In the context of western history, Patient Zero in the plague of models may have been Thomas Robert Malthus, who created a mathematical model of human starvation, and whose name became synonymous with “OMG, we’re all going to die!”
Malthus wrote in “An Essay on the Principle of Population” in 1798:
“If the subsistence for man that the earth affords was to be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what the whole world at present produces, this would allow the power of production in the earth to be absolutely unlimited, and its ratio of increase much greater than we can conceive that any possible exertions of mankind could make it ... yet still the power of population being a power of a superior order, the increase of the human species can only be kept commensurate to the increase of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity acting as a check upon the greater power.”
The result of this most simple of abstract models of risk was that within a predictable period, human population growth would outstrip the ability of agriculture to feed them, resulting in mass starvation. Too many mouths and too little food would lead to mass hunger and death. This argument (made about starvation in Ireland) later led Jonathan Swift to satirically propose “A Modest Solution” that basically came down to, “So let’s eat all the babies.”
Of course, Malthus was wrong on both assumptions: human populations don’t grow exponentially indefinitely (nor do any living things, for that matter), and agriculture was quite capable of matching or exceeding the human population’s demand for food. Fortunately, Swift was also wrong, and there was no need to eat the babies.
Even though Malthusian thinking has been disproven more often than sightings of UFOs and Bigfoot, you probably still see variations on Malthusian models nearly every time you open a web browser, watch a news program, or do research on everything from property values to the price of Corinthian leather or Italian marble bath tiles. If there’s anything that we’re not either running out of, or going to be overwhelmed by, you generally won’t read about it in the popular press.
- chemicals in the air we breathe;
- chemicals in the water we drink and the food we eat;
- chemicals in the soil, the oceans, the clouds (yes, the clouds);
- too much sunlight;
- too little sunlight;
- the wrong kind of light (radiation);
- running out of stuff;
- drowning in wasted stuff;
- killing off animal species;
- being overrun by animal species;
- causing mutations to animal species;
- not finding animals where they’ve historically lived;
- having animals fetching up in places they have NOT historically lived; and, of course…
- diseases of a zillion sorts, with viruses top-of-mind at present.
But, as the saying goes, “It’s all in good fun when the glaciers are retreating away from the village. It’s not so good when they’re expanding toward the village.” (Okay, I’ll admit it, I made up that saying.) Because, of course, there are worse things out there than running out of things, even cuddly Coca-Cola polar bears:
And while we’re in the mutant invasion column, send in the “Spotted and Oddly Striped Zebras.” And don’t forget the mutant wolves of Chernobyl, cougars with deformed tails, deformed sea urchins, deformed frogs, mutant bugs and birds, two-headed sharks, and deformed fish with tumors. And lest we forget, the dreaded alligators of Lake Apopka, with their deformed genitals. (And wouldn’t you like to be the person who measures that little variable, hmm?) There is hope, though, because:
