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Alas, the Eskimo Curlew. Most extreme of the Neo-Malthusian scare books is Vogt's Road to Survival. Vogt is an ornithologist, once editor of Bird Lore, who (to quote the book's jacket) "became interested in the relationship of man to his environment through his studies of bird behavior." Now chief of the Conservation Section of the Pan American Union, he still seems to care as much for "wildlife" (especially birds but including bighorn sheep) as he does for the .human species.
Again & again he yearns for the "lost song" of the extinct Eskimo curlew, "a Mozart of the prairies," and all through the book he develops the idea that men cannot live happily and permanently on the planet except in "ecological" balance with "the wildlife." In many cases, he thinks, this balance can be restored only by drastic reduction of human population (100 million Americans would be about right). According to Vogt, medical men who keep people from dying, upset nature's balance; if more people died there would be more room for mountain lions.
He regards wars and famine (among humans) with a friendly eye. Of China he says: "There is little hope that the world will escape the horror of extensive famines in China within the next few years. But from the world point of view, these may be not only desirable but indispensable. A Chinese population that continued to increase at a geometric rate could be a global calamity. The [peace] mission of General Marshall in this unhappy land was called a failure. Had it succeeded, it might well have been a disaster."*
The Elastic Soil. Real scientists take a dim view of Road to Survival. Here & there, they admit, among Vogt's errors, prejudices, mysticism and reckless appeals to emotion, they can find iotas of truth-but not many. From the verbiage of Vogt and his fellows, three central ideas about soil can be winnowed. All of these ideas are wrong, and the scientists knock them down easily.
First is the notion that "soil cannot be stretched," that each acre has a certain production capacity (Vogt calls it "biotic potential") which cannot be boosted without dire peril. This is the same fallacy that expresses itself in the old saying, "There are only so many slices in the cake." Some businessmen say this when they decide that their markets cannot be expanded and, therefore, should be divided among them in quotas set by their cartel. Some labor unions decide that there are only so many jobs to be divided, and therefore oppose labor-saving devices.