Malthus, Overpopulation and Immigration

Malthus, Overpopulation and Immigration

In the same week (28th of March to 1st April, 2011) two rather alarming reports have surfaced in the world's press: first, the Chinese are considering relaxing their one child per family laws for ethnic Han Chinese living in urban areas, secondly, we learn that in the last 10 years the population of India has grown by 180 million - the same number as the population of the whole of Brazil.

Why should this concern me, currently visiting Brazil, although I have to recognise that it too is an overpopulated country in the sense that it cannot provide jobs or, by the government's own admission, sufficient food, for all of its population (hence its Bolsa Família programme)?  The reasons sit in ships in ports in south of Brazil.  The ships are full of soybeans heading to China.  No problem there, I hear you cry; trade between the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) must be a good thing.  It may well be, until we start calculating the environmental cost of growing this soya.  According to that indispensable organ, The Soybean and Corn Adviser, the total area estimated to be given over to soya cultivation in 2009-10 in Brazil is 22,300,00 hectares as opposed to 21,60,000 hectares in the previous season.

In other words, Brazil is bailing out China's inability to curtail its own population at the cost of converting existing pasture and also of course cutting down new areas of untouched vegetation.  This situation would be bad enough as it stands but if the population of China increases as a result of relaxing the one child policy; if the population of Brazil increases as it is doing, and if India becomes incapable of feeding its rapidly increasing population then we are going to see devastating destruction of Brazil's natural organic resources.

Add to this the increased demand for vehicle fuel, a great part of which is now being met by ethanol produced from sugar cane, an increase caused partly by the net increase in numbers of vehicles, especially in the developing world, and partly by the uncertainties of the Middle East, and we see another threat to those resources as the current 8,00,000 hectares devoted to sugar cane cultivation in Brazil, half of which is made into ethanol, will have to be increased.

So what does all this have to do with Malthus? We are constantly being told that the ideas of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), which claimed that human populations increase geometrically while the capacity to feed them increases arithmetically, are wrong.  This contradiction is justified by pointing out how human science has created new crops of rice, for example, there are more productive and resistant to disease and therefore capable of feeding more people.

Other anti-Malthus arguments state that there is plenty of undeveloped land left in the world where food can be grown.  This land is not, of course desert that can be recovered only with difficulty and large amounts of cash, it is found in areas like the Amazon rainforest, which is easy to tear down and where governments are either quietly encouraging deforestation, too weak to prevent it or corruptly profiting from it.  And when the last trees in the Amazon are felled to grow soybeans or sugarcane or raise cattle, where shall we pillage next to feed our growing populations?

What this argument fails to point out is that all this palliative dithering with genetic modification does is simply postpone the point at which the world's capacity for producing food is overwhelmed by the numbers of people wanting to eat it. And it is not simply a question of food supplies: although we are not supposed to use the word, Europe and North America are currently being ‘swamped’ by immigrants squeezed out of their native countries either because there is insufficient food for them or because population numbers mean there is simply too much competition for the few jobs available, competition that sometimes leads to civil violence.

At the moment the pressure for resources is leading the West to head East and occupy Iraq and attempt to control oil reserves in the rest of the Middle East, while the pressure for lebensraum is leading a population shift from East to West, towards Europe and North America.  Sometimes the two currents cross, as in the incidents of Muslims in Britain insulting soldiers returning from the Middle East.  If anyone is naive enough to believe that this two-way traffic is a benign result of market forces or the natural adjustment of global population, a quick glance at the headlines in today's newspapers should be enlightening.

One of the curious aspects of being alarmed by or raising an alarm about the current situation of mass immigration (we are told one million people have immigrated into Britain within the last 12 months) is that such activity is regarded as right-wing oppression.  If the political right wing is traditionally associated with a country's employer class, a right-wing policy would actually encourage immigration, as importing cheap labour reduces the costs of industrial production.  If a traditionally left-wing posture involves supporting the working classes then opposing importing cheap workers into working class residential areas, thus undercutting local wages and changing social patterns without consulting the original inhabitants, should perhaps be seen as a left-wing activity.

This is of course having an interesting effect on the political face of the developed world as people in those social groups originally introduced as cheap labour are now demanding decent wages and full access to material goods and social services.  Opposition to these demands is being increasingly expressed through votes for political parties that are currently accused of being ‘right-wing extremists’, as we are currently seeing in France.  All one can say to this is that politicians who do not wish to see the rise of such extremists should perhaps pay more attention to what is happening on their own streets.  When an Anglican bishop states that parts of his diocese are ‘no-go areas’ for non-Muslims it may be worth paying some attention.

Another brick thrown at those arguing in favour of reducing population to manageable levels and restricting or forbidding permanent immigration is that their arguments are racially prejudiced.  This is quite clearly nonsense because in the case of Europe and the North American states founded by Europeans, there is no dominant race.  It is absurd for an Englishman to decry the racial status of another person because he himself will be unable to confidently state that he is of unmixed Anglo-Saxon blood.  And if he did then I as a Welshman might invite him to return to the wretched lowlands from which his ancestors immigrated to our green and pleasant land.

No, the argument against immigration of all kinds is a demographic one.  In the case of Britain anyone who has lived in the same place for 30 years or who returns to his or her birthplace after time spent away will probably find open fields have been built on and the general physical quality of life has deteriorated thanks to increased numbers of people and their increased demands on natural and social resources.

In a democratic society we theoretically have the right to decide whether we want this situation to continue but in a recent public meeting in my own home town concerning the planned imposition of 400 new houses (with no plans for creating jobs for those who will live in them) it was quite clear that the decision had been made on high and no amount of local representation was going to make any difference.

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