In last week’s blog, Yogi Berra reminded us, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” One of the most frequent predictions made by climate alarmists is that global warming will result in crop failure leading to widespread famine and starvation. These alarmists paint a pretty bleak portrait of the future. In my own mind, such predictions conjure up dark and disturbing visions similar to those found in the 1981 film “The Road Warrior,” starring Mel Gibson. The film is a post-apocalyptic drama set in Australia, following a massively destructive world war and the consequent collapse of civilization. Mel Gibson plays the role of “Mad Max” Rockatansky, a former police officer whose family has been killed. He now roams the desert wasteland in his patrol car scavenging food and fuel. “Mad Max” encounters other bands of people, each fighting desperately against one another to acquire limited resources. This all makes for great theater, as long as we can watch the movie in our comfortable homes with well-stocked refrigerators. But is this nightmarish vision of the future really where we’re heading? Is humanity doomed to turn against itself as food supplies collapse? Does our only route to salvation involve giving up the fossil fuel energy that drives our world?
It’s quite helpful to know that the plea for humanity to soon rid itself of fossil fuels is hardly new. During the 1970’s, many of the leading intellectuals and the media were imploring us to slash our use of coal and oil, warning that failure to do so would bring about disaster. For example, in 1986, University of California physicist John Holdren (who later became science advisor to President Barack Obama) said it was possible that climate induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020. Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich was considered the leading public intellectual regarding human population and resources. Ehrlich rocketed to fame when in 1968 he published a book called The Population Bomb. In his book, Ehrlich famously claimed that “The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970’s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.” In 1974, Ehrlich wrote, “America’s economic joyride is coming to an end: there will be no more cheap, abundant energy; no more cheap, abundant food.” In response to the world’s growing population, Ehrlich recommended that we “must have population control at home, hopefully through a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.” Such methods would involve birth control and abortion, voluntary at first, but forced in necessary.
So what has happened since 1968? Well, the world’s population has indeed grown substantially. The world’s population was 3.6 billion in 1968. Today, the earth sustains an estimated 7.8 billion inhabitants. Rather than severely limiting our use of fossil fuels, the world has massively increased the utilization of coal, oil, and natural gas. The chart below shows how the world has acquired energy over the last 50+ years. Note that total world energy consumption has roughly tripled over that time span and the soaring use of fossil fuels has accounted for the vast majority of that increase. Much of this additional energy consumption has taken place in the developing world – countries like China, India, and Indonesia. In the United States and Western Europe, renewable energy sources like solar and wind have been growing over the last two decades – assisted by massive government subsidies and mandates. Yet in 2019, solar and wind still accounted for a minuscule 3.3% of worldwide energy. Oil continues to provide the largest share of energy production at 33%, followed by coal at 27%, and natural gas at 24%.
In the United States, the total amount of energy provided by fossil fuels continues to increase. However, the overall share of energy production from coal has fallen in recent years, replaced mostly by natural gas. (Solar and wind have slightly increased too, but even in the US they still account for only 3.9% of all energy production.) Natural gas production has dramatically increased thanks to the fracking revolution. Natural gas has several wonderful advantages. First, it is composed of very pure carbon and hydrogen. It therefore burns very cleanly without emitting any undesirable sulfur or nitrogen pollutants. Secondly, because of its chemical structure, natural gas emits only about half as much carbon dioxide as coal. In fact, since peaking in 2007, US carbon emissions have declined by almost 14% largely due to the fact that many electric power stations converted from coal to natural gas. So natural gas has been hugely beneficial in providing clean, cheap energy production while lowering carbon emissions.
So it’s been over 50 years since the dire forecasts of people such as John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich. The world’s population has dramatically increased. Fossil fuel use has soared, as have carbon dioxide emissions. Yet rather than calamity, this has been a time of unprecedented human flourishing. People around the globe are living longer than ever before. Worldwide life expectancy has steadily risen, from 56.9 years in 1970 to 72.6 years in 2019 – an increase of over 15 years! For comparison, at the dawn of the industrial revolution in 1850, worldwide life expectancy was less than 30 years. Prior to the industrial revolution and the widespread use of fossil fuels, countless lives were cut short by terrible living conditions, inadequate nutrition, scarcity of clean water and lack of health care.
Not only have people worldwide been living longer, they’ve been living far better. Even though world population has more than doubled in the last 50 years, people still enjoy far greater abundance. Although not perfect, perhaps the best measure of human material well-being is gross domestic product. GDP is the total value of goods and services produced; in other words, GDP measures wealth. In 1970, the worldwide GDP per person was just under $6,000 per person. By 2016, this had risen to an inflation adjusted figure of $14,574 – an increase of over 145%! This astonishing increase in wealth has allowed human beings to live happier, more prosperous lives than ever before. Global poverty has fallen dramatically since the industrial revolution and especially since 1950 thanks in large part to the spread of free markets and the use of fossil fuels. In 1850, roughly 87% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. (extreme poverty is defined as living on less than $1.90 per day) By 2015, less than 10% of people were still in extreme poverty! Instead of experiencing apocalyptic scarcity and impoverishment, human welfare far exceeds any other time in history.
Why were experts such as Ehrlich and Holdren so wrong? Rather than the wasteland of “Mad Max,” the world has become a place of even greater fruitfulness. Indeed, the agricultural industry is nothing less than a modern miracle. Despite many more mouths to feed, food production has skyrocketed. Check out the chart below. From 1866 until 1937, US corn production hovered just over 20 bushels per acre. Since then, corn production has dramatically increased, in recent years reaching almost 180 bushels per acre. My dad grew up on a farm in central Illinois. I remember him talking about how in the 50’s, they were elated if their farmland could yield 50 bushels per acre. The fact that modern farms can produce more than three times that yield per acre is nothing short of astonishing. Total corn production in the US has likewise risen, reaching a breathtaking 15 billion bushels in 2016. Worldwide crop production has also seen impressive increases over time. Agricultural progress means that we’re producing much more food from the same or even less farmland.
How did this agricultural miracle happen? Well, the first and most important development was the widespread mechanization of agriculture. For most of history, farms have been powered by the sheer hard work of people and draft animals. It goes without saying that you can only plow and cultivate so much land using animals. As a matter of fact, the very term “acre” was originally used to denote the amount of land that could be plowed in a single day using a yoke of oxen. Thankfully, modern farms are plowed, planted and harvested with tractors and combines. These machines are powered by fossil fuels, allowing farmers to be incredibly productive. Modern combines can harvest up to 200 acres per day! Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist notes, “A modern combine harvester, driven by a single man, can reap enough wheat in a single day to make half a million loaves [of bread.]”
Agricultural production has also been greatly aided by nitrogen based fertilizers. There would be no possible way for an acre of farmland to produce 180 bushels of corn without fertilizer. There just aren’t enough nutrients in the soil. In particular, the amount of nitrogen in the soil is usually the limiting factor in crop growth. In times past, farmers of course used manure as fertilizer to help increase crop yields, but there’s just so much manure to go around. A huge breakthrough came in 1910, when two German chemists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, developed a process to produce large scale nitrogen based fertilizers. The Haber-Bosch process involves combining nitrogen (N2) and hydrogen (H2) gases at high temperature and pressure to produce ammonia (NH3). The ammonia becomes the key component in fertilizer, as it provides the nitrogen that crops need. The source of hydrogen used in the Haber-Bosch process is methane (CH4), the primary component of natural gas. Thus, this amazing fossil fuel is critical to producing nitrogen based fertilizers. The importance of the Haber-Bosch process for increasing agricultural yields can hardly be overstated. It has been estimated that nitrogen fertilizers increase crop yields by 30%! That means that billions of people around the world are alive and well-nourished because of fertilizers produced using fossil fuels.
A third key component of the modern agricultural miracle is irrigation. Irrigated lands are able to produce 2-3 times greater crop yields versus farmland dependent on rainfall alone. Irrigation not only allows farmers to increase yield, but also utilize land in arid regions which would not otherwise be suitable for raising crops. Thanks to irrigation, people no longer have as much to fear from natural cycles of drought which would otherwise result in widespread crop failures, famine and starvation. Yet the practice of irrigation is highly dependent on the energy provided by fossil fuels. Water is not easy to transport. Just ask the countless women in the undeveloped world who spend most of their day carrying water back and forth from remote sources to their homes. Irrigation requires powerful water pumps and these pumps are usually operated by electricity generated from coal.
Therefore, despite doomsday predictions, agriculture today provides more than enough food to feed the planet’s 7.8 billion people. In fact, worldwide food production exceeds demand by about 25%; in other words, there is currently enough food for over 10 billion people. We should be truly thankful to be living in such an amazing time in human history – a time of such prosperity and abundance. We should never forget that this astounding prosperity is made possible by the widespread use of fossil fuels. Fuels that power our tractors and combines; the natural gas which provides our fertilizer; the fuels that enable the irrigation of our crops. And this is not the end of the story. There is every reason to believe that worldwide food production will continue to increase. The agricultural miracle which has taken place in the United States and other developed nations has not yet reached many parts of the world. Many parts of Africa and Asia have the same potential to massively increase crop yields and food production through agricultural mechanization, fertilization, and irrigation.
So rest easy, knowing that the world produces plenty of food and will continue to produce plenty of food in the years to come. (One of the great ironies of modern life is that most of our health problems in the United States stem from obesity rather than undernourishment.) But don’t get complacent, because it seems that some people can’t stand prosperity. Climate alarmists have unfortunately beguiled policy makers into making many decisions which have made it much more difficult to feed humanity. We’ll look at these threats next week.
