Superabundance And Jordan Peterson’s Alliance For Responsible Citizenship
Limitless Possibilities in a Finite World
Abundance or scarcity? Can the world’s population go on growing and consuming more resources, or must overpopulation and overconsumption lead to a global catastrophe? Is it time to stop having children and give up the conveniences of modern life to safeguard the environment from harm, or can humanity innovate to even greater abundance while responsibly stewarding our environment?
Academic and author Marian Tupy seeks to answer these questions in his paper for ARC.
Marian shows that on almost every metric life has been improving: mortality rates have reduced, nutrition has improved, income has risen. And most interestingly, resources are more abundant than before. Even in the short period from 1980 until 2022, the world’s population rose from 4.4 billion to 8 billion people, and total resource abundance rose by 420.1% with it.
He describes how many of the issues surrounding our resources today are beginning to be solved. Whether it is rising forest coverage in in the West, replenishing fish reserves through new forms of aquaculture, or rebuilding nitrogen reserves in our soil through crop modification. Each solution is the product of human innovation, and each has the power to continue driving us towards greater abundance.
But for this to continue, he argues, the West must once again embrace an ‘abundance mindset’ – one which recognises and celebrates the extraordinary potential of human innovation grounded in freedom.
He believes that this mindset – this story – enables us to look to the future with hope.
Marian Tupy
Marian L. Tupy is the founder and editor of HumanProgress.org and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. He is the co-author of Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet.
Gale Pooley is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a board member at Human Progress.