Malthusian Swerve

Summary

Radiolab Episode Summary: "Malthusian Swerve"

Release Date: March 28, 2025
Hosts: Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser
Produced by: WNYC Studios
Description: Radiolab delves deep into human curiosity, blending science, history, and personal stories with innovative sound design. In the episode "Malthusian Swerve," the hosts explore the concept of resource depletion and humanity's capacity for innovation to avert potential catastrophes.

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1. Introduction to the Malthusian Swerve

Latif Nasser initiates the episode by reflecting on a lecture by astrophysicist Sandra Faber, which sparked his concern about the exponential growth of Earth's GDP and its unsustainable impact on the planet's resources.

Sandra Faber [03:14]: "We can see this number is completely ridiculous."
Latif Nasser [04:19]: "We're gonna just eat the planet up. We're gonna devour the physical material level of this planet. We're gonna eat it up in more like a couple thousand years."

2. Understanding Economic Growth and Resource Consumption

The discussion centers on the alarming statistic presented by Faber: a consistent 3% annual global GDP growth rate leading to the rapid depletion of Earth's resources within millennia, a stark contrast to the planet's potential lifespan of hundreds of millions of years.

Jeff Guo, host of NPR's Planet Money, joins the conversation to assist in breaking down these numbers and exploring their implications.

Jeff Guo [07:13]: "Like, this is so totally not precise."
Latif Nasser [08:19]: "No copper for anybody."

3. Resource Depletion Scenarios

The hosts examine several critical resources, assessing their current consumption rates and estimated depletion timelines under continued 3% growth:

a. Copper

• Consumption: ~27 million tons/year
• Estimated Depletion: ~70 years

Jeff Guo [07:23]: "Copper's a big deal, right?"
Latif Nasser [08:33]: "70 years. 70."

b. Sand and Gravel

• Consumption: ~50 billion tons/year
• Estimated Depletion: ~600 years

Jeff Guo [09:08]: "We're using so much. We actually don't know."
Latif Nasser [10:46]: "That is nuts."

c. Lithium

• Consumption: ~200,000 tons/year (growing at ~20% annually)
• Estimated Depletion: ~100 years

Latif Nasser [12:19]: "Which is bad, Jeff. It's bad."

d. Oil

• Consumption: ~37 billion barrels/year
• Estimated Depletion: ~28 years

Jeff Guo [14:35]: "2052 might be the day we run out of oil."
Latif Nasser [14:59]: "Wow."

4. Historical Example: The Transition from Charcoal to Coal

Jeff recounts the 1400s England's overreliance on charcoal for iron production, leading to deforestation. The crisis was averted by Abraham Darby in 1709, who innovated the use of coal in blast furnaces, highlighting a recurring pattern where humanity finds innovative solutions to resource crises.

Jeff Guo [15:37]: "But then something happened... he figured out coal."
Latif Nasser [17:33]: "Oh, my God, where are the trees going?"

5. Defining the Malthusian Swerve

The hosts coin the term "Malthusian Swerve" to describe the phenomenon where impending resource depletion crises are circumvented by technological innovations or discovery of new resources. This concept is named after Thomas Malthus, who predicted that population growth would outpace resource availability, leading to widespread misery—a prophecy not fulfilled due to such swerves.

Jeff Guo [19:37]: "I think we should call this the Malthusian swerve."
Latif Nasser [23:27]: "Swerve. I like it. I like it."

6. Current Implications and Future Outlook

The conversation shifts to contemporary challenges, particularly oil consumption and the fracking revolution, which temporarily averted the "peak oil" crisis but introduced new environmental issues. This underscores the complexity of relying solely on resource-based swerves without addressing underlying sustainability concerns.

Latif Nasser [29:08]: "But is that a swerve? Like, I mean, if we're... just find another way to get more fossil fuels."
Jeff Guo [29:19]: "We have a problem that's not, it's not a scarcity problem, it's an anti-scarcity problem."

7. Conversation with Sandra Faber

Sandra Faber joins the dialogue to provide her perspective on the multifaceted crises humanity faces, emphasizing the need for a mature understanding of wealth and growth management to navigate multiple simultaneous challenges, referred to as the "poly crisis" or "metacrisis."

Sandra Faber [36:28]: "A crisis of crises. Yeah. So every time we think of one of these possible swerves... a gigantic fraction of the problem unsolved."

8. Reflections on Economic Systems and Growth

Jeff and Latif debate the role of economic systems in managing resource scarcity, questioning whether capitalism and market incentives are sufficient or if a more household-like cooperative approach is necessary. They express concern over the difficulty of long-term planning and collective action to prevent environmental degradation.

Latif Nasser [32:27]: "If this was your car... you'd take their keys away."
Jeff Guo [31:04]: "Invent something newer, cheaper, better than what we had before."

9. Conclusion and Call to Action

The episode concludes with reflections on the need for systemic changes in how humanity approaches growth and resource management. The hosts express both hope and apprehension about the future, highlighting the importance of innovative thinking and cooperative efforts to ensure a sustainable existence on Earth.

Sandra Faber [35:51]: "Where is the next swerve?"
Latif Nasser [39:27]: "You don't need to relisten... here's hoping that it prompts a lot more conversation, maybe even action."

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Notable Quotes:

• Jeff Guo [19:40]: "I think we should call this the Malthusian swerve."
• Latif Nasser [35:24]: "We have been given the gift of cosmic time."
• Sandra Faber [36:25]: "A crisis of crises."

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Key Takeaways:

• Malthusian Swerve: A recurring historical pattern where potential resource depletion crises are averted through innovation or discovery of new resources.
• Resource Depletion Risks: Critical resources like copper, sand, lithium, and oil face significant depletion timelines under continued economic growth.
• Economic Growth vs. Sustainability: The tension between GDP growth and sustainable resource management requires reassessment of how wealth and growth are conceptualized and pursued.
• Future Challenges: Addressing multiple simultaneous crises necessitates a mature and cooperative approach to resource management and economic planning.

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This comprehensive exploration in "Malthusian Swerve" challenges listeners to rethink the trajectory of economic growth and its environmental impact, urging proactive innovation and systemic change to secure a sustainable future.

Transcript

[Latif Nasser]

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[Lulu Miller]

Hey, Lulu here. So, a few months back, I our illustrator, Jared Bartman got a difficult prompt. We asked him to design a cute tote bag based on our incredibly morbid episode, cheating Death. And Jared was stumped. How do you create something plucky and cheerful and design forward about the inevitability of dying? So he brooded and he doodled. And then one day, it hit him. It is easily my favorite design ever. And because it's sort of this secret code about death, it's kind of like carrying carpadium around on your shoulder. And you can get that tote bag right now if you become a member of the lab. You knew it was coming. The lab is the way we have designed to support the show. It's super easy, just a couple clicks. You send a few bucks our way a month in exchange for, you know, public radio, currency, tote bags, and other perks. Whether you support us or not, we are so grateful for you. But if you've ever been on the fence, I would say that now is a really good time. Because not only does the tote bag have a very cool surrealist design, it also has a zipper. So go take a [e-mail] join. That's Radiolab.org join and that's all. Thank you. On with the show.

[Jeff Guo]

Oh, wait, you're listening. Okay. All right.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

All right. You're listening to Radiolab Radio from wny.

[Latif Nasser]

Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Latif Nasser. So a couple of weeks ago, we put up a brand new episode called Growth. We talked about pumpkins and a finger and some slugs and every single person on our planet. But there was one Growthy. You know, currently growing thing we did not talk about, which is the economy. Now what got me thinking about economic growth was not all the stuff that's in the news, the tariffs, the fear of the recession, all that stuff that everybody's talking about. What started it was a lecture I heard a little while back by of all people, an astrophysicist.

[Sandra Faber]

So I'm going to sketch what we know about Earth's history, cosmically speaking.

[Latif Nasser]

Her name is Sandra Faber, she goes by Sandy. Brilliant scientist. She co authored the standard model for thinking about how galaxies form. She won a national medal of Science back in 2011. And she started the lecture by saying we have a pretty happy little planet to live on.

[Sandra Faber]

Earth is a good place to live for, let's say of order 100 million.

[Latif Nasser]

Years at least should be livable for a really, really long time. Okay, except, so now she goes on.

[Sandra Faber]

To say, over the last century or so, we've been seeing planet wide GDP growing exponentially now.

[Latif Nasser]

So what she did is she took the average gross domestic product worldwide and that's a rough measure of economic growth. And that had been growing recently around 3%, which for economists is like a.

[Sandra Faber]

Happy little growth number you will recognize 1.033.

[Latif Nasser]

But Sandra took that 3% and with some quick math, she started to just play it out year after year. And in her lecture she's showing this chart where you can see this curve just shooting up.

[Sandra Faber]

We can see this number is completely ridiculous.

[Latif Nasser]

And she was basically like, look at all that growth that's eating up Earth's resources.

[Sandra Faber]

A large number here is bad because means that we want more of that product.

[Latif Nasser]

And so even though Earth should be good for 100 million years, we're gonna just eat the planet up. We're gonna devour the physical material level of this planet. We're gonna eat it up in more like a couple thousand years.

[Sandra Faber]

And my concern is that we're not talking.

[Latif Nasser]

And when I heard that, that was, that was, that was breathtaking and horrifying. And honestly, like I haven't been able to stop thinking about that number. 3% sounds like a specific thing, but also it's kind of abstract and mathy. And I wanted help, I wanted help to parse this out. Like how bad is that really? How bad could that possibly be? And so I turn to someone whose job it is to literally make sense of this exact kind of thing.

[Jeff Guo]

Hello.

[Latif Nasser]

Hi, how you doing?

[Jeff Guo]

Hi, I'm doing well, how are you?

[Latif Nasser]

And we had what I felt like was a kind of a roller coaster Of a conversation. So I'm just gonna play it for you right now.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. Okay. So I am Jeff Guo. I'm one of the hosts of the Planet Money podcast at npr.

[Latif Nasser]

Terrific show.

[Jeff Guo]

Thank you. And I guess what do I do? I talk about economics all day. That's.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, my God.

[Jeff Guo]

That's what I do.

[Latif Nasser]

I need you. I need you to help me. It's more than scratch an itch. I need you to help me cure.

[Jeff Guo]

This existential dread that you have now.

[Latif Nasser]

That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay. Well, I mean, I guess where I would start is. And you know, I would hate to contradict a Nobel prize winning astrophysicist. It sounds like, you know, starting out on dangerous territory.

[Latif Nasser]

I mean, well, she won the National Medal of Science, not the Nobel, but she's gonna.

[Jeff Guo]

She's gonna. It sounds like she's gonna win.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, yeah, sure. Fair.

[Jeff Guo]

But you did ask me to kind of look into what things are we gonna run out of.

[Latif Nasser]

Yes, yes, yes. Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay. Yeah, yeah, so I did. So I looked at a bunch of things that people are kind of worried about, and I just did some very rough back of the envelope math. Like, this is so totally not precise.

[Latif Nasser]

My favorite kind of math. My favorite kind of math.

[Jeff Guo]

Wavy.

[Latif Nasser]

Great. I love it.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay, so I don't know, what should we start with? Copper.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, that's a big deal.

[Jeff Guo]

Copper's a big deal, right?

[Latif Nasser]

Very big deal.

[Jeff Guo]

So if you look at copper consumption over the past century, since the Industrial revolution, our demand for copper has grown about 3% every year.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

Like, you know, in recent years, it's. We've consumed about 26, 27 million tons a year of copper.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

So if you just, you know, extrapolate that out. If you just assume copper is going to keep growing at 3% every single year. Right.

[Latif Nasser]

Fair. Fair assumption.

[Jeff Guo]

I looked up how much copper people think we have. According to geologists, what we know is out there and could theoretically get to. And that number right now is 5 to 6 billion tons.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

It's not nothing, but we're using it pretty quickly. And if you just assume that. That this number is going to keep growing at 3% a year.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah, sure.

[Jeff Guo]

It would take about maybe another 70 years and then no more copper.

[Latif Nasser]

That's it. 70 years.

[Jeff Guo]

70 years. 70.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, okay, so that sounds terrible.

[Jeff Guo]

It's true. It's true. That's assuming, of course, that, you know, we do keep consuming copper at that.

[Latif Nasser]

Point, using copper and kneading copper the same way that we are. Yeah, yeah, sure. T minus 70.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

No copper for anybody.

[Jeff Guo]

No copper.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, okay, so then what. But then. So that's. This seems to point exactly to Sandy Faber's point, right? It's true.

[Jeff Guo]

It's true. It's true.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Do you want to do another one?

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, that's the end of it. I thought you were going to be like, but there's a giant. There's a copper thing that we're going to. No, there's no but. That's it. It's just like. Yeah, she's right about copper.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay, but. There's a but. There is a but coming up. There's a but. Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay.

[Latif Nasser]

You want to go through more of them before we get to the but? Is that the idea?

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay. Okay. Okay, okay. Okay. Next one. Okay, next one.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay, so another one I looked into is sand.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay. Yeah. Which seems like there should be a ton of that.

[Jeff Guo]

Seems like there should be so much of it.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

And you know the reason why we need sand, Right.

[Latif Nasser]

And why do we need sand for concrete? Ah.

[Jeff Guo]

So it's actually so important that we don't know how much we're using.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, my God.

[Jeff Guo]

Like, we're using so much. We just. We actually don't know. But, like, ballpark estimates, we're using maybe 50 billion tons of sand and gravel every year.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, that sounds like a lot.

[Jeff Guo]

I don't even know. I can't even visualize that. I don't. It's a lot.

[Latif Nasser]

Right.

[Jeff Guo]

And I couldn't even find how much sand and gravel there is in the world. Like, nobody actually knows.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

This is one of those numbers where it's like, uh, but we're doing, like, back of the envelope math here.

[Latif Nasser]

Right, right, right.

[Jeff Guo]

So I was like, well, if we don't know how much sand and gravel there is in the world, surely we know how much rock there is in the world. Right?

[Latif Nasser]

Totally. Totally, totally.

[Jeff Guo]

So I looked it up, and according to geologists, the Earth's crust, all of the Earth's crust, contains maybe like 23 quintillion tons of rock and stuff. Okay, okay.

[Latif Nasser]

But. But it does seem like, like the. The whole point of sand is that it's. It's like teeny tiny. It's this. Like, it would. It would take a lot of energy to turn that rock.

[Jeff Guo]

It would.

[Latif Nasser]

Sand.

[Jeff Guo]

It would. But assuming that we're able to do that. Right.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay. Assuming that we're going to use sand that. That we're going to use sand and gravel. At a rate that grows by 3% every year.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Year after year after year.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

It would take about. Do you want to guess how long it would take to deplete the entire Earth's crust?

[Latif Nasser]

Wait, so, quintillion. Based on the growth rate now, I would imagine this one is gonna be. This one is not on Sandra Faber's side. I'm gonna guess this one is, like, way, way, way far from now. Like, this is gonna be like a million years or something.

[Jeff Guo]

Five to six hundred years.

[Latif Nasser]

That seems so short. Again, that is way shorter for the whole crust.

[Jeff Guo]

I know.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, my God. That's not like it's long, but it's not that long. That's like. That is nuts.

[Jeff Guo]

All right, I got a couple more.

[Latif Nasser]

It's just making me more and more existentially worried. Okay, but keep going.

[Jeff Guo]

That's how I felt when I started on this journey. Right. Okay, I got a couple more.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, great. Love it.

[Jeff Guo]

I gotta pull up my spreadsheet. I'm gonna talk about lithium.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, great. Good one, good one. And lithium, you imagine there are, like, those giant deserts filled with those, like, sand flats or whatever, right?

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. In Bolivia.

[Latif Nasser]

In Bolivia, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so this one will be again, like, I think this one. I feel like there's gonna be a curve ball in here where you're like, no, no, no. We have enough for millions of years anyway. Okay, keep going.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay, hang on. Let me see. Let me pull up my. Where did my notes go on this? I can't wait when we have to fact check all of this. Okay. Lithium. So we are using about 190, 200,000 tons of lithium every year.

[Latif Nasser]

Right?

[Jeff Guo]

That's kind of.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, so. And that's like in. That's in phones, electric cars. Da, da, da, da.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, Batteries. Batteries is a big one for lithium. Very important. Lithium consumption, of course, has been exploding. So over the past decade, lithium has been growing. You want to guess how much it's been growing?

[Latif Nasser]

What, like 5% or 10%?

[Jeff Guo]

On average, around 20%.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay. Wow. Okay, wow.

[Jeff Guo]

So we need a lot. And we need a lot more lithium, which is good.

[Latif Nasser]

Which is good. Which means, like, more electric cars, more. Da, da, da, da. Right. More recyclable batteries and stuff. That's great.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. So geologists think that of all the lithium that we know is out there, there's probably like 105 million tons of it, like, out there.

[Latif Nasser]

That sounds a lot less than the sand. You're like, this doesn't sound. This is gonna get worrying. Okay, keep going.

[Jeff Guo]

Right. And so, you know, if you do this all, you know, the same math, and you just. If you assume. If you just assume, just, you know, for the sake of argument, it's only gonna grow at 3% a year, right?

[Latif Nasser]

Sure.

[Jeff Guo]

We'd probably run out of lithium around about March.

[Latif Nasser]

I feel like you're gonna say, like. I feel like you're gonna say, like, so soon. Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

But keep going about a hundred years.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, 100 years again.

[Jeff Guo]

It's not bad.

[Latif Nasser]

No, it is bad. It's bad, Jeff. It's bad. We need that. Like, we're gonna need that later for even better stuff.

[Jeff Guo]

It's true.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, keep going.

[Jeff Guo]

I'll do one more. I'll do one more. Which is. This is a big one. Oil.

[Latif Nasser]

Mm. Really scary one. Yeah. But hopefully we're weaning off of this one, so maybe this one is a different.

[Jeff Guo]

Hopefully.

[Latif Nasser]

Like, it's going in the opposite direction.

[Jeff Guo]

Hopefully. Doesn't seem like it's really happening yet.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, gosh.

[Jeff Guo]

But.

[Latif Nasser]

But I don't think you have had a single piece of good news here.

[Jeff Guo]

Just wait for it.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

All right, so if you look at oil, right? How much do we consume every year? About 37 billion barrels of oil as a world. How much is left? Probably 1.6 trillion barrels.

[Latif Nasser]

Really?

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. So it's not.

[Latif Nasser]

That's a lot.

[Jeff Guo]

It's a lot, but it's maybe less. It's less than I thought. So another way to say 1.6 trillion is 1600 billion.

[Latif Nasser]

Right. Right.

[Jeff Guo]

So 37 billion a year. We have about 1600 billion barrels left out there.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, that. When you say it like that, it sounds quite. Quite alarming. Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Not great. So, you know, if you do the math again, exponential growth, there's.

[Latif Nasser]

We do want to use less of it anyway, Right? Yeah. I'm ambivalent about this.

[Jeff Guo]

Trying to. Yeah.

[Sandra Faber]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

About 28 years.

[Latif Nasser]

No way. That is nothing.

[Jeff Guo]

2052 might be the day we run out of oil.

[Latif Nasser]

Wow.

[Jeff Guo]

Maybe. Maybe.

[Latif Nasser]

I was worried about when Sandra Faber said we had thousands of years. And you're like, you are taking me even an order of magnitude less if that.

[Jeff Guo]

Maybe decades. Yeah. So I started to get a little nervous, and so I thought, well, what happened in the past? You know, like, when we were overexploiting some resource and it looked like it was gonna run out. And when I looked into it, there's this funny thing that happens. And so just for example, let me tell you a story.

[Latif Nasser]

Please.

[Jeff Guo]

It's about medieval England.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

So it's the 1400s okay. It's like medieval England, it's the 1400s, and this amazing new technology has just arrived on the shores of ye olde England. And it is this new way of making iron.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

It's called the blast furnace. So just, like very briefly, like before the blast furnace, you kind of had these backyard ovens, basically, where you kind of baked the iron ore to make the iron. And they were like, super inefficient and really slow and not great.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

But this blast furnace, the scientific innovation was that if you blew air onto the fire, you could get it really hot, and then you could get it so hot that you could just melt the iron. And it was amazing.

[Latif Nasser]

Got it.

[Jeff Guo]

And this, like, revolutionized iron making. So these blast furnaces, they're these huge 20 foot tall stone towers. You would have these giant bellows at the bottom blowing.

[Latif Nasser]

Just imagine the bellows. I was just imagining the bellows. Okay, cool. Okay. So that's the key innovation here.

[Jeff Guo]

Yes. And medieval England, iron was so precious, so important. You needed it for ploughs and spades, horseshoes, pots, kettles, nails, hammers. Yeah, whatever. And so now you had this technology that you could make these blast furnaces. They could make a ton of iron a day.

[Latif Nasser]

A ton. A literal ton.

[Jeff Guo]

A literal ton. Which is, like, just unprecedented.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

The problem with all of this is what was the fuel that went into this blast furnace? And at the time, it was charcoal.

[Latif Nasser]

Which is. Which is. Charcoal is made out of wood. Is that right? No.

[Jeff Guo]

Yes, yes, yes. So. So this was.

[Latif Nasser]

So they're like slurping down forests? Basically.

[Jeff Guo]

Yes, yes. Just picture the English countryside, right? You've got these blast furnaces sending up these huge plumes of smoke, and then everyone's just chopping down trees as f as they can to feed these giant blast furnaces. And it makes people really concerned.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Like, really concerned. They're like, oh, my God, where are the trees going? But it got so bad that by the late 1500s, you have parliament banning new iron mills from starting up in different places. They're like, we cannot do this. We just cannot deal with this because.

[Latif Nasser]

We have one tree left, and everyone's about to save the tree.

[Jeff Guo]

We gotta save the trees.

[Latif Nasser]

The tree.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You even have Queen Elizabeth I. Not the second, the first. You have Queen Elizabeth I. She is issuing royal edicts saying, no more charcoal making in my royal forests. Like, we just can't. We can't do this anymore. But then something happened.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay?

[Jeff Guo]

So in 1709, this English guy named Abraham Darby, he figured out how to use a different kind of fuel. So not charcoal. So maybe you want to guess what he figured out.

[Latif Nasser]

Oil, probably. Right.

[Jeff Guo]

Coal. He figured out coal? Yes. He figured out you can use this sort of modified coal to run these blast furnaces. And this changed everything. I'm not exaggerating. The iron industry took off. This led to the industrial revolution. We avoided the problem. We avoided the shortage. And it's not an isolated example. This is a pattern that comes up. We did this with whales. When we stopped using whale oil for lamps and started using kerosene, we did this with rubber. We started making synthetic rubber instead of getting all our rubber from trees. It's happened over and over again where we have stood at the edge of the cliff where it looked like, oh, crap, if we keep doing what we're doing, we are going to run out of some precious resource.

[Latif Nasser]

Right.

[Jeff Guo]

And then somehow, at the last minute, catastrophe is averted. I mean, this has happened so often. I feel like we should give it a name.

[Latif Nasser]

I know. I was going to say, do economists have some kind of, like, wonky name for this?

[Jeff Guo]

Not that I could find. So I'm going to take the opportunity to give this a name.

[Latif Nasser]

Jeff, it is yours. Yours to name.

[Jeff Guo]

I think we should call this the Malthusian swerve.

[Latif Nasser]

Swerve. Malthusian swerve. Okay. And why that?

[Jeff Guo]

Because, remember, do you remember Thomas Malthus?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah. And if I remember, his whole thing was like. No, you tell me what his whole thing was like.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. So he was this famous English philosopher type. He lived, you know, he grew up in the 1700s, pretty much around the time that coal was taken over England.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Right.

[Jeff Guo]

So he was seeing a lot of this happen. And he's famous for predicting that humanity's growth would hit a limit that, you know, populations would grow faster than we could provide food for them. Right. And so the future of humanity was to be limited and trapped by our own lack of resources and that everybody would just be miserable and sad and poor and hungry forever.

[Latif Nasser]

He does not sound like he would have been fun at parties.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, yeah, he was a real bummer. But maybe what he's more famous for is that none of that happened. The reason that Malthus prophecy didn't come true.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Is due to what I would say is the most important Malthusian swerve of all time.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

And this one is fertilizer, Right, Right.

[Latif Nasser]

What was like the green revolution or whatever? Right. Is that right?

[Jeff Guo]

The fertilizer revolution.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

So I don't know if you want to hear the guano story, please.

[Latif Nasser]

I love the guano story. I know the guano story, but I love the guano story, and I want to hear you tell the one.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay, let's do it together then. Yeah. So, like, most. So, like, so this is like the 1800. A little bit after Malthus time. In the 1800s, Europeans are starting to realize you can really supercharge food production if you use better fertilizer.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Right. And specifically, there's this one fertilizer that indigenous people in South America were using that was amazing.

[Latif Nasser]

Guano. Guano, which is basically just bird poop.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

Right.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay. So basically, you would have all these seabirds, and they would poop on these rocky islands and coastlines along South America, and the poop would just accumulate. So the Europeans. So, like, in the 1800s, the Europeans are importing hundreds and thousands of tons. They're literally fighting wars over control of these guano islands. Like, Spain is getting into wars with Peru and Chile. Like, just who gets to seize the poop islands.

[Latif Nasser]

Right.

[Jeff Guo]

But the problem is, we were using guano way faster than the birds could, you know, make the guano.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

And then in the 1900s, in the early 1900s, some German chemists figured out a way to basically make synthetic guano. They invented an industrial process to literally pull nitrate, nitrogen. Yeah, that's like, the key ingredient in guano.

[Latif Nasser]

Right, right, right.

[Jeff Guo]

Pull it out of the air and make synthetic fertilizer.

[Latif Nasser]

And that is. That is on the order of a, like, alchemy discovery. Like, that is, like, this thing that. That is super abundant in the air all around us. It is literally the majority of the air, but it was unusable. And then there was a hack where we then figured out how to make it usable. That seems like that's, like, a miraculous technological breakthrough.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, it's a miraculous story. And it is, like, maybe one of the best examples of this thing that I'm gonna call the Malthusion swerve.

[Latif Nasser]

Swerve. I like it. I like it. So the swerve is, like. It's like. When you say swerve, I'm picturing, like, it's like a car about to collide into a cliff, and then right at the last second, swerves out of the way.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

And Malthus is driving the car, thinking that, of course we're gonna hit the cliff. And then really, it's like the passenger who then just, like. Just like, yanks the steering wheel is like, nope, not gonna happen. Right. At the last second we figured it out.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. And if you look at human history, this is a pattern that happens over and over again.

[Latif Nasser]

I find this somewhat of a relief. It is sort of encouraging. But it also seems like. Like there's so much drama here and there might be a time where we can't swerve in time. Like what. What happens if and when we can't swerve in time? And also I would argue sometimes the swerves, sometimes we swerve right into another cliff. So for example, the example you talked about, from charcoal to coal, which is great for the trees, except after a while it's also bad for the trees. Right? Like, it's like global rising temperatures lead to wildfires, lead to trees not able to grow where they once were able to grow. Like, it's like we're.

[Jeff Guo]

It's true. But we've bought ourselves more time.

[Latif Nasser]

Fair.

[Jeff Guo]

Right. We've bought ourselves more time, but then.

[Latif Nasser]

We just always use that time to step on the gas to the next thing. Right. And then maybe when we do swerve, then we swerve into something worse. Something that causes, you know, war, exploitation, or just messes up the planet in a way that you. That is unswerve backable from.

[Jeff Guo]

I mean, yes, that is all totally right. It is a mess. But you know, to help us unpack it, I think we should talk about a swerve that we are in the middle of right now.

[Latif Nasser]

Actually. First we're gonna swerve to break, but only for a minute. Then we'll swerve back and step on the gas directly towards a currently oncoming cliff. Radiolab is supported by Capital One Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees. Just ask the Capital One bank guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. He'd also tell you that Radiolab is his favorite podcast too. Oh, really?

[Jeff Guo]

Thanks.

[Latif Nasser]

Capital One Bank Guy. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.combank Capital One NA member FDIC Radiolab is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. The news about reading is not good.

[Jeff Guo]

About 33% of fourth graders can read proficiently.

[Latif Nasser]

But there's a School district in a poor Rust Belt city that's doing something different. We want to be the best. Sound it out. My turn.

[Sandra Faber]

This was an amazing school.

[Latif Nasser]

For years, almost every third grader in in this district has passed the state reading test. Find out how they're doing it on Sold a story. New episodes available now in your podcast app Radiolab. Latif back with Jeff Guo from Planet Money, telling us about a thing he has noticed called the Malthusian swerve, where we're about to run out of some resource, but at the last minute, some new resource or idea or innovation comes along and saves the day. And just before the break, Jeff had been telling us about how he'd been looking for examples of the swerve back in the past.

[Jeff Guo]

And I was like, okay, but is there a more recent example? Is there, like, an example of a Malthusian swerve that happened in the past couple years? And there is one oil.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, we're in the middle of the Malthusian oil.

[Jeff Guo]

We are, yes. Remember, do you remember, like, in the 80s and 90s, all of the talk about peak oil?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Do you remember?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and even before that, like, I think in the 70s and stuff, like, it's like we keep having this conversation over and over again. Peak oil. Yes.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You have people, you have geologists, distinguished geologists, saying, warning us that, you know, we're gonna run out of oil, that we're gonna reach peak oil very soon, and that. Well, you just told.

[Latif Nasser]

You just said it in 52 years or whatever. Like, you just said it the same thing. Yeah, yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Well, back in the 1990s, they were saying it's going to happen in the 2000s. They were saying, oh, crap, like, we're going to start running out in the year, like, 2000 something.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

And if you look at oil production, like, yeah, it does. Especially in the U.S. yeah, it does kind of start to slow down in the 2000s. A lot of people were wondering about, what are we going to do? How are we going to adapt? How are we going to move away from oil? And if you look at the chart, you'll see the oil production, it goes. Kind of starts to dip in the 2000s, and then it starts to rise again more and more and more.

[Latif Nasser]

There's.

[Jeff Guo]

There's a swerve, and that was caused by the fracking revolution.

[Latif Nasser]

But is that a swerve? Like, I mean, if we're. Now we just found another way to get more fossil fuels. Like, is that even really that feels like a. We swerved and swerved right back in the same direction.

[Jeff Guo]

That is one way to think about it. The way I think about it is like it's a mini swerve, you know, like, oh, crap, we're running into the cliff. We can't find any alternatives, but we did find a way to get a little bit more oil out of the ground in the meantime.

[Latif Nasser]

But, but, but in a way, running out of oil isn't even necessarily the problem here. The problem is the thing it's doing for everything else.

[Jeff Guo]

It's true. The problem with fossil fuels, it's not that we're going to run out of them. We have too much of them. It's too easy to go and find oil in the ground. It's too easy. We have a problem that's not, it's not a scarcity problem, it's an anti scarcity problem. Right? And then we burn them and then there's these horrible side effects for the environment. And then the world's getting hotter and wildfires are popping up. Like, that's.

[Latif Nasser]

It's a much harder sell, though. It's a much harder sell to tell people, we have too much of this thing. That's gonna hurt you as opposed to, we have not enough of this thing. So take care of it.

[Jeff Guo]

Yes. That is the key thing here, I think. Like, you look at how these Malthusian swerves, if we're gonna call it that, how they.

[Latif Nasser]

I love it. I love it. Keep doing it.

[Jeff Guo]

How did they happen? Right? And it was people who were motivated by the terror of, we're gonna crash into this giant problem in so many years and we need to figure it out.

[Latif Nasser]

Necessity is the mother of invention kind of thing. Desperation is the inventor's best friend.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, yeah, right. And you look at how an economy works, and I'm not saying this is the, the ideal way to operate, but an economy works through incentives.

[Latif Nasser]

It's one of those things where the more you use, the less you have. The less you have, the higher the price, the higher the price. Then all of a sudden new pockets of that resource that would have been too expensive before to get now become unlocked.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, exactly. Or also we might try to innovate, right? Like now there's an incentive to invent something newer, cheaper, better than what we had before. Like, I would bring up the example of like, lithium. Right now there is so much money, and if you can invent a battery that doesn't need lithium, you will, like, I don't know, win the Nobel Prize. Right. Like you will, like there is a lot of energy and motivation to solve that problem.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

And if we were all just going to be like, well, we just, we don't need that much lithium because we're just going to conserve it and recycle it and we're not going to grow, then what's the point of trying to make anything more efficient or better? There's no incentive.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah. But it just, it feels like a, like a trap, like, and an especially capitalist kind of a trap where the only thing that will inspire us to innovate or to swerve, to use your word, is the immediate danger of the cliff. Like, I mean, we're talking about resources and economics, GDP and blah, blah, blah. But really this is all like a head game. It's like all like people's minds work in this very specific way. And long term thinking is so hard for us. And it's like we've got this system that leans into a thing that is already a problem with us and the way we think, it's like we're just gonna use it as long as it's there. And when it starts to almost not be there, we'll figure out something else.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, right. How do we get people to actually do the thing that is in the long term interests of everybody? Do you like, is the solution to have like some intergalactic Queen Elizabeth come down and say, no, no, no, no, guys, you're using way too much oil. You gotta stop. You gotta stop. You gotta put a pause on it. Right. Is it that or is it sort of we're all left to our own devices and some combination of the free market and also government leaders worrying about this thing hash out some kind of, you know, compromise. That's kind of what we're stuck in right now.

[Latif Nasser]

But like, we're all so smart enough to. Can't we figure out a system where we don't have to just drive into the cliff and swerve at the last minute every time? You know?

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

If this was your car and there was. I mean, this is such a weird analogy. There's only one car and you, whoever is in the driver's seat, really, it's all of us. But whoever's in the driver's seat keeps driving pedal to the metal, accelerating faster and faster at cliffs, you would take their keys away, you'd be like, sorry, you are not fit to drive.

[Jeff Guo]

It's scary.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah. I don't know, why do we keep doing that then? Like, do you think growth is inevitable? Do you think Growth is good. What do you after all of this, what is your take on growth in particular?

[Jeff Guo]

I think that growth is. Maybe we should talk about what growth even is. Like there are always going to be parts of the economy that we point at and we're going to say that's bad growth. We don't want that. But growth is not just us burning a lot of fossil fuels and polluting the planet. Right. Growth can be good. Like growth could be starting a new business, mentoring kids, inventing a new kind of medicine that saves lives. That is also growth. And so for me, I guess it's hard for me to say that growth is bad and maybe it's because I've just been too economics pilled. But when people say the word growth to me, I think of a country like China. You know, China's economy grew so fast that it lifted 800 million people out of poverty.

[Latif Nasser]

Incredible, right? It's like hard to say that impossible seeming.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, it's hard to say that's bad.

[Latif Nasser]

That's funny. That was probably the population of the entire Earth in Malchus, right?

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. And that's amazing. And so I think it's about figuring out specific things that we can do to be smarter about it to make it less harmful. But I don't know.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, I agree with that. Like we all have needs and there are increasingly more of us. But I do think that taking like I still am sort of struck by the Sandy Faber's like stone cold, like zoom out. There's nothing that's wrong about that logic either. She just has a seemingly a different priority than most economists, which is like she's thinking at a different scale.

[Sandra Faber]

We have been given the gift of cosmic time. We have hundreds of millions of years, if not another billion years. But we have not solved the problem of combining human nature with living in abundance.

[Latif Nasser]

So I should tell you, we actually ended up talking to Sandy Faber.

[Sandra Faber]

My cosmic point of view at this moment is to try to figure out how people will live the best possible life on Earth after cheap energy has passed away.

[Latif Nasser]

And telling her about your Malthusian swerve idea.

[Sandra Faber]

Where is the next swerve? That's the thing. That's the thing specifically with regard to energy.

[Latif Nasser]

And the thing that she was most concerned about was that energy is just so wrapped up in all these different parts of our lives, basically everything we do and it has these huge effects on the environment. She says we're actually dealing with a bunch of different cliffs and a bunch of different kinds of cliffs all at the same time.

[Sandra Faber]

Some people call it the poly crisis and some people call it the metacrisis.

[Latif Nasser]

Basically, we're facing a crisis of crises.

[Sandra Faber]

A crisis of crises. Yeah. So every time we think of one of these possible swerves, I'm not saying we shouldn't pursue them, but they leave a large fraction, everyone leaves a gigantic fraction of the problem unsolved. So I would say a huge issue for a long term, happy human history in the future is having a more mature picture of wealth, how it should be managed and how growth should be managed.

[Jeff Guo]

I think Sandy and I, we're totally in agreement about what we want for the world, for the future. It's just about how we get there. And so can I give you, can I give you my silly galaxy brain way of thinking about all of this?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, please. Please.

[Jeff Guo]

So you're talking about, like, why can't we. This is, you know, the Earth is our home, so why can't we all, you know, get together and take care of it?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

And cooperate and all of that. Right. And if you're just a household of like a couple people, you have a relationship, if you're just a village, you like, know everybody, you, you know, you can help each other out, give each other things, all of that. But when you get bigger and bigger, when you get to the scale of countries and like the world. Right. It's very hard to get people to cooperate. It's very, very hard. Everybody has different opinions. No one's going to agree. Everybody's going to have different motives. And what an economy is, is a way of turning all of that, of organizing us at a global scale into something productive. And obviously, you know, the economy is not perfect. There are all kinds of problems we didn't even have the time to talk about today. But when it comes to dealing with issues of scarcity, like running out of some resource markets are a tool that, you know, historically have kind of worked, even if it's been super messy and dramatic and swervy and may have created way bigger problems down the road. I'm not saying that the economy is the answer. Right. But it does give me a little bit of hope that the economy finds a way most of the time. Hopefully.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Are we talking about a swerve away from resources or should we really be talking about a swerve away from a certain kind of thinking or a certain kind of economy or just thinking about growth in general? It's true. You're right that an economy is a way to Organize a globe. But like, but maybe we need to be acting more like a household. Cause we only have this one house.

[Jeff Guo]

If you can figure out a way to do that, they will give you a Nobel Prize, like on the spot, I guarantee.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, well, thank you, Jeff. I don't know if you exactly chased away my existential dread, but I appreciate you sort of holding my hand through it.

[Jeff Guo]

It's all we have in the end, each other.

[Latif Nasser]

That's right. Thank you so much.

[Jeff Guo]

Thanks a lot, Tiff. This has been a lot of fun.

[Latif Nasser]

That was Jeff Guo, host and reporter over at NPR's Planet Money podcast. Thank you to them for loaning us Jeff, for how game he was, his research, his charm, and his back of the envelope math. Really appreciate all of that. In fact, we produced this story in collaboration not just with Jeff, but also the editorial team over there at Planet Money, including Alex Goldmark and Jess Jiang. And so they are actually playing the same conversation on their feed too, which is very exciting for us. If you don't already know it, Planet Money is a. I mean, it's money. It says it in the title. There's so many smart people. It's full of surprises and adventure. Go check it out on Apple or Spotify or NPR or wherever you get your podcast. Obviously you don't need to re listen to this conversation over there, but they did just do a great episode that is a deep dive into gdp. They did another one about synthetic diamonds, which are not a critical Earth resource, but there is kind of a swerve happening there. Anyway, on our side, this episode was produced and edited by Pat Walters and Soren Wheeler. Fact checked by Natalie Middleton. Special thanks to Jennifer Brandell. And of course, thank you Massive. Thank you to Sandy Faber. Her math, her thoughtfulness, her cosmic perspective, which of course prompted this conversation. And here's hoping that it prompts a lot more conversation, maybe even action as we all move into the next hundred million years of life, hopefully on this planet. I'm Latif Nasser. Thank you for listening.

[Keegan]

Hi, I'm Keegan and I'm from Longmont, Colorado. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumra and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co hosts. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bresler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz, Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyan Sanbandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McKeown, Alex Neeson, Sara Khari, Sarah Sandbach, Anisa Vitza, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is.

[Latif Nasser]

Provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore.

[Keegan]

Foundation Science Sandbox Assignments Foundation Initiative and the John Templeton Foundation.

[Latif Nasser]

Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by.

[Jeff Guo]

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship wnyc. Org.