The shadow of the world's future, or The earth's population possibilities & the consequences of the present rate of increase of the earth's inhabitants

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1775636852

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-164018

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Knibbs, George Handley http://d-nb.info/gnd/1045010944

Title:: The shadow of the world's future, or The earth's population possibilities & the consequences of the present rate of increase of the earth's inhabitants

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Ernest Benn Limited

Year of publication:: (1928)

Scope:: 131 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter I. The Outlook

Collection:: Economics Books

THE OUTLOOK scientific knowledge believe that the future will greatly transcend what we witness to-day. , We do well to remember, however, that the possibilities are, after all, limited by the nature not only of Man himself, but also of his environment. There is no reason whatever to believe that the old civilisations of China, India, Babylon, Egypt, Peru and Mexico attained to anything like the great develop- ments in science and invention which are characteristic of modern times. All available historic records indicate that recent human progress is unique. Man is living in a larger and more difficult world than in the past, and apparently for the first time. And to-day his great problem is how to carry on the issues he has raised. His intelligence compels him to have regard to the significance of this problem. When the question of the world’s past is reviewed in a large way, one realises that the vicissitudes of Nature, with which we are familiar through meteorological studies, may possibly have greatly checked human increase. On the other hand, however, the develop- ments of agriculture, the facilities for transportation which enable commodities to be transferred readily to wherever they are found to be most serviceable, and those accessions of knowledge which have made the earth more productive—for example, schemes of irrigation and fertilisation—open up possibilities of supporting larger populations. The limits of this possibility are by no means definite. There is, moreover, another side to the whole ques- tion. Human desires have no intrinsic limit, Man tends to surround himself with more than is necessary for the maintenance of life. He desires luxuries, not only in foods but also in clothing, housing and mode of living. Compared even with the general conditions of living but two or three hundred years ago, the elaborations of modern civilisation are very striking.

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