Charles Darwin in the quote was speaking exclusively about non-human animals. He was famously cagey about applying the principles he observed in nature to humans and society. To this day, people who have never read his famous work about Galapagos birds think its actual title is “The Origin of the Species” and the actual subject humans because his detractors used so much ink to attack him for its implications for the prevailing religious authority.
It was Thomas Malthus who famously applied the principle to humans, with disastrous results. Perhaps the author’s choice of falsely contextualizing Darwin was intentional because Malthusian thinking is a prime example of confusing data-driven forecasting with scientific truth. The constant failure of a world famine to validate Malthus and his disciples should be evidence for optimism.
Also, we didn’t cheat ‘Malthusian death’ through the use of fossil fuels - the ‘Green’ Revolution, a period characterized by a boom in food production driven by oil extraction, didn’t occur until the 1960s, and Malthus’ apocalypse had already been falsified by then. Its purpose was not to end hunger but to prevent the spread of communism by propping up capitalist-friendly authoritarian regimes with cheap food, and the lives it counts as saved through domestic mechanization, overproduction, and exportation could have been much more sustainably saved through knowledge transfer and democratic revolution.
The discovery of the Haber process in the 1910s was the point at which food production was no longer limited by fertile land; methane (a.k.a. cow farts, marsh gas, landfill burnoff), the chemical needed for the process, is not exclusive to oil extraction. Though we use oil to overproduce food today, people still starve due to famine. The problem is not food production but political organization, just as it has been since the invention of inexpensive ammonia fabrication. Authoritarian regimes use their power over food distribution to reward loyalists and starve threats. A world without tyrants is a world without hunger.
Charles Darwin in the quote was speaking exclusively about non-human animals. He was famously cagey about applying the principles he observed in nature to humans and society. To this day, people who have never read his famous work about Galapagos birds think its actual title is “The Origin of the Species” and the actual subject humans because his detractors used so much ink to attack him for its implications for the prevailing religious authority.
It was Thomas Malthus who famously applied the principle to humans, with disastrous results. Perhaps the author’s choice of falsely contextualizing Darwin was intentional because Malthusian thinking is a prime example of confusing data-driven forecasting with scientific truth. The constant failure of a world famine to validate Malthus and his disciples should be evidence for optimism.
Also, we didn’t cheat ‘Malthusian death’ through the use of fossil fuels - the ‘Green’ Revolution, a period characterized by a boom in food production driven by oil extraction, didn’t occur until the 1960s, and Malthus’ apocalypse had already been falsified by then. Its purpose was not to end hunger but to prevent the spread of communism by propping up capitalist-friendly authoritarian regimes with cheap food, and the lives it counts as saved through domestic mechanization, overproduction, and exportation could have been much more sustainably saved through knowledge transfer and democratic revolution.
The discovery of the Haber process in the 1910s was the point at which food production was no longer limited by fertile land; methane (a.k.a. cow farts, marsh gas, landfill burnoff), the chemical needed for the process, is not exclusive to oil extraction. Though we use oil to overproduce food today, people still starve due to famine. The problem is not food production but political organization, just as it has been since the invention of inexpensive ammonia fabrication. Authoritarian regimes use their power over food distribution to reward loyalists and starve threats. A world without tyrants is a world without hunger.