The Coming Malthusian Catastrophe.

It is a few years (not many) hence. Throughout the developing world, people are faced with dying or dead cattle, failed crops, dead fruit and nut trees, no fish in their rivers or lakes or coastal waters, and hardly any water for drinking, cleaning or sanitation, let alone irrigation. Such water as there is isn't safe to drink, being dirty, and heavily contaminated with pathogenic organisms.

Such stores of food and water as there were have long since been exhausted, and there is no food or water aid to be expected from the developed countries, who are hoarding it all for their own populations, as harvests have been bad in the American Mid-West and Canadian Prairie Provinces, too, as well as in Russia and Ukraine, still not recovered from the prolonged war between them. People in the OECD countries are not happy to be faced with food and water rationing, but they accept its necessity. They don't think there is anything to spare for the unfortunates of the 'Third World'. Altruism, at least with respect to 'people in faraway countries', is dead.

The people of the developing world are faced with other physical problems: extreme heat and humidity, often above what the human body can tolerate; and extreme - and highly destructive - weather events.

In addition to these, however, as things have got worse in terms of food and water scarcity, different ethnic, national and religious groups have competed with ever-increasing ferocity with one another for these vital resources, leading to escalating mortality, in addition to the mortality resulting from lack of them. If altruism is dead, 'parochial altruism' is, alas, very much alive, and deadly in its effect - see Choi and Bowles (2007).

The US Census Bureau informs us that world population in 2050 will be 9.75 billion. Chatham House, in its 2021 climate change risk assessment, says that the world will need to produce ~50% more food to meet demand by 2050, but yields could decline by 30% 'in the absence of dramatic emissions reductions' and the average proportion of global cropland affected by drought will probably rise to 32% p.a. by 2040, which, they point out, is over 3 times the historic average (p.2).

According to OPEC's Secretary-General, Haitham Al Ghais, oil will account for 29% of the energy mix in 2045, energy demand will increase by 23% to that year, as the world's population increases by 1.6 billion likewise. This, he informs us, requires investment of $12.1 trillion in oil to 2045, which is $550 billion a year. Reuters reported Al Ghais as saying oil demand would amount to 110 million barrels a day in 2045, which is 40.15 billion barrels a year. Current world oil demand is 102.2 million barrels a day, according to the IEA, so OPEC are predicting a rise in global oil demand over the next 22 years of 7.8 million barrels a day (2.847 billion barrels p.a.), or 7.632%. This is ~0.347% p.a., which may not seem much, but it is still far from the 'drastic emissions reductions' needed to avoid severe famine and acute water scarcity in developing countries, and moving in the wrong direction.

That this is happening is hardly surprising, given the signals sent out by our politicians: the UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, recently announced at least 100 new oil and gas drilling licences for the North Sea (Guardian, 31st July 2023). The Labour Opposition leader, Sir Keir Starmer, pledged to accept these if Labour won the forthcoming General Election, and he described Just Stop Oil's opposition to oil and gas drilling as 'contemptible', although in fact they are only opposed to new oil and gas drilling, not existing oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.

US President Joe Biden, meanwhile, approved 6,430 oil and gas drilling permits in his first two years of office, compared to former President Donald Trump's 6,172 in his first two years (Center for Biological Diversity), and gave final approval to the $8 billion (£6 billion) 'Willow Project' oil drilling project in Alaska, expected to produce 576 million barrels of oil over 30 years, or 19.2 million barrels p.a., see Guardian, 13th March 2023.

Meanwhile, the world's governments continue to subsidise fossil fuels to an enormous extent: the sums involved are truly staggering, being US$5.9 trillion in 2020, or 6.8% of global GDP, rising to 7.4% of global GDP in 2025, according to the IMF. World GDP in 2025 will be ~$116.45 trillion, according to Statista, so the global fossil fuel subsidy then will amount to $8.6173 trillion, or $273,252.79 every single second.

Compare this figure with global military expenditure: it was a mere 2.2% of global GDP in 2022, or $2.24 trillion, according to SIPRI. Either way, we are spending considerable sums of money on death, and this is in spite of the fact that global debt has reached $305 trillion as of the first quarter of 2023 (IFF), meaning the global debt/GDP ratio is 2.889, given that this year's global GDP is ~$105.57 trillion (see Statista, as above). With a population of ~8 billion, the $305 trillion amounts to a debt of $38,125 for every man, woman and child on the planet.

Capitalism is a bit like Oliver Twist - it keeps asking for more, and needs to do so, because it depends on economic growth for ever greater revenues and profits, which necessitates population growth, as it needs more consumers, even if - in these days of greater and greater automation of the production process and robot-isation even of the supply of services - it doesn't need more workers, and both of these forms of growth require more consumption of resources and energy. The latter will entail that any expansion of renewable energy will never keep up with the growing demand, but there will always be a gap for fossil fuels to fill. Of the 178,899 TWh of primary energy supplied to the world in 2022, oil supplied 52,970 TWh, natural gas 39,413 TWh, coal 44,854 TWh, traditional biomass 11,111 TWh, and modern biofuels 1,199 TWh, a combined total for the CO2-emitting fuels of 149,547 TWh, or 83.59%. Oil, natural gas and coal alone made up 137,237 TWh, or 76.71%. Source: Our World in Data.

In the World Energy Council's most optimistic scenario, the share of fossil fuels in the global primary energy mix will fall to 59% in 2050, compared to 30% for renewables and 11% for nuclear (p.12). 

In sum, if the entire human race isn't seriously f***ed, then - unless there are some drastic changes very soon - billions of us certainly will be.