‘Overpopulation!’
Another way for the rich to blame the poor
“Crying ‘Overpopulation!’ is just another way of shifting blame from the rich to the poor.” — George Monbiot
George Monbiot [MON-bee-oh] is an investigative journalist whose first book focused on human rights violations in West Papua (1989); his second focused on human rights shortcomings in the Amazon (1991); his third documented violations of human rights in Kenya and Tanzania (1994); his fourth book (2000) chronicled the corporate take over of Britain and threat to democracy (viewed as a bad thing); his fifth book (2003) was a manifesto for a New World Order needed to implement a global justice movement (for humans); his sixth book (2006) was on how to stop global warming; his seventh book (2013) was on how to be enchanted while rewilding the planet; his eighth book (2022) looked at industrial agriculture (viewed as bad) and alternatives (good) while neglecting to note that the only alternative is to not turn fossil fuels, directly or indirectly, into food, and not using fossil fuels to end climate change (e.g. not turning natural gas into nitrogenous fertilizers, or using diesel to power anything…) will minimally decrease food production by 90%.
Monbiot has been a Guardian columnist since 1996. ‘Regular’ and ‘weekly’ come up, but I could find no total. But 27 years of informing the world x 52 weeks could mean 1,400 columns read by millions. Thanks to our global education system, all right thinking humans need someone to tell them what to think about complex issues (thousands do, but ever fewer can agree to disagree). Thank you George. Somebody needs to do it. Meanwhile, the pace of planetary destruction has not slowed. Not good news for 10 year olds. Somebody should tell them. Maybe Monbiot will.
Monbiot’s last book is about how the world works to produce food for humans, livestock, and pets, and not entirely a political call to action to enact political solutions, e.g. depower the rich and enrich the poor so they can exercise their rights, democratically of course, to consume more — it’s a social justice thing. Monbiot’s worldview and mindset are remorselessly human centric.
Technology will allow humans to farm cells instead of plants and animals. “Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming — and save the planet… humanity’s bacon.“— George Monbiot, techno-optimist.
We’ll grow billions of tons of whatever type of cell you want to eat in giant bioreactors, and in any quantity and combination you want. So, of course “overpopulation” can’t be a problem, and those who say it is are eco-fascist racists who want to kill black babies and poor people after their rights have been taken from them so they can be better exploited by rich people.
Like dreams of replacing fossil fuels with alternative energy sources at the same or larger scale and energy return on energy invested than fossil fuels (alt energy will cost less too), Monbiot’s imaginings are energy blind. Lab grown food will be confined to small-scale demonstration projects seeking funding… unless we start building thorium reactors NOW!
George’s book, Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet 2022, on Amazon has no ‘Look Inside’ offering, and the ‘Read sample’ is entirely quotes in praise for the book. As E.O. Wilson noted, “people would rather believe than know,” and Monbiot is a very popular writer. Telling people that we can feed as many humans as want to live on the planet, on ever less land area while producing more and higher quality food is the story I want to believe. But getting what you want (or even what I want) isn’t how the world works. Sorry about that. Such is a cartoon view of the world.
The idea that those who imagine there is or could be an “over” population problem (except of livestock) want to shift blame from the rich to the poor implies the rich (or any one group of modern expansionist humans) should be blamed, and the poor (or any other group of modern techno-industrialized humans) should be favored.
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This is “for and against” thinking. Perhaps only expansionist r-culture creates political animals like Monbiot (and 8+ billion and counting other pathogens that comprise the Man Swarm. Monbiot wrote a book on rewilding. So did David Foreman. I’m guessing Monbiot didn’t cite him as a source, nor even read his book (Man Swarm: How Overpopulation is Killing the Wild World) as it would not confirm Monbiot’s (or his reader’s) bias.
Monbiot is an investigative reporter and cites hundreds of sources who do support his worldview/mindset on any issue, whatever it may happen to be at a given time. For example, he was once antinuclear and could cite experts at book length about why nuclear power is the worst thing ever since the invention of agriculture. Now he views nuclear power based on thorium and nuclear waste burning as the best thing ever for turning clean energy into food industrially.
If thorium and other so-called nuclear ‘waste’ will replace fossil fuels, cell agriculture will produce illimitable food (by turning nuclear energy into food industrially) or if consumers prefer consuming natural plants and animals grown on such parts of the planet as are not rewilded by Monbiot (when we elect him world leader), then using less land area to produce more food will be another solution, and if so, I want to know (rather than believe Monbiot is a hypergraphic idiot whose i’s I am not worth to dot). So I got his latest book, Regenesis, to consider reading it.
I usually don’t start reading a putatively non-fiction book or article at the beginning. I read the reference section, if any, first. Who is cited, their claims, matter. If everyone cited is hopelessly biased (e.g. pro nuclear or anti-nuclear, pro alt food production, anti-conventional large-scale ag — the only kind there is for some reason), then I can save my limited time and not read the book.
In the sixth century, Jianzhi Sengcan noted that “the struggle between ‘for’ and ‘against’ is the mind’s worst disease.” He was probably not the first.
Of interest, the ebook version of books usually include hyperlinks to sources. So Regenesis:
The Nine Chapters and # of Notes/sources Cited
1 What Lies Beneath — 72 [soil good]
2 What Lies Ahead — 200 [putative solutions good]
3 Agricultural Sprawl — 318 [bad]
4 Fruitful — 56 [good]
5 The Number of the Feast — 62
6 Putting Down Roots — 145
7 Farmfree — 135 [I had already looked into what ‘farmfree’ refers to — lab-grown food]
8 Pastures New — 74
9 The Ice Saints — 1
Total references: 1,063
Of note, all notes/references are hyperlinks. As everyone knows, if it’s not published (e.g. self-published) on the internet and freely viewable (because someone wants to take in their claims, like mine, then it doesn’t matter. I’m used to usually getting around paywalled science journals using Sci-Hub and DOI number of an article, but with Monbiot, no need. He doesn’t cite paywalled science stuff. He cites “promotional” advocacy research by enthusiasts. There are over a thousand of them on the internet supporting whatever conclusion you want to confirm. Flat Earth anyone? I could cite 1,063 references proving Earth is flat before breakfast (believe me, I could).
But there actually is information on the internet that has fallen between the cracks of misinformation and disinformation, if you dig for it and know it when you trip over it. Maybe Monbiot did. So, a mere five minutes to consider each of his sources will only take 89 hours, but I’m getting old, so random sampling is the best I can do. Just scroll up and down and click on underlined text in blue before I have time to read the text. Not perfectly random, but maybe close enough.
Okay, another week saved. I don’t need to read anything Monbiot writes. So, back to reading Vaclav Smil and Tom Murphy. Monbiot should too, but he obviously won’t as doing so would be an existential threat to everything he thinks he knows. That Monbiot and the people who read him exist is evidence of a failed education system. When posterity says, “so if you knew all this, why didn’t you do something?” The answer will be, “some few knew, but the rest would rather believe than know.” This message will allow some to know why they are about to die a ghastly death.
