We Are 8 Billion!
“The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.”
An Essay on The Principle of Population, 1798: chpt VII, para 20, lines 2-4
For more on Malthus
Reading the news on November 15, 2022, the UN reporting there are 8 billion of us on the planet had me remembering that the Resource Clock in the foyer at IDRC HQ, 250 Albert Street had been noticed when the population reached 5 billion on July 12, 1987.
By happy coincidence alumna Anne Whyte, urged by her daughter, who, reading the population news, wrote to asked what had happened to the clock and sharing, “watching that clock tick over was one of her strong and abiding memories of visits to IDRC when she was a young child.”
The clock was still in place in 1999 when IDRC produced the brochure: The Resource Clock, with the clock showing 6 billion!
So, Dear Readers, I share the question: “Does anyone know what happened to the IDRC Resource Clock?”
Anne remembers “pausing by the large stainless steel clock many times in the lobby and I recall Ivan’s satisfaction when it was first installed and linked to the UN population database. The only one in Canada! A ticking symbol of IDRC’s international status in bureaucratic Ottawa.”
Neither of us recalls the inauguration of the clock but we do remember a story of Geoff Hawtin critiquing the “algorithm” that linked the count of population increase to that for the decrease in arable land. He was deemed correct in his analysis and the clock disappeared for a fix.
With help from the always impressive people in the IDRC Library I was able to find IDRC, on July 8, 1987, hosting a Media Seminar to raise awareness of our Planet reaching the 5 billion population Plimsoll Line.
DRC President Ivan Head opened the event and Anne, as Director of the Social Sciences Division, was Chairman (sic) of the panel:
- Africa – Mpembele Sala-Diakanda, Director of the Institute for Training and Demographic Research (IFORD), Cameroon
- Asia – Dr. Anchalee Singhanetra-Renard, professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Chiang Mai University in Thailand
- Latin America – Jose Alberto Magno de Carvalho, Director of the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil
- Canada – Alan Simmons, President, Canadian Population Society
IDRC members of staff were busy answering question from TV, radio and press. In addition to Ivan Head and Anne; Melba Gomez, Alan Simmons, James Mullin, Joseph Hulse, Marc Farren and a friend of the Centre, Morris Strong were busy.
The Headlines / lessons taken from the briefings were mixed: City Cheers baby No. 5 billon (Ottawa Sunday Herald); Five billion population –mark – cause for concern not celebration (Cambridge Daily Reporter); Prospects bleak for world’s five billionth child (Windsor Star)….
Of all that was written, this, from the Toronto Star, captures the essence of the news on July 15, 1987 and makes the link to the news of November 15, 2022.
“But as Head and other thinkers well recognize, there is a deeper, more widespread global problem: poverty. Without solutions to feeding the world’s hungry, there is small chance of addressing issues of war, peace and the environment.
Solutions mean change – change that is not even being debated in the assemblies and parliaments of industrialized nations, comfortable as they are. As the World Commission on Environment and Development noted: “Those responsible for managing natural resources and protecting the environment are institutionally separated from those responsible for managing the economy. The real world of interlocked economic and ecological systems will not change: the policies and institutions concerned must.”
What is the world coming to? The answer, for better or worse: A place of our own making.”
Not quite plus ça change: current conversations do accept the inextricable link that binds economics and ecology as key to the planet’s environment.
Let’s give Malthus the last word:
“Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.”
An Essay on The Principle of Population, 1798: chpt XIX, para 15, line 1
Click for the July 15, 1987 Media Seminar clipping archive (144 pages).
Thanks to Anne and daughter, Jo, for this trip in the Time Machine.
Bulletin No. 70
January 2023