No miracle cure: The dark side of the Green Revolution

The Green Revolution, which dramatically increased crop yields, is widely touted as proof that humanity can innovate its way out of every crisis. But this view neglects the tremendous harm caused by modern agriculture.

Infinite growth proponents

Those who believe human populations and economies can and should keep growing forever usually refer to the Green Revolution when they argue that scientific progress and ‘technofixes’ can dissolve planetary limits. This was a common narrative in many media stories marking the recent death of Population Connection co-founder and famous scientist, Paul Ehrlich, who spent his long career raising awareness of the dangers of unchecked growth.

The Green Revolution was no miracle cure for ecological overshoot, however. While it helped save millions of people from starvation, the enormous increase in agricultural production to keep pace with population and consumption growth has accelerated all our environmental crises and made our human enterprise profoundly unsustainable and susceptible to collapse.

What exactly was the Green Revolution?

The Green Revolution was a significant advancement in agricultural technology that enabled a tremendous increase in the production of food grains, especially wheat and rice, during the mid-20th century, thereby preventing catastrophic famines.

The fear that population growth would outstrip available food supplies likely became prevalent after the dawn of agriculture, but it is commonly linked back to Thomas Malthus, an 18th century English cleric and economist. In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus argued that food production increases linearly, while population increases exponentially, which eventually leads to disaster.

This concern also formed the basis of Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb, which warned that humanity was on the path to mass starvation. This alarming scenario looked quite likely in the 1960s, when global population growth rates peaked and many developing countries were undergoing severe food shortages.