{"id":100592,"date":"2017-09-29T07:15:19","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T15:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gnxp.nofe.me\/?p=189571"},"modified":"2017-09-29T07:15:19","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T15:15:19","slug":"this-time-it-was-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/2017\/09\/29\/this-time-it-was-different\/","title":{"rendered":"This time it was different"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/publicdata\/embed?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&amp;ctype=l&amp;strail=false&amp;bcs=d&amp;nselm=h&amp;met_y=sp_dyn_cbrt_in&amp;scale_y=lin&amp;ind_y=false&amp;rdim=region&amp;ifdim=region&amp;tdim=true&amp;hl=en_US&amp;dl=en_US&amp;ind=false&amp;icfg&amp;iconSize=0.5\" width=\"600\" height=\"425\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B004VMV3U4\/geneexpressio-20\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-189572\" src=\"http:\/\/gnxp.nofe.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/standonzanzibar.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"183\" height=\"275\" \/><\/a>As a child I was a consumer of a fair amount of environmentalist alarmism. Not the standard stuff you see on the news, but books like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B071RXJ697\/geneexpressio-20\">The Population Bomb<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I also read the science fiction classic <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B004VMV3U4\/geneexpressio-20\">Stand on Zanzibar<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B004VMV3U4\/geneexpressio-20\">Stand on Zanzibar<\/a> is about an overpopulated Malthusian world. It is the world of 2010, and the population is 7 billion. The author, John Brunner, was writing in 1968. This was the beginning of the worries about population growth and sustainability.<\/p>\n<p>Brunner was right about the world population in 2010&#8230;but it&#8217;s not quite the dystopia that he painted. In some places, like the Congo, it is quite hellish. But in much of the world there is a slow but steady advancement, much of it thanks to China.<\/p>\n<p>Rather than the inevitability of a Malthusian crisis due to overpopulation (note that fertility rates peaked in the 1960s) slowly creeping up on us, I think we need to worry about our society&#8217;s ability to withstand shocks. <strong>Those shocks might destabilize the social matrix which our high productivity society needs to survive,<\/strong> and without that productivity, we will be a Malthusian crisis.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\" href=\"https:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/add_to\/facebook?linkurl=https%3A%2F%2Fgnxp.nofe.me%2F2017%2F09%2F29%2Fthis-time-it-was-different%2F&amp;linkname=This%20time%20it%20was%20different\" title=\"Facebook\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" ><\/a><a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\" href=\"https:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/add_to\/twitter?linkurl=https%3A%2F%2Fgnxp.nofe.me%2F2017%2F09%2F29%2Fthis-time-it-was-different%2F&amp;linkname=This%20time%20it%20was%20different\" title=\"Twitter\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" ><\/a><a class=\"a2a_button_google_plus\" href=\"https:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/add_to\/google_plus?linkurl=https%3A%2F%2Fgnxp.nofe.me%2F2017%2F09%2F29%2Fthis-time-it-was-different%2F&amp;linkname=This%20time%20it%20was%20different\" title=\"Google+\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" ><\/a><a class=\"a2a_dd addtoany_share_save\" href=\"https:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Fgnxp.nofe.me%2F2017%2F09%2F29%2Fthis-time-it-was-different%2F&amp;title=This%20time%20it%20was%20different\" data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/gnxp.nofe.me\/2017\/09\/29\/this-time-it-was-different\/\" data-a2a-title=\"This time it was different\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a child I was a consumer of a fair amount of environmentalist alarmism. Not the standard stuff you see on the news, but books like The Population Bomb. I also read the science fiction classic Stand on Zanzibar. Stand on Zanzibar is about an overpopulated Malthusian world. It is the world of 2010, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[129,388,2756],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-environmentalism","category-overpopulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100592"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100593,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100592\/revisions\/100593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}