"They," "socialists," are not at all doing their duty when they uncritically reproduce statements directly Malthusian claiming that the "natural" carrying capacity of the earth is 2 billion people.
Such an assertion is more than nonsense, it is reactionary, antithetical to every single actual fact of social development. Some of us uncharitable sorts, not blessed with the forgiving, accommodating personality of others, might also point out that such a statement is ignorant. No species increases beyond "natural limits" by a factor of 3, without experiencing catastrophic population crashes. Now unless someone wants to take that next Maltushian step, an anti-baby step, and claim that wars are a function of overpopulation and for population control, there is no sense to discussing natural limits of populations. The notion of overpopulation is not scientifically based, it is, as Chase showed more than 30 years ago in his great The Legacy of Malthus, pseudo-scientifically based, and designed specifically to preserve the power of those already in power. Certainly population growth rates tend to decline as/when Louis Proyect describes it. But all those elements of the description, literacy, health care, etc. are functions of one single thing: economic development. Economic development means agricultural productivity leading to an urban expansion. And that takes energy. Big energy. (Aside: Kerala is very very interesting, having been more or less a matriarchy for years-- but currently, things are not quite so rosy there as we would like to believe. Kerala's "development" is not without contradiction, pollution, and social exploitation. It is no more the way forward than Cuba's experiments, remarkable as they may be, with bio-farming will lead to self-sufficiency in food production). I think Louis Proyect's statement re population and limits and global warming says all that is wrong in the "naturalist" analysis : "However, we do know that there are *natural barriers* to unlimited population growth. The most dramatic of these is global warming which is a byproduct of energy consumption..." Global warming is not a product of 6 billion people on a planet built for 2. Global warming is the product of the private property system of capital's need to garner profit no matter what the SOCIAL cost. If that isn't the case, then indeed, the more than 2 billion people living on a dollar a day, the 4 billion living in poverty, the 5.2 billion living on the rations determined by a ruling class, have no way out, as the energy requirements for their emancipation from privation, that is to say the emancipation of us all, cannot be fulfilled. dms
