth as leading to a rapid decline in the living standards of man. He blamed this decline on three main factors: the overproduction of offspring; the inability of natural resources to sustain rising human population; and the irresponsibility of the lower classes to prevent their overpopulation. Very generally, Malthus suggested that this trend could be controlled only if the family size of the lower classes was regulated so that poor families would not produce more children than they could support. He predicted that the demand for food would inevitably become far greater than the available supply of it. This prediction was rooted in the thought that population, when unchecked, increased geometrically; i.e., 2,4,8,16,32... while food products, or as he called it ‘subsistence’, only grew at an arithmetic rate; i.e, 1,2,3,4,5,...... He provided only a basic economic reason for this however, and generally attributed famine, poverty and other catastrophic occurrences to divine intervention (he was a very religious man, a clergyman, in fact). He believed that such natural outcomes were essentially God’s way of preventing man from being lazy. The point here is not to provide an evaluation of Malthus, and one might well argue that he was wrong in many of his predictions; but rather to highlight the posit that man has long been living beyond his means. Sooner or later, this will have its consequences. As a species, our success has cer...